the court philosopher

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., a great writer and historian, and an old-guard liberal, died this week at the age of 89.

Schlesinger was a Kennedy administration insider, and sometimes a Kennedy apologist. But he was a proud liberal to his dying day.

I met Schlesinger several times in 1992 and he seemed very old and frail then. I'm amazed he lived this long, and I'm sorry for his passing.

Here's the New York Times obituary.

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I used to have many connections that caused me to meet famous people. I didn't have these connections in order to meet famous people, it was just the way my life was. But they're all gone now; I've moved on and so have they. My famous-people-meets are growing old and stale.