Iâm sure Mrs. LFS and the kids will look after her well.
Hope he stays here. HR Puffenstuff was some freaky shit for 8 year old Dan
Which was more drug induced? Hr puffenstuf or Donny and Marie?
That was a good song about good dogs 
Posting this in this thread. Donât know his entire history but Iâll give him the benefit of the doubt. He seems to have amassed his fortune by generally being smarter than other business people.
Iâm sure there are things in his past that are objectionable (like the weirdo windowless dorm), but he seems like a pretty unobjectionable billionaire. But I am a Buffett/Berkshire Hathaway stan and am predisposed to liking him.
Obituary here:
This part was weird:
Perhaps in another life Mr. Munger, with all his drive and self-assurance, would have been the chief of a giant corporation. But he had no regrets about making his fortune in the shadow of Mr. Buffett.
âI didnât mind at all playing second fiddle to Warren,â he said in an interview for this obituary. âOrdinarily, everywhere I go I am very dominant, but when somebody else is better, Iâm willing to play the second fiddle. Itâs just that I was seldom in that position, except with Warren. But I didnât mind it at all.â
An interview for this obituary?
Itâs weird phrasing, but the Times (and probably other big papers), have lots of pre-written obituaries for famous people. They can update for age and cause of death before publication, but they want to have the basic biographical details and tone hammered out in advance rather than doing a rush job when the story breaks.
Oh, I know that every well-known person likely has an obituary prepped. I just donât think Iâve ever seen an interview designated as being âfor the obituaryâ. I wonder if both parties viewed it that way. Like, the NYT was saying, âHoly shit, we need to schedule an interview with this guy before he passes.â While Munger is like, âAhh, how wonderful, the NYT wants some more of my wisdom. It seems like Iâll never go out of style. Iâll do this one now and we can schedule the next one for 2025.â
At the funeral, Amy Lynn Carter read a love letter Jimmy wrote to Rosalynn when he was serving in the Navy:
My darling, every time I have ever been away from you, I have been thrilled when I return to discover just how wonderful you are. While I am away, I try to convince myself that you really are not, could not be as sweet and beautiful as I remember. But when I see you, I fall in love with you all over again. Does that seem strange to you? It doesnât to me. Goodbye, darling. Until tomorrow. Jimmy.
man
Old Q&A with folks who do obits for the Times. Seems like interviewing for obits is pretty common and explicit (the subject knows what the interview will be used for, and reporter agrees to embargo the info).
Interviewing the Subject in Advance
Q.
1. How do you go about approaching famous people while theyâre still alive to request an interview for their future obituaries? 2. Do you seek interviews only with those in good health, or also those known (or rumored) to be sick or in decline? 3. Do your reporters in such interviews delve into touchy subjects or disputed events and facts of a subjectâs life? 4. Do famous people tend to try to whitewash or aggrandize their pasts? 5. Does anyone ever spill the beans about their role in unsavory events, or candidly confess to unflattering actions on their part? 6. Does The Times ever promise to embargo juicy, newsworthy details until the subject has died? 7. Has any famous person ever succeeded in pulling the wool over your (The Timesâs) eyes? 8. Does The Times ever gloss over, or omit entirely, the sordid details of a famous personâs death? 9. Obituaries usually get the last word about a person. Does that place any special burden on you?-- Douglas W. Meyer, New York A. Thatâs a lot to chew on, but good questions. Iâve taken the liberty of numbering them for the benefit of readers, and Iâve pulled in a talented writer of advance obits, Marilyn Berger, to help me here. But let me give you some short answers first:1. Directly but also delicately. 2. All of the above. 3. They had better. 4. I think you know the answer to that one 5. Not to my knowledge, but itâs what we live, hope and pray for. 6. Yes, always. Thatâs the deal, and sometimes the carrot. 7. Iâm guessing: Yes. 8. We may not be needlessly graphic, but we donât ignore them. 9. I think so. And many people think of a Times obit as the last last word. So itâs a double weight. In fact, I think Iâll go lie down while Marilyn jumps in. By way of introduction, she has had an accomplished career as a journalist and has been writing advance obits for The Times for many years. She has carried on the storied tradition of Alden Whitman, who set the gold standard for interviewing subjects before their deaths and then writing brilliant obituaries about them. That tradition, by the way, has waxed and waned, but weâre beginning to revive it again in some interesting multimedia ways (to which youâll have to stay tuned, literally). Another reader points out that in discussing some compilations of Times obits, I forgot to mention a book filled with nothing but Whitmanâs obits. Thank you, sir. An egregious omission. Here it is: " Come to Judgment: Divers Notables Who Found Fame and Earned Obits in The New York Times*" (Viking, 1980). But without further ado, Marilyn: Yes, we often interview major figures for their obituaries, and yes, there is a promise to embargo everything that is said until after that personâs death. That embargo is arranged precisely so that the person will be as candid as he or she can. One always hopes that some startling new fact will emerge from these interviews, but mainly, at least up to now, what emerges is the inner feelings of that person in response to events. Clark Clifford, for example, recalled the proudest moment of his life as the time he was able to convince President Johnson to start pulling out of Vietnam; his most shameful, when he was fingerprinted as an accused criminal in the BCCI case. People who are both in good health and in poor are approached. The delicacy of that approach is all important, especially with those who are ill. Most people are quite savvy about all of this and hope to have some input into their final record; but there are many who are too superstitious or frightened to submit to this kind of discussion. Some are quite introspective about their lives; some are not capable of introspection. The Times, of course, exposes unsavory events in a personâs life when they can be discovered. There are no cover-ups. Obituaries are not eulogies: they have to include the good and the reprehensible. Precisely because an obituary is the âlast word,â there is a special burden to get it right. But that special burden exists for all articles. Journalism, as someone once said, is âthe first rough draft of history,â and all of us try to make it as smooth and truthful as possible.
This is really fascinating, thanks.
âWhy the f you left me on readâ j Carter 2023
From the Times obit.
Soon he was assigned to Nome, Alaska, where he developed a talent that would serve him well.
âPlaying poker in the Army and as a young lawyer honed my business skills,â Mr. Munger told Janet Lowe in her 2000 book âDamn Right! Behind the Scenes with Berkshire Hathaway Billionaire Charlie Munger.â
âWhat you have to learn is to fold early when the odds are against you,â he said, âor if you have a big edge, back it heavily, because you donât get a big edge often, so seize it when it does come.
This was truly fascinating, thank you for sharing
From the WSJ, I donât think I had heard this before:
Munger retained his sense of humor into his 90s, even though he was nearly blind, could barely walk, and his beloved wife, Nancy, had died years earlier. Around 2016, an acquaintance asked which person, in a long life, he felt most grateful to.
âMy second wifeâs first husband,â Munger said instantly. âI had the ungrudging love of this magnificent woman for 60 years simply by being a somewhat less awful husband than he was.â
Military intelligence
My first job (17, maybe?) in journalism was writing obits, though not for famous people. We had lots of famous obituaries in the system. ⌠almost got fired for mistakenly writing someone was from Pissburgh, PA. No idea how that got thru the copy desk.