I’m losing too many people I admire these days.
Charlie Wilson was the kind of man who would declare on 60 Minutes: “I just love stickin’ it to the Russians.” The kind of man who would make a fact-finding trip through Pakistan, taking his then-girlfriend, a former Miss World USA, in tow through that Islamic country. And then, when the Defense Intelligence Agency refused to ferry her, he was the kind who would use his position on the House Appropriations Committee to slash the funding for two DIA planes, and have them transferred to the national guard instead. His House colleagues used to say Charlie Wilson was the only person they had ever met who could strut while sitting down. And, yet, he also managed to get elected 12 times from Lufkin, Texas–a town so socially conservative that it didn’t vote to allow alcohol sales until 2006, which was 73 years after the rest of the country ended Prohibition.
