The great writer Norman Mailer died November 10th. A combative, hard-living man — described by the NY Times as an occasional “prodigious drinker and drug taker” — he was 84.

That’s a ripe old age for a man who lived the way he did. He saw the Biblically allotted three score and ten, and raised it 14. Was that enough for these so-called journalists? Not even close. In the second graf, they tell us Mailer died of “acute renal failure.”

Let me get this straight: The man’s overworked kidneys kept his blood clean for 84 freakin’ years, while he was drinking and drugging and womanizing and stabbing his wife and challenging critics to fistfights. But he didn’t die of those things. Nor did age catch up to him. Oh, no: Mailer died of renal failure.

Why does it have to be failure, people? I’d call those 84 years a rousing renal success!

Kidneys never catch a break…

— Kenny