My first memories of Mr. Von Hoffman were watching his commentaries for 60 Minutes back the early 1970s. I will be curious to hear his thoughts about my upcoming critical article about that show's report on the killing of Emmett Till.

While I was a young pro-war conservative when I first saw his commentaries, I was impressed. They were witty, incisive, and wonderfuly irreverent. I always thought: why can't we be on the same side?

I never imagined that in 1980 that would indeed be the case though I was the one to make the biggest change in sides. That year, Mr. Hoffman hosted a closed-circuit telethon to raise money for the Libertarian campaign of Ed Clark. While Von Hoffman has never been, and is not, a libertarian, he is not a prisoner of ideology in his political choices.