Famous last words

WHEN I screw up, I’ll cotton to it. Well, I screwed up. I believed the Washington Post when it reported that Richard Holbrooke’s last words, tinged with both drama and foreboding, were: "You've got to stop this war in Afghanistan." This final cinematic utterance offered the perfect ending to Holbrooke’s novelistic life as he lay on his deathbed. But as the old cliché goes, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Holbrooke’s words were taken out of context. And the Hollywood ending never happened.

Rajiv Chandrasekaran, who I think is the best reporter at the Post, wrote the original obit. That’s why I didn’t question it. To his credit, Chandrasekaran recognized his screw-up and set the record straight this afternoon. Here’s what really happened:

“As Dr. Jehan El-Bayoumi was attending to Holbrooke in the emergency room at George Washington University Hospital, she told him to relax and asked what she could do to comfort him, according to an aide who was present. Holbrooke, who was in severe pain, said jokingly that it was hard to relax because he had to worry about the difficult situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

El-Bayoumi, an Egyptian-American internist who is Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's physician, replied that she would worry for him. Holbrooke responded by telling her to end the war, the aide said. The aide said he could not be sure of Holbrooke's exact words. He emphasized Tuesday that the comment was made in painful banter, rather than as a serious exhortation about policy.”

Real life is almost never as interesting or dramatic as it is portrayed in fiction. And the initial reports of big breaking news almost always get it wrong. I know better. But my love of artful irony in a story got the better of me this time. So I hurriedly advanced the meme. Sorry about that. I can, however, take a little solace from the fact that everybody else in the media fell into the same hole with me.