I was on the porch of my swamp shack, reading the online Washington Post. Swamp Rabbit dropped by to hit me up for beer money. He was two dollars short of a six-pack.

“Check this out,” I said, pointing to a detail in Kissinger’s obit that amused me. “He went to dinner with Zsa Zsa Gabor, drove her home and was making a move on her when his beeper went off. It was Richard Nixon. Before Kissinger could get ‘to first base’ with Zsa Zsa, Nixon ordered him to ‘come back immediately’ to the Western White House.”

I scrolled through the story. “And how about this,” I said. “According to the Post writer, Kissinger ‘made tabloid headlines’ with Jill St. John when the two of them ‘inadvertently’ tripped an alarm one night at St. John’s Hollywood mansion.”

Swamp Rabbit looked unimpressed. “Who’s Jill St. John? And Zsa Zsa what’s-her-name — ain’t she the one starred in that TV series with Arnold the pig?”

“I think that was Zsa Zsa’s sister,” I said. “The point is that Henry the K had an active social life. He was dating stars and ‘stunning starlets’ when he wasn’t working as secretary of state and national security adviser.”

“You mean when he wasn’t ordering U.S. planes to carpet-bomb Cambodia, or backing Pakistan’s slaughter of them Bengalis, or stirring up dirty wars in Central America, or helping overthrow democracy in Chile, or ‘greenlighting’ Indonesia’s invasion of East Timor that killed more than 200,000 peeps. And that ain’t even the half of it.”

“Exactly,” I said. “The pudgy little shmuck invented a playboy persona for himself, which helped avert attention from the fact that he was a war criminal, indirectly responsible for something like two million deaths. The New York Times said he ‘proved mesmerizing as a media figure.’ I’m agreeing with you, dummy.”

I explained to him that the world is a big chessboard and Kissinger was a chess master and the rest of us just pawns in his game, to paraphrase Bob Dylan.

“It ain’t right, Odd Man. All them dead peeps, but that evil furball lived to be a hundred years old.”

I’d put Swamp Rabbit in a dark mood, it seemed. “Here,” I said, handing him two twenties. “Buy yourself a whole case of beer if you feel that bad.”

Footnote: Evidence exists that Kissinger realized early on that the Vietnam War was unwinnable. But he played a big role in sabotaging peace talks in order to help get Nixon elected president in 1968 and re-elected in 1972. One can only wonder how many lives were sacrificed to ensure Nixon’s victories and Kissinger’s continued presence in government and the gossip columns. You won’t see any estimates in the mainstream media.