I can’t remember the first time I met Dovie Eisner, which is odd given that he always stood out, his small broken body wheelchair-bound with a breathing tube as a result of his being born with a recessive genetic neuromuscular condition called nemaline myothapy. But I do remember the last time.
From about 2012 until he slipped into a coma last year and passed away last week on Sept. 11, Dovie was a central figure in the small world of conservative writing and thinking in New York City.
It was a group that, along with myself, included the likes of Karol Markowitz, Sohrab Ahmari and Armin Rosin. Basically, if you had ever written a right wing op-ed in Gotham, you were a friend of Dovie.
Dovie’s position in this circle was entirely of his own volition. He would seek us out, often one by one, first through social media, then a lunch or dinner carefully choreographed to accommodate his severe disability. I’ve never known anyone so anxious to be on the scene, nor so deserving.
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When Dovie would see a photo of a meet-up he had not attended, he would simply reply, “Why wasn’t I invited?” which became an inside joke for us, summing up all life’s little disappointments.
As a thinker, Dovie was top-notch, and two lights shone brightest in his philosophy: the importance of fairness and the importance of life.
Intellectually, Dovie was a tireless — and I’ll be honest, sometimes even annoying — devil’s advocate, with an extraordinary ability to see the best arguments of all sides.
There you would be, waxing poetic about free speech absolutism, and in his quiet wheeze of a voice, he would start listing off exceptions as if he had a Black’s Law Dictionary stashed somewhere in his wheelchair.
In retrospect, it is amazing that someone whom life dealt with so unfairly held so dear to his broken breast the ideal that we, us human beings, must always treat others with fairness in mind.
Dovie was just as committed to his undying belief in and fight for life. Not just his, but those of the unborn and others in his own shoes, tempted by the easy out of assisted suicide, a practice he abhorred with every fiber of his being.
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Writing in the New York Post last year, shortly before his slip into eternity began, Dovie said, “The logic of assisted suicide leads inevitably to the conclusion that those with doctor-approved expiration dates are living lives not worth living. Lives unworthy of life, as the Nazis referred to people with disabilities when they set out to exterminate us with their Aktion T4 program.
“I’ve heard echoes of that myself — from peers, from rivals, sometimes from myself: I haven’t been suicidal in a good number of years, but I can’t say that about my teens and early 20s.”
As stoic and strong as Dovie was, there were late-night texts full of fear and sadness as well. He wouldn’t let you off the hook with platitudes. He literally had no time for that. You couldn’t just say, “Don’t worry, it will be OK,” because he knew, and you did too, that it damn well wasn’t going to be.
Those are some of the most frank and cherished conversations I’ve ever had. No artifice, no lies, the cold, bitter reality of life’s cruelty faced head on. Everything was up for grabs because Dovie demanded it be so.
But also, the presence of God’s love — which Dovie found in every face and facet of the world around him — with a depth one could only envy.
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Every writer and thinker who he blessed with wisdom is better for having known Dovie. When we fight for the disabled in the womb, we fight for Dovie. When we fight against the killing of the light that assisted suicide represents, we fight for Dovie.
Dovie, who loved life so dearly, and lived it so fully.
Often, after a group dinner, the bill would come and someone would say, “Who had five top-shelf bourbons … oh.” We would all scrounge to cover Dovie’s excessive bar tab, and we were happy to do it. We would all love to do it just one more time. The kid knew how to live.
The last time I saw Dovie, we were standing on the corner outside the Yale Club in Manhattan, and I was having a smoke as we waited for his special minivan to come get him.
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“You know, Dave,” he said with thick breath, “all I really want is a beautiful wife and like four kids.”
I told him, “I get it, man.”
He looked at me and said, “I mean, Stephen Hawking did it.”
I nodded, took a drag and said, “Well, how’s your physics?”
Dovie spit out his breathing tube and said, “Stop, don’t make me laugh.”
I spent a lot of time trying to make Dovie laugh, time I am so grateful for.
Mark Twain wrote, “Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.” Dovie was like a philosopher stone, turning brutal suffering into humor and humanity at every turn. He was the toughest guy I ever met, and we will not see his like again.
