“The fact that Charlie Wilson’s heart–his second–finally gave out wasn’t all that surprising when you consider how he lived. Wilson, a former Texas Congressman, who died Feb 10 at 76, was the kind of man who would declare on ‘60 Minutes,’ “I love stickin it to the Russians.” The kind of man who would bring his then girlfriend, a former Miss World USA, on a fact-finding trip to Pakistan. The kind of man, his House colleagues used to say, who could strut while sitting down. Still, he was elected 12 times from Lufkin, Texas–a town so conservative that it didn’t vote to allow alcohol sales until 2006. Even those who disagreed with Wilson couldn’t help but like him: the liberal columnist Molly Ivins wrote admiringly that he hadn’t “an ounce of hypocrisy.” ‘Charlie Wilson’s War,’ the 2007 movie about his work as the chief backer of the Afghan mujahedin who fought against the Soviets, opened with Tom Hanks, playing Wilson, in a hot tub with two showgirls–just as Wilson had specified in a 1990 interview. It’s just as well they stuck to his wishes; nobody could have made up a character like Charlie Wilson.”