Americans are broad-minded people. They'll accept the fact that a person can be an alcoholic, a dope fiend, a wife beater, and even a newspaperman, but if a man doesn't drive, there is something wrong with him.

Buchwald’s joke turns on a reversal of moral expectations: society may tolerate serious vices and harms, yet treats the harmless deviation—not driving—as a suspicious flaw. The line satirizes mid‑20th‑century American car culture, where driving signified adulthood, masculinity, independence, and normalcy. By lumping “newspaperman” in with stigmatized categories, Buchwald also pokes fun at his own profession and the public’s cynicism about it. The humor exposes how social conformity and consumer habits can become moralized, so that failing to participate in a dominant lifestyle (automobility) is read as a character defect rather than a preference or circumstance.