I Remember The Late William Safire, Dead at 79
So many famous people have died lately. It's pretty depressing.
My niece wrote on her Facebook page "Enough with the dying, people."
Anyway, today it's the New York Times columnist Bill Safire.
He was a terrific writer. And he wrote two entertaining columns -- one on politics, one on language. I really enjoyed reading him, including his novels.
But my one experience with him was not great.
I had written a "Dear Colleague" letter for my boss, Carl Levin, calling on the Secretary of State to inform the Israeli prime minister that UN Resolutions 242 and 338 the land for peace resolutions) applied to the West Bank. Prime Minister Shamir had just announced that they didn't.+
Levin circulated the letter and got a few dozen colleagues to sign on.
The Israelis went ballistic and dispatched a top aide to our office to upbraid Levin.
Safire called to upbraid me. He said that he heard that I had not drafted the letter for Levin and that in fact the left-wing Israeli official, Yossi Beilin, had drafted the letter to subvert the Likud government and that I had duped Levin into circulating it.
Safire even told me where Beilin had handed me the letter. He said he would write a column exposing me as an agent of the Israeli Labor party. He laughed when I said, honestly, that I did not know who Beilin was.
Anyway, it was pretty scary. Exposed in the Times for working with the Israeli Labor Party!
I told him that he was accusing me of violating my oath and breaking the law. He came on strong but finally backed down. I must have convinced him.
In the end, he left me out of the column. (It turns out that Safire had been duped by an Israeli official who told him the Beilin story. He was, apparently, just following up on a tip).
Levin was unfazed. "I told you to draft the letter and I re-drafted it. It's not going to be a story."
And he was right. But I did learn something about journalism that day.
In any case, I'm sorry Safire has passed. In a media loaded with dim bulbs, he was a smart, savvy writer and commentator. He was old school.
RIP, William Safire.
MJ,
you the humanitarian I'm not, I say good riddance. His being a good writer is secondary to what he wrote about. I once called our County Paper to complain about the many times they printed 4 columnists on the same day, all Conservatives, and I mentioned one in particular; he said the guy was a good writer.
Safire and Novak were people the world could do without. Good riddance to both of them.
September 27, 2009 4:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Second.
I remember reading a Safire column where he quoted Sharon's mother as saying "Never trust the Arabs." And neither Safire--nor his editors--were embarrassed to run this quote approvingly.
I doubt the NYT would ever have run a column that included the exhortation, "Never trust the Jews!"
The world is definitely better off without Safire polluting it. First, Irving Krystal and now Safire. Things are really looking up.
September 28, 2009 12:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
myth,
there's an old myth? that says death comes in threes; Kristol, Novak, and now Safire.
September 28, 2009 6:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
You have an odd sense of gratitude, but I do understand, what the hell can you say?
You told this story in part before, BTW, and it got to me, on top of a whole *lot* of other things.
Frankly, I don't like this guy, not one bit. And his sophomoric, self-congratulatory writings about language (you should SEE how the supine NYT readership is going off about his linguistic *genius* BTW); those stupidities can all be tossed, it goes without saying. Sheesh! Policy was 1000x worse.
Best one can opine, apart from his "understandable" egotistical excesses, is he was a product of another time when many in USA were awfully mixed up about issues of justice, and how he fought other people, uh, passionately (really kind word there!) to make sure his side prevailed no matter what.
In life, he was always a big part of the problem, never the solution (OH, SORRY, I GOT THAT FLIPPED BACKWARDS!
...or did I?). Nixon White House. Good grief!
September 27, 2009 4:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
A reminder from the AP...
And so what if Safire contributed to the annihilation of over 1,000,000 Iraqis and 5000 American soldiers?
We're all so grateful for his explanation of phrases like "the proof is in the pudding!"
September 27, 2009 4:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Another one (influential conservative) bites the dust! What a pity.
September 27, 2009 5:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
As with most humans Saffire had his good points and his bad points.
Today, I will remember him for coming out strong against further media consolidation, one of the few who did-left or right-and for that I admire him. He made a difference in a positive way.
The stuff I disagreed with can wait a day or a week, even. It is sad to me that our society can't even wait an hour before they start in with the digs. We used to be kinder, and have more decency.
At any rate, thanks MJ, Saffire made a difference to many “nattering nabobs of negativism” and “hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.” At least, to this one.
September 27, 2009 5:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
His "On Language" column was brilliant. It is a double pity that he didn't (a) stick to it after 2001 and (b) (speaking of the modern lack of decency) ever apologize for what he did instead of it in 2002-03.
September 27, 2009 5:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, I missed that about media consolidation. If he said that, then good for him.
September 27, 2009 10:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Every once in a while, there is an obituary I read with a great deal of satisfaction. This is one of them.
September 27, 2009 6:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Maybe it's just me, but it seems as though 25 years ago there were a handful of conservative pundits whom I respected, even though I almost always disagreed with them about politics. Mr. Safire was among them. And I appreciated his column on language.
But nearly all of these people, Mr. Safire included, went with the flow when their... movement... got hijacked by people who did not deserve any respect. The idea that winning at any cost was more important than the quaint notions of honor and dignity, or the idea that we are all Americans first, and political adversaries second.
Maybe it was more about me growing up than them losing their way. But to me William Safire was one of the good guys on the other side back in the mid-1980s, and a total douchebag by the turn of the century. (For me the tipping point was the Clinton impeachment. And it's been decidedly downhill since then.)
So rest in peace, William Safire. I'll try to remember you before you turned 60.
-- ARG
September 27, 2009 6:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
I can hear Mr. Safire from the grave scolding me for this sentence fragment.
D'oh!
-- ARG
September 27, 2009 7:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
I second the motion on both your comments. I would, however, amend "honor and dignity" in the first one to include "honesty, consistency, and civility."
September 28, 2009 7:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
I was a graduate student in New York when Safire started to write "On Language" for the New York Times. Being involved in studies that took language seriously (Anglo-American Analytic Philosophy), I read him from time to time. I know he got a lot of kudos for his On Language columns and I suppose, for the general readership, he did his part in advancing the unpopular opinion that language really matters a lot more than people think.
However, He did write a column in which he ridiculed the expression "You can't have your cake and eat it too" presumably because he thought that you had to first have the cake if you were going to eat it. The implication being that the expression implied the opposite.
I wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Times in which I explained that Safire had it all wrong. The expression "you can't have your cake and eat it too" is perfectly coherent. The mistake being that Safire was reading it as if it meant "You can't FIRST eat your cake and THEN have it" (reading a temporal sequence in the conjunction "and"). Clearly that is not what “and” signifies. All it says is that you can't both have your cake and eat it too because when you eat it you don't have it anymore. It is as plain as that.
Needless to say, the New York Times did not see fit to print my letter of correction.
(For the logicians among you Safire was denying that p&q is equivalent to q&p, a rather obvious mistake for someone who prided himself in his linguistic skills.
Nevertheless, Safire the popularizer of "paying-attention-to-language" did have my support. The political writings I will not comment on at this time.
September 27, 2009 9:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
The expression merely says that it can't be true that you both have your cake and have eaten it too which is equivalent to saying that you can't both have eaten you cake and have it too.
~(p&q) iff ~(q&p). I'm surprised that slipped by his editor.
September 27, 2009 9:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
I can't believe I've gone this far into the comments on one of MJ's posts without seeing anything by AnnaA.
September 27, 2009 10:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
She's trying to figure out who to ask about Olmert's alleged peace offer.
September 27, 2009 10:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
When is she going to learn that nobody likes a pop quiz?
But just so this doesn't go completely off-topic, Safire was the kind of grammarian I always had trouble with - the kind who would like to set English in amber. For me, proper grammar is determined by common usage, not academic fiat. One of my favorite saying is in regards to splitting infinitives: "Just because Pliny couldn't is no reason I shouldn't".
September 27, 2009 11:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
I had a neat discussion with some folks here a little while back about conservatives I like. I forgot to mention Safire. I don't agree with him politically. On language I also thought he was too conservative -- I agree with protecting the language but also with letting it evolve -- but he's a likable guy to disagree with and a true debater in a world of shouters.
September 27, 2009 11:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
He was a nasty piece of work. I remember his efforts to get us the war in Iraq. He gunned up the Atta-Saddam connection in every article, accusing the CIA among others of covering up the connection. He did not say he "thought" there was a connection; he wrote it as fact. He did this on the basis of zero evidence. He never to my knowledge acknowledged any error or any explanation, nor did the Times. Judith Miller, whore for Bush-Cheney and the neoconservatives, had more integrity.
September 28, 2009 7:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think people liked his name. "William Safire" sounds smart or something.
He adored Ariel Sharon and everything related to killing Palestinians and never tired of writing of this love of his.
Huffington Post retells his never-ending campaign of lies claiming that Iraq was behind 9/11 over several years. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-fiderer/how-douglas-feith-and-wil_b_95740.html
September 28, 2009 12:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the links. Respecting positive accomplishments of recently deceased does not require forgetting or denying historically significant deception, intimidation and cowardice.
September 28, 2009 7:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
I see you're trying to give a balanced view of his life and you've walked that line throughout. Good for you, that is something you can be proud of.
My name and avatar suggest I might be temperamental, and I have certainly not met the standard you have tried to set here. I am telling the truth, though, when I say the guy drove me up the wall, and to a rare degree.
At NYT, readers are about 10 or 20 to 1 saying he was the finest righter and his column on English was the greatest, typically with about 3-5 recommends a piece. Commenter number 57 stood out, though:
57.
MC
Texas
September 27th, 2009
3:29 pm
Mr. Safire was an accompished student of the English language. That was his strength. He was well-intentioned and was generally likeable dut to his ability to laugh at himself. But like his counterpart, Thomas Friedman, he suffered from an uncontroblable hubris which when mixed with his hawkish philosophy resulted in support for policies which have greatly damaged this country and cost hundreds of thousands of innocent people their lives in misbegotten wars.
Recommend Recommended by 46 Readers
There was another very civil but harsh reference, I think they've take it out (and if so that is *real* censorship) that his absolute, unquestioning and passionate support for everything that Israel ever did however illegal was a blemish on what might have been the reputation of a great conservative mind. That had about 150 recs, but like I say, I think they took that out.
I respected Novak a lot by the way; most here hated him but I never did even though he may have had many offensive views. But Safire I'll make an exception for. This Iraq business was a solemn disgrace spanning several years; a propagandist is all. And honestly and with sincere respect to his good intentions, I genuinely regarded his language stuff to be idiotic, irrespectively and independently of the above. But whether I'm right on that, it's no reason to dislike him. The other ones are, though, in my view. And I *really* am offended by him. Just my opinion is all.
September 28, 2009 9:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
"writer!!!' Ooopps! Ha-hah!
September 28, 2009 9:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
The sad fact is that Safire, like Novak and William Kristol, misspent his intelligence and ability on causes that made our nation a worse place.
September 28, 2009 9:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
As far as I'm concerned the Safire who wrote "nattering nabobs of negativism" for Nixon and helped push the country into W's war of choice in Iraq owed humanity one really big apology before he died. As far as I know, we never got it.
September 28, 2009 10:26 AM | Reply | Permalink