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William Safire, RIP

September 27, 2009 by GayPatriot

From the New York Times remembrance: (h/t – The Corner)

He was a college dropout and proud of it, a public relations go-getter who set up the famous Nixon-Khrushchev “kitchen debate” in Moscow, and a White House wordsmith in the tumultuous era of war in Vietnam, Nixon’s visit to China and the gathering storm of the Watergate scandal that drove the president from office.

Then, from 1973 to 2005, Mr. Safire wrote his twice weekly “Essay” for the Op-Ed Page of The Times, a forceful conservative voice in the liberal chorus. Unlike most Washington columnists who offer judgments with Olympian detachment, Mr. Safire was a pugnacious contrarian who did much of his own reporting, called people liars in print and laced his opinions with outrageous wordplay.

Critics initially dismissed him as an apologist for the disgraced Nixon coterie. But he won the 1978 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, and for 32 years tenaciously attacked and defended foreign and domestic policies, and the foibles, of seven administrations. Along the way, he incurred enmity and admiration, and made a lot of powerful people squirm.

On a personal note, Mr. Safire was my college graduation speaker at Syracuse University in May of 1990.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Filed Under: Great Americans

Comments

  1. The_Livewire says

    September 28, 2009 at 1:36 pm - September 28, 2009

    RIP Mr. Saphire, your commentary will be missed.

  2. ThatGayConservative says

    September 29, 2009 at 4:42 am - September 29, 2009

    I can’t say for certain that I ever read Saffire. I might have and just don’t remember. I’ll have to see if there’s some free archives to thumb through.

  3. ThatGayConservative says

    September 29, 2009 at 4:45 am - September 29, 2009

    From WSJ:

    The turning of the years can be cruel, and it is sad to lose men like Bill Safire, Robert Bartley, William F. Buckley Jr., Robert Novak, Irving Kristol, Milton Friedman, Jack Kemp and others who did so much to rescue America from the failures of the 1960s and malaise of the 1970s. Yet one reason we note their deaths is the great success they had in life. As Safire would have urged, our obligation is to stop grieving and return cheerfully to the barricades.

    Very nice.

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