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William Safire, R.I.P.

wsPolitico calls him “Nixon’s speechwriter,” but I think most of us will remember him as the long-time author of the New York Times column, “On Language.”  Here is a convenient collection of those columns, which I enjoyed immensely.

Comments 1

  1. J.E. Dyer wrote:

    We all have our Safire memories. Mine go way back, and are not particularly portentous. I always loved his writing.

    I have remembered a forgettable Cold War figure for years, one-time East German Communist Party leader Walter Ulbricht, because Safire used him as an example of the clunky compound-adjective descriptions adopted by a lemming-like :-) press. The Western media, you see, invariably referred to Ulbricht as “spade-bearded Walter Ulbricht.”

    The other description Safire invoked in the same piece was “globe-trotting diplomat Henry Kissinger.”

    Thanks for the link, Barbara. Safire always had a persuasive goodwill even in his most critical commentary.

    September 27th, 2009 at 5:06 pm

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