BUMP
Posted on 09/27/2009 8:07:35 PM PDT by pissant
William Safire, who died today, was a breakthrough figure—the first professional Republican ideologue of his time to become a mainstream fixture in journalism. Indeed, when he was hired by the New York Times to write a column after his tenure as a speechwriter and intimate of the president in the Nixon White House, the shock and horror with which his new position was viewed in the Times newsroom and in the journalistic corridors of Washington were unprecedented in their ferocity. Safire himself said that people would barely look him in the eye in his place of employ for years.
He was blessed with a skin as thick as a rhinoceros’s, and he kept at what he was doing without apology or fear or regret. Over time, he revealed himself as a profoundly unorthodox columnist who combined hawkish views on foreign policy with a libertarian perspective on domestic matters—and a more uncompromising advocate for the state of Israel, its right to defend itself, and the importance of the Zionist experiment never walked this earth.
Safire famously said he wrote his column in 20 minutes, which is in part what gave his pieces their immediacy and force, as though his hand had untrammeled access to his thoughts and conveying them through touch-typing 750 words was all it took. He took far more care with the novels he wrote–among them the wonderful potboiler Full Disclosure, about a conspiracy to evade the requirements of the 25th Amendment, and the enormous bestseller Freedom, about Abraham Lincoln.
(Excerpt) Read more at commentarymagazine.com ...
Uh... Library alert!
William Safire, RIP
Godspeed Bill.
While not a firebreather like most here, he was a good guy in a sea of scoundrels
Certainly better than the stooge the Times has now.
RIP Mr. Safire.
BUMP
Gonna miss you Bill... RIP
btt
I will miss his work. This man was a wordsmith of the first order. RIP.
Oh, too bad. I loved his vocabulary.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.