I think he also wrote professor Smith's lines.
disreputable dunderhead, bubble-headed booby, cybernetic simpleton, Nattering ninny
Posted on 09/27/2009 11:19:38 AM PDT by fours
Edited on 09/27/2009 12:39:50 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
William Safire, a speechwriter for President Richard M. Nixon and a Pulitzer Prize-winning political columnist for The New York Times who also wrote novels, books on politics and a Malaprop’s treasury of articles on language, died at a hospice in Rockville, Md. on Sunday. He was 79.
The cause was pancreatic cancer, said Martin Tolchin, a friend of the family.
There may be many sides in a genteel debate, but in the Safire world of politics and journalism it was simpler: there was his own unambiguous wit and wisdom on one hand and, on the other, the blubber of fools he called “nattering nabobs of negativism” and “hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.”
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.
R.I.P. Mr. Safire. Ya done good.
R.I.P. Mr. Safire.
RIP good man. You will be missed.
I agree
You said it, I have just realized I have missed him lately, blessings of peace to his family.
I think he also wrote professor Smith's lines.
disreputable dunderhead, bubble-headed booby, cybernetic simpleton, Nattering ninny
R.I.P.
Perhaps...
Republican? Hell! ...In Name Only.
Safire would've kicked that fat moron's ass.
nattering nabobs of negativism.
Hillary Clinton a “congenital liar.
A friend of the English language and of the Republic. RIP.
RIP, Mr. Safire.
I do not wish to be a nattering nabob of negativism, but there is no conservative journalist that can wear the mantle of Bob Novak or Bill Safire, at least not one that is as admired on the left as Novak and Safire were.
I still don’t get why “Passion” is “full of nasty Jews”. OK, I only saw it way back in the theater, but I don’t recall anything particularly outstanding in there about Jews being all evil.
RIP
Safire was the last good columnist the NY Times had.
I suspect there is, and I also suspect that it is being covered up. No joke.
It would be interesting to know if somebody has correlated certain chemical or other environmental factors with the apparent increase in cases of pancreatic cancer.
My kids' pediatrician - - a very wise old doctor whom I trust and admire immensely - - told me about 10 years ago that there would likely be an epidemic of liver cancer "20 to 30 years from now" due to so many people having hepatitis-c (and many not even knowing it).
Bump!
"I am now a Keynesian in economics" - Richard M. Nixon, New York Times, January 4, 1971
thanks, for memories. DFU 
I'm sure our SOSino, Is really dreading, her/their "history" now.
RIP...losing a lot of writers from our side this year however there is a new generation picking the pen up and carrying on the torch.
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