R.I.P. William Safire

http://gawker.com/5368901/columinst-and-word-nerd-william-safire-dead-at-79

I may not have been a fan of his political idealogy (although he was pretty moderate in his conservatism), but I loved his knowledge of words and etymology.

OTM. My standard obit line is most appropriate here.

rip

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/31525

Also: he was master of (one of the practices' originators, actually) preparing, churning, serving, and reheating stories of insider Beltway malfeasance that mean jackshit to the rest of the country (e.g. Bert Lance).

haha xp

heaven must have needed someone to find wmds

or wsmd

I will miss his NY Times magazine column, though I didn't always read it. Depended on what phrase or word he was writing about.

nattering nabob of the nonliving

rip. always liked his language column. and getting him to acquiesce to a substantive correction in one of his political columns was a personal highlight of my copyediting career.

On Language is my favorite column of all time.

Safire, like other "language mavens", had far too narrow a conception of what is correct or acceptable, but this is no big deal, because his jabs at bad usage were usually delivered as entertainment, not as stern tirades against the ongoing destruction of civilization, as evidenced by the fact that some people who should know better write clumsily.

From what I can tell, he was probably good to his mother and a sociable human being.

His work on behalf of Spiro Agnew and Richard Nixon, and later on his work to advance a whole raft of destructive and violent policies put forward by Reagan, Bush the Elder, and Bush the Younger, mark him out as having either no judgement or no morals.

His language column was usually salf-satisfied and irritating, almost never educational, but for some reason I always had the impression he'd be a nice guy in real life as long as you didn't get him started on usage issues. RIP.

Tricky Dick's Language Lovin' Lackey.

I actually read Freedom back in high school. I guess it was his response to Vidal?

getting him to acquiesce to a substantive correction in one of his political columns was a personal highlight of my copyediting career.

I'm impressed! Let's make you a tee shirt! No—a bumper sticker— "Another Corrector of Bill."

Aimless totally OTM.

I was quoted in his language column circa 1987 on music-biz lingo. not because of my great expertise but rather I was the person who picked up the phone at the magazine office that morning. being a naive young dude I was actually shocked that some underling - perhaps an intern? - did the actual interview though I wasn't surprised that my published quote was garbled. still, my parents were very very impressed that sunday so thanks Bill! RIP.

Safire didn't engage in the venomous slander that is par for the course in right-wing commentary these days but you needed to take him w/a grain of salt if not the whole shaker. like when he called Hillary Clinton "a congenital liar" I couldn't help thinking "and you worked for Nixon & Agnew?". well he knew from experience w/world-class congenital liars.