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Out of Left Field |
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 WILLIAM SAFIRE ...retires at 75 |
Liberals could almost enjoy
a slick Bill Safire column
of TheColumnists.com
A good chunk of humor went out of the New York Times on January 24. That was the day William (I like to call him Billy) Safire wrote his last column for its op-ed page.
What a card Safire was. On his last day he filled up the entire page with four pieces. There was always slick laughter behind Safire’s ravings. He would trot out those right-wing whoppers with an “aint-I-the- devil” impish smile lurking between the lines.
I appreciated Safire most
for one of his salvos on that last day. I think he saved the
best for last when he gave a dozen rules under the heading, “How
to Read a Column.” Rule No. 10 said, “Resist swaydo-intellectual
writing. Only the hifalutin trap themselves into ‘whomever’
and only the tort bar uses Latin for ‘who benefits?’
So far so good. And then he added, “Columnists who show
off should surely shove off.” Good, too. And now this kicker,
“And avoid all asinine alliteration.”
Ah, Billy, you dirty dog. You showed you can make fun of yourself with the best of them. For it was none other than William Safire who provided the later-to-be-disgraced vice president Spiro Agnew with the immortal alliteration putting down intellectuals who attacked Republican policies. Agnew-Safire called them, “nattering nabobs of negativism.”
That is pure poetry. An academic was moved to break down the phrase thusly: “ Natter is defined as to nag, to find fault peevishly, and a nabob is a native provincial deputy or governor of the old Mogul empire in India, or a European who has become rich in India.”
It took a man with uncanny skill with words--Safire will continue to write his Sunday language usage column--to come up with that classic piece of alliterative vituperation. He is also credited with providing Agnew with the phrase “effete corps of impudent snobs.” This is good, but not great. Maybe that is why Safire doesn’t seem to claim it with chest out as he has for the “nattering nabobs” gem.
Safire’s presence
undoubtedly inspired fellow speechwriter Pat Buchanan to come
up with these alliterative putdowns of the press: “helpless,
hysterical, hypochondriacs of history.” And “pusillanimous
pussycats.” Not bad, but not quite as eloquent as the master’s
natterings.
Safire could be slick, sly, outrageous and oh-so-hypocritical
in his skewing of the left, while ignoring similar or worse abuses
of the public trust by George W. Bush and Co. In his final column
he passed along a bit of advice that overwrought liberals should
have figured out for themselves if they weren’t so teeth-gnashing
mad at Safire’s ragging.
Safire’s Rule No. 4 for reading a column read: “When infuriated by an outrageous column, do not be suckered into responding with an abusive e-mail. Pundits so targeted thumb through these red-faced electronic missives with delight, saying, ‘Hah! Got to ‘em.’ ”
A friend of mine who knew only too well Safire’s ploy for incurring wrath would respond on occasion to a Safire broadside by feigning a misunderstanding of Safire’s intent. When Safire wrote a fierce defense of Israel and condemnation of the Palestinians, the wag would chastise Safire, saying, “I can’t understand why you are being so critical of the Israelis.”
“If Safire mocked and distorted John Kerry’s record,” the constant reader would complain, “Why are you praising this incompetent guy, Kerry?” Safire never responded to these e-mails.
Safire retired his column at 75 after 32 years of providing the Times op-ed page with an oft conservative, sometimes reactionary, as well as fairly consistent libertarian slant. He got his start as a copy boy for the Herald Tribune columnist Tex McCrary and scored a coup as a public relations man when he pushed Richard Nixon and Nikita Khruschev into a famous “kitchen debate” at a trade exhibit in Moscow that was a plum for one of his clients.
In his swan song he thanked, among others, “the unforgettable Richard Nixon, who gave me the chance to participate in history.” Not everybody believes he deserved to get off unscathed from association with Nixon, but he is generally credited for escaping from Nixon’s White House to write a pre-Watergate memoir, “Before The Fall.”
Give him credit for turning away wrath by saying such as “I beat a spoon in my highchair about…”And he enjoyed outdoing critics’ calumny by calling himself “a twice-weekly right-wing scandalmonger.” This sure enough took the edge off the truth about this man who called Hillary Clinton “a congenital liar.” I believe it was John Kenneth Galbraith, a liberal, who made sport with that by suggesting that Safire was really saying she was “a congenial liar.”
The Times has come up with
an in-house right-winger, John Tierney, to fill Safire's spot.
Tierney has shown conservative slants as a reporter for sure,
but I doubt he can provide the titters that came from the self-proclaimed
sly, right-wing scandalmonger.
Some of the outraged critics of Safire felt he should have been
replaced by Jeff Gannon (real name Jim Guckert), the disgraced
pseudo-pornographer who masqueraded as a reporter at Bush administration
press conferences. They thought his softball questions to mock
Bush's opponents had a Safire stamp because they were almost
as funny as they were deceitful.
I think the Safire chair should have been filled by Woody Allen.
©2005 by Stan Isaacs. The Stan Isaacs caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. This column first posted March 7, 2005.
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