On Tuesday, we called up a few liberal writers to get their take on former Times columnist William Safire, who died on Sunday at the age of 79. The consensus? Politically distasteful, but a first-rate sparring partner!
“He had a healthy respect for political give-and-take, he loved language and he was a worthy Read More
Fitting, perhaps, that on Sunday William Safire followed his fellow conservative commentator and native New Yorker Irving Kristol into death.
Mr. Safire was not the father of a movement like Mr. Kristol, but he was often the clever public voice, a reporter-turned-speechwriter with an eye toward playing the press. It was Mr. Safire, after all, Read More
Another week, another article about some amazing new communications tool and how it’s changing our lives, like, forever!
This time, we’re meant to look at the deeper meaning of a new technology that’s bringing people closer together, changing the face of advertising and marketing, and even helping make the world a better, safer place. Read More
Here’s one more anecdote on the New York Times‘ Recording Room, which we wrote about in today’s paper. William Safire, in a 2001 column in The Times, wrote about the rules of dictation for the place.
The Times‘s recording room has rules for those of us who have to phone in our copy Read More
Back when I was a kid, we used to denounce people who used code words for Jews. Rootless cosmopolitans was the classic. The modern variants were “pushy,” “aggressive,” and “New Yorkish.” It was antisemitism cloaked in euphemism.
Lately I’ve noticed where Jewish writers can’t talk openly about the Israel lobby, but resort to a Read More
In this week’s New York Times Book Review, self-styled professor of desire Amy Sohn looks at Pamela Paul‘s Pornified: How Pornography Is Transforming Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Families.
Citing Paul’s claim that increased availability of internet pornography has changed the way men relate to—and have sex with—the real women in their Read More
When you have been dancing with the same partner for many years, you can anticipate his moves, your body rocks in just the right direction with just the slightest pressure from his hand and you know which way to bend just from the nod of his head. I have been in a marathon dance ordeal Read More
William Safire of The New York Times , like a very small, yappy dog, has been biting, snapping, tearing at President Clinton for years now. During the recent scandals, he used every opportunity to run down, to demean, to belittle the duly elected President, to insinuate, to repeat rumor, to besmirch. Endlessly, repetitively, without mercy Read More
In case anyone missed the follow-up story buried inside the New York
Post or the last few editions of the Drudge Report , the results
are in on the DNA testing of the supposed Presidential love child, Danny
Williams. The lurid claim by the boy’s mother, a former prostitute and
cocaine addict named Bobbie Ann Read More
Dread, a sinking in the stomach, is coming over me. What if the star inquisitor really manages to impeach Bill Clinton or force him to resign? William Safire will be out celebrating (thumb on his nose, finger in the air, “I got him, I got him”). What if Mr. Safire wins because the score is Read More
