Gunga Din hangs it up (my farewell to Bill Safire)

[WilliamPitt]

Gunga Din hangs it up
Monday 24 January 2005 @ 10:04

I read today in the Times that Big Bill Safire is hanging up his spurs as a pundit. He writes, "Here's why I'm outta here: In an interview 50 years before, the aging adman Bruce Barton told me something like Watson's advice about the need to keep trying something new, which I punched up into 'When you're through changing, you're through.' He gladly adopted the aphorism, which I've been attributing to him ever since."

I always admired Safire's writing ability, and though he wrote speeches for one hell of a goofy guy once upon a time, a man whose talents and drive earn him a spot in the Major League Baseball of speechwriting deserves respect. Few people in any field have the chops to do what Safire did in the Nixon White House, and though he is stained indeliby by that association, the fact that he got there at all is a testament to his skill with the written word.

Yet it is that ability to craft rhetoric that requires me to place Safire's work in the same file as that of Bob Novak. I could never quite understand why so many people took seriously a lot of the stuff issuing forth from these guys. It wasn't simply that I found most of Safire's arguments to be, shall we say, facile. More than anything, it was the glaring fact that he was a hired gun for the extreme right.

In essence, I never understood why he was listened to; it was so clear that he didn't really believe in what he was writing, so much as he was playing a role. Safire, you see, was an integral part of the extreme right's message disbursement system, refered to as the 'Mighty Wurlitzer' by one writer a few years ago.

It starts with the grassroots media folks, who get the ball rolling by banging the wires about a particular message or invented story at places like FreeRepublic.com and Lucianne.com. It then gets picked up by Newsmax, while simultaneously the blast-faxing of mainstream news outlets commences.

Rush and the radio wingers will begin pounding the drum. Fox News will then pick it up and flap it around, and the certifiably insane Wall Street Journal editorial staff will pitch in. But it was Safire who would slingshot these things into the 'respectable press' by getting them published in the New York Times, the flagship newspaper of American journalism.

As Judy Miller of the Times (chief purveyor of the Chalabi-provided story that Iraq was practically swimming in weapons of mass destruction) so gruesomely proved, if the Times says it, the mainstream and cable news media in general will feel safe in turning on their megaphones, and then we're off to the races.

Ergo, Safire was worth his weight in solid gold to the folks who think Hillary Clinton murdered Vince Foster and wants to become President so she can give our entire military establishment over to Red China before anointing Osama bin Laden as her chief of staff. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

More here: http://truthout.org/fyi

[Cleita]

1. I own his little book on grammar.

For the waste of the rest of his mind, I am sorry for him.

[LittleClarkie]

16. I have a book somewhere with essays on words

For wordsmithing, he was a wonder.

For everything else, Pitt's word "facile" fits pretty well. I wasn't aware of that until this summer when I saw him quoting freepers as if they were credible. That was just pathetic. I thought he was a William F Buckley type with SOME integrity. But no. Media whore with a glowing vocabulary.

Nevertheless, brilliant wordsmith.

[LearnedHand]

2. I forgave that man EVERYTHING...

...after he published an essay entitled, "Where Was God," after the Indonesian tsunami. In that essay, he completely DESTROYED the fundy smarm that said those people in Indonesia were suffering the wrath of god because they weren't christians. (How many ways is that WRONG?)

Safire's article (published in the NY Times) compared their suffering to the suffering of Job (of the Old Testament), whom god sought to draw closer, not to punish.

Oh, and Will, you KICKED ASS on Democracy Now (funny, funny!!!) Way to go.

[K-W]

3. The terrible vicious beauty of arguments built off unassailable lies.

Good point on the novak connection.

[PDittie]

4. His column on language

was a 'don't miss' for me.

His opinion pieces long ago devolved into the mutterings of a partisan hack, and I lost respect for him as a result.

Looks like I wasn't the only one.

[oasis]

5. Safire :"partisan hack" and shameless liar. A disgrace.

[WilliamPitt]

6. .

[Tsiyu]

7. When you don't have much going for you

you become a Right Winger.

When you REALLY don't have much going for you, you become a Right Wing Grammar Nazi.

[kentuck]

8. Will Pitt....thanks for writing this.

I doubt few others would dare to approach the subject and it is a truth worth writing. He was a hired gun for the extreme right.

[yardwork]

9. Mighty Wurlitzer of the Right

Now internet sites, notably DU, appear to be on the Mighty Wurlitzer route. Disruptors drag things over here for us to see, and hope that it will help get the ball rolling.

Too sad for them when it blows up in their faces, as it did on Parlock Night!

Perhaps the internet will be somewhat more immune to the impact of the Wurlitzer, just because it is so huge and uncontrollable.

[Swamp Rat]

10. Good riddance!

One less NeoCon hack.

[hfojvt]

11. More praise than he deserves

"I always admired Safire's writing ability"
The only examples I have of his writing ability - the dozen or so of his NYT columns which I had the misfortune to read - do not deserve that level of praise.
When I went looking for Bob Herbert's latest column I found about four columns by Safire instead. One of them was "how to read a column". My first piece of advice in that regard was one that I put into practice - How to read a column - 1) If you see that the column is by William Safire - don't"

[Randers]

14. "1) If you see that the column is by William Safire - don't"

That's the place I got to pretty quickly.

I would notice what subject he was talking about. That was about it.

[WilliamPitt]

12. .

[WilliamPitt]

13. One last boot

[oasis]

15. kick