William Safire, 1929-2009
September 27th 2009 23:39
William Safire receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2006
William Lewis Safire, Pulitzer Prize winner, language expert, long-time columnist for The New York Times and speech writer for President Nixon, has died at the age of 79. The Baltimore Sun newspaper described him as a conservative columnist and word warrior who feared no politician or corner of the English language.
Author Eric Alterman, in his 1999 book Sound and Fury: The Making of the Punditocracy, called Safire an institution. "Few insiders doubt that William Safire is the most influential and respected pundit alive," Alterman wrote.
He was born William Lewis Safir (he added an e to his surname later for what he described as pronunciation reasons) on December 17, 1929. A Jew, Safire was throughout his life a staunch and vocal advocate of Israel. The young William attended the Bronx High School of Science and then spent two years at Syracuse University before dropping out. He worked as a radio and television producer, in public relations and as a publicist before joining the Nixon presidential campaign in 1960.
In 1973 Safire joined The New York Times as a political columnist, beginning a 32-year stint as one of America's most respected political pundits and its mostly widely read language expert. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1978 for commentary on the alleged budgetary irregularities of Bert Lance, an adviser to Jimmy Carter (and widely acknowledged as originator of the saying, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it").
Safire described himself as a "libertarian conservative", defined by Wikipedia as, "A term adopted by a broad spectrum of political philosophies which advocate the maximization of individual liberty and the minimization or even abolition of the state".
Bill Clinton was more interested in Safire's nose than his prose. Clinton said he wanted to punch that nose after Safire called his wife "a congenital liar".
Safire also wrote several novels and was chairman of the Dana Foundation, a philanthropic organisation which supports brain science, immunology and arts education.
Upon announcing the retirement of Safire's political column in 2005, Arthur Sulzberger Jr, publisher of The New York Times, said, "The New York Times without Bill Safire is all but unimaginable. Whether you agreed with him or not was never the point — his writing is delightful, informed and engaging."
Image: UPI.com
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