In this dangerous year to be a celebrity, we've lost yet another: William Safire.
Safire was one of Nixon's speechwriters and the New York Times' resident conservative for, like, ever.
He was a smart guy. Not the worst of the worst. He made Republicanism seem smart and sound. And, was a consummate insider.
And, for that reason, he is generally considered to be beyond reproach.
As with all forms of idolatry, I must register my dissent.
Bill Safire may not have been a Sarah Palin Republican. He was classy, refined, gentlemanly and made lots of friends. He even made the occasional breaks with orthodoxy--and was wont to trumpet these breaks at any given chance for a shot at street cred. (See: criticism of Bush administration over detainee policy once torture was no longer in vogue.)
But, this is precisely the reason I have zero respect for the man and could care less that he's passed on.
Another beltway conservative has died and we're all supposed to be respectful and pretend he didn't harm journalism with his typical access-oriented approach and America with his harshly regressive, selfish, unburdened-by-fact opinions of man and god and law.The Versailles press corps will trumpet out maudlin biography after maudlin biography and gloss over the bad and uncomfortable things he did while they offer effusive praise for his writing abilities and pristine acumen for communication. There will be laudatory things said across the aisle, perhaps even commenting on how he crossed the aisle every once in awhile himself. Barf bags will not be provided.
Bill Safire's greatest hit? His completely-divorced-from-reality assessment of the situation in Iraq and his resulting cheerleading for the Bush administration's illegal, stupid and murderous invasion.
Mr. Safire found intellectual solace and moral comfort in that war, ascribing to the redder than rosy scenario wherein American troops were to be greeted as liberators with leis tossed around their bulging, burly and freedom-fed (rough) necks, so much the image of a ring-toss game in someone's vision of a baseball-mitt-Americana worth saving, preserving and sending, stamped by the US Postal Service through rain, sleet and snow into the heart of Mesopotamia, opened by a hitherto-wayward child with chocolate in his eyes and a smile in his heart, the penetrating glow of liberty finding common cause with the sandy and mysterious ether of Iraq so hungry; aching to be nourished, so thirsty; crying out to be quenched with the blood of the unfortunate, yet
chosen as collateral, Arabs and assorted brown folk therein, innocuous in their own right, but human sprinklers for this New Lawn of Liberty as the white phosphorous and shrapnel fell, giving the Cradle of Civilization exactly what it craved as that paltry and righteous blood mixed with the ever-correct and never faltering, always right and wholly courageous blood of
so very few crackers, blacks and mestizos, resulting in an uber-blood, a super-fuel, a democratizing Agent Crimson that would spill across the land in torrential waves of Justice and Democracy and All That Is Right And Good and flower the sandy expanse with a never ending yield of McDonalds, Starbucks and Banks of America ready to dole out the greenbacks at ATMs on the corners of streets and avenues and boulevards named in honor of Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney and most of all, George W. Bush.
But then. Well. We all know the next chapter.
William Safire made a career not only out of being professionally wrong, but more than that, he made a career out of espousing a doctrine, conservatism, that has utterly and shamelessly failed as an intellectual idea with any sort of rigor and that in practice has resulted in nothing but petty and mean action directed towards, always towards, the people who have needed help the most, ever at their expense, ever at their detriment for the sake of higher profits, freer markets, and policed morality. Despite any occasional pangs of guilt that translated into friction with party elders and his friends in the halls of power.
He was a writer and as a writer I am expected, nay demanded by Civility's grinning mouth and always blind eyes to respect him on some level. But, as a human being I cannot. No, I can. I choose not to.
Maybe when we stop giving undue respect to elite, beltway blowhards who have spent their entire lives enthralled by the allure of the status quo, genuflected to power brokers at any given chance and only ever worked to undo progress and rights...maybe then journalism will improve and maybe, just maybe, America will be a little bit better...a little worse for wear, but also wise in this knowledge of real pain inflicted and suffered.
Honoring or respecting or celebrating William Safire in any way shape or form does not lead us down this path. It's just more of the same: Bullshit on the dungpile that is the collective American body politic and intellect.