HOME
DV NEWS
SERVICE ARCHIVE LETTERS SUBMISSIONS/CONTACT ABOUT DV
Does
William Safire Need Mental Help?
by
Mickey Z.
Dissident
Voice
November 11, 2003
Read
William Safire's "On Language" column in the Sunday New York Times Magazine
and, besides the fact that complaining about how humans speak is about as
logical as pointing out that dolphins do not execute their swimming strokes
perfectly, Safire seems like a reasonably sane fellow.
Check
out his regular op-ed column and you might come to a different conclusion:
William Safire needs mental help.
He
writes for the newspaper of record. His words are deemed "fit to
print." But either he has no fuckin' clue what's really going on or he's
100% aware...and thinks all is swell.
Case
in point: Safire's November 10, 2003 column, "The Age of Liberty," began
by crediting President (sic) Bush with demonstrating "a strong sense of
history." What did Dubya do to warrant such rare praise? In a recent foreign
policy speech, he evoked "the direct line of aspirations expressed by
three of the past century's most far-seeing and controversial U.S. presidents."
Safire is referring to Woodrow Wilson, FDR, and Ronald Reagan. Is Wilson
controversial for promising peace and then waging war? Is FDR controversial for
interning over 100,000 Japanese-Americans without due process? Is Reagan
controversial for, well, being Reagan? No, in Safire's topsy-turvy world, these
words from Bush serve as an explanation: "From the Fourteen Points to the
Four Freedoms, to the Speech at Westminster, America has put our power at the
service of principle. The advance of freedom is the calling of our time."
(This
on the same day John Gibbons, a former appeals court judge, said justice was
being "totally denied" to the detainees in Guantanamo Bay. "They
don't have access to lawyers; they have had no hearings; they are just in
limbo," explained Gibbons. "That's as clear an example of justice
denied as you can find.")
The
former Nixon speechwriter turned corporate media mouthpiece further demonstrated
his possible mental instability by using the words "clearly articulated"
and "detailed, coherent, and inspiring" in relation to something
George W. Bush said out loud. "A carefully constructed speech, like a poem
or a brief or a piece of music, has a shape that helps makes it memorable,"
Safire gushed. In other words, this wasn't just a cynical exercise authored by
a team of manipulative Bush handlers...this was a "moving exposition of
the noble goal of American foreign policy." (Note: Safire didn't type
those words by mistake. Check the Times corrections box for November 11 and
you'll see no mention of his column being riddled with errors.)
In
the elegiac speech that so captivated dear William, Bush (leader of a nation
that incarcerates its citizens at the rate of 1200 a week) pointed the finger
at "outposts of oppression" like Cuba, Burma, North Korea, Zimbabwe,
and China. Conversely, our un-elected president claimed "We've witnessed,
in little over a generation, the swiftest advance of freedom in the 2,500-year
story of democracy...It is no accident that the rise of so many democracies
took place in a time when the world's most influential nation was itself a
democracy."
That
would be the U.S. he's referring to...the influential democracy in which one
needs to raise $200 million to win four years in the White House. Yet, as
Safire informs his readers: "Protecting and extending freedom has always
been America's 'calling,'"
Let
me recap here: Either Safire has no fuckin' clue what's really going on or he's
100% aware...and thinks all is swell. Whichever deduction you reach, it all
points to this: William Safire needs help...now.
And
while we're at it, let's take a second look at his stale "language maven"
schtick. Steven Pinker, author of The Language Instinct, had this to say
about Safire's ilk: "The contradiction begins in the fact that the
words
'rule,' 'grammatical,' and 'ungrammatical,' have very different meanings to a
scientist and a lay person. The rules people learn (or, more likely, fail to
learn) in school are called prescriptive rules, prescribing how one 'ought' to
talk. Scientists studying language propose descriptive rules, describing how
people do talk."
In
other words, as long as most people can understand you, the hell with the William
Safire.
Mickey
Z. is the author of The Murdering of My Years: Artists and
Activists Making Ends Meet (www.murderingofmyyears.com)
and an editor at Wide Angle (www.wideangleny.com). He can be reached at: mzx2@earthlink.net.
Other Recent Articles by Mickey Z.
* Sports
Fans of the World Unite!
* Stepping on
a Flea (Sound familiar?)
* Epicurean
Evolution: A New Theory of (un)Natural Selection
* Not All
Italians Love Columbus
* In Our
Own Image: Teaching Iraq How to Deal with Protest
* "The
Truth Has to be Repeated"
* A
Ceremonial Journey: Bush's Progress
* History
Forgave Churchill, Why Not Blair and Bush?
* Incomprehensible
Reluctance? AIDS Dissent and Africa
HOME