by Glynn Wilson

I am still scratching my head as I re-read the New York Times feature obituary on William Safire, wondering how in the world the nation’s newspaper of record could get things so wrong in the end.

The power vacuum created at the Times when Howell Raines resigned really has left the former U.S. newspaper of record with a talent void — in spite of the TV commercials to the contrary.

I mean look at this lede. Do you see anything wrong?

William Safire, a speechwriter for President Richard M. Nixon and a Pulitzer Prize-winning political columnist for The New York Times who also wrote novels, books on politics and a Malaprop’s treasury of articles on language, died at a hospice in Rockville, Md., on Sunday. He was 79. The cause was pancreatic cancer…

NY Times Columnist William Safire Dies at 79

Do you know what a malaprop is? According to Wikipedia, which of course is banned in links from the NYTimes online, a malaprop is the substitution of an incorrect word for a word with a similar sound, in which the resulting phrase makes no sense but often creates a comic effect.

What Safire wrote was a dictionary for terms used in politics not otherwise found in a regular dictionary, terms such as “trial balloon” and the like. I’ve had a copy since the early 1980s, when I first studied political science and journalism at the University of Alabama and became a fan of Safire’s columns in the paper and the Sunday magazine.

Maybe in the end the Times‘ new management got mad at Safire for something, or maybe they just hired the wrong guy to write his obit. It doesn’t do him justice.

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