Safire in denial

January 1, 2007

I was just catching up on yesterday’s Meet the Press and was struck by just how far gone William Safire is. Tim Russert asked his journalist roundtable, for example, to name the biggest story of 2006. Safire wasn’t alone in mentioning the war in Iraq, but his response was, shall we say, unique.

“The Iraq story is obviously the big story of the year. And I look at the Trumanesque quality in the White House now. You have a president who is facing all this bad news coming out of Iraq and the casualties and the brink of civil war. And he’s hanging in there and he’s not admitting defeat, he’s not embracing defeatism. And he’s coming up with another approach, and who knows, he may turn it around.”

It prompted Kate O’Beirne, of all people, to counter Safire, saying, “In 2004, being steadfast like that served him well. The contrast was John Kerry is a flip-flopper and George Bush is steadfast. But by 2006, that was no longer an asset. What they considered steadfast, I think, looked stubborn and out of touch.”

When O’Beirne has to intervene with a dose of reality, you know Safire has reached a breathtaking state of denial.

On a related note, Russert reminded Safire (and all of us) that the former Times columnist predicted in 2005 that by the end of 2006, we’d see evidence of victory in Iraq, a troop withdrawal would have begun, and a civil war would fail to develop. Asked to respond, Safire said he remains “optimistic,” and added, “One of these days I’m going to be right.”

Maybe someone could explain to me why Safire keeps getting invited back to Sunday morning public affairs shows. Even among the conservative punditocracy, Meet the Press has to be able to do better than this.

Here’s my nominee for “the big story of the year”. It’s from today’s online Independent.

City dwellers poised to take over the world
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
Published: 31 December 2006

Humanity is about to undertake the greatest change of habitat in its entire history. Authoritative international reports to be published over the next months will show that, for the first time, we will soon be a predominantly urban species, with more people living in towns and cities than in the countryside.

Official United Nations figures show that the world’s urban population has more than quadrupled over the past 50 years. Almost half of us inhabit towns and cities: within a quarter of a century 60 per cent of us will do so.

London, some 200 years ago, became the first city since ancient Rome to reach a million inhabitants: now, there are more than 200 such cities. About 20 of theseare “megacities” exceeding 10 million, and one, Tokyo, has become a “metacity”, with more than 20 million. Reports by Washington’s Worldwatch Institute, published next month, and by the UN Population Fund, due in the summer, will describe the imminent transition and grapple with how to cope with the rapidly swelling cities.

The task is all the more difficult and urgent as 95 per cent of the increase is in developing countries, partly through births, but also through migration from the impoverished countryside to swelling slums that are home to a billion people.

I don’t expect our so-called journalists, at Russert’s roundtable or anywhere else, to know or give a damn about this, but all of our lives are already being influenced by it.

  • he’s not embracing defeatism

    There’s a difference between practicality and defeatism. One is consistent with reality and one isn’t. It’s amazing how much nutty reasoning I see from editorialists and on blogs.

  • Safire just doesn’t want to look like he was being an idiot and in the process, he’s making himself look like an idiot.

  • “One of these days I’m going to be right.”

    So does Jeanne Dixon and those that follow Nostradumbass and the quacks at the National Inquirer.

    Being right once doesn’t make up for being wrong 99 other times.

    I think Safire might be better off starting his own psychic friends network.

  • In the waning days of 1944, with the devastating failure of the Wehrmacht’s “westward surge” and the coming onslaught of Soviet troops glaring like the two eyes of a gint, hungry cat—Hitler and his inner sanctum of uber-loyalist hacks continued to ramble senselessly—oft-times, even incoherently—that the war could still be won; than “final victory” was still within grasp.

    If, of course, the army would just do its job.

    If the generals could only recognize him as a visionary.

    If the people would only embrace him as their “messianic protector.”

    62 years later, history is, in a way, repeating itself….

  • Poor Safire:

    “One of these days I’m going to be right.”

    He can’t even keep pace with the proverbial broken clock.

  • “One of these days I’m going to be right.”

    Thought the first: What Former Dan said, except Nostradamus and Dixon have had far more “hits” than the White Horse and all of its cheerleaders put together.

    Thought the second: When Satire compares BushBaby to Truman is he referring to the president or the movie character played by Jim Carey? I’d agree with the latter comparison … Except … Carey’s character wanted to and eventually did break out of his bubble… Nope, forget it. Willy’s an idiot.

    Thought the third: Does this mean if Satire predicts a troop withdrawal in 2006 and it doesn’t occur until say, 2012 his prediction was correct? Or does it not count because his Trumanesque hero is no longer in office.

  • Safire espouses the story line that the world is but a stage for George W. Bush’s games to play and we are all but the players. Bullshit. Three thousand US servicemen weren’t born and raised so Bush could play soldier with them and that their deaths are a only a liability for his political legacy.

    Safire’s personal ego is tied to that of Bush because he, and others, proclaimed Bush to be the second coming of Ronald Reagan, another myth of Republican leadership. Safire is in the game to protect his own ego as much as that of Bush.

  • I haven’t watched those shows in a long time and I’d completely forgotten about Kate O’Beirne. Wow. My life has been endlessly better off without her.

    Happy 2007 Everybody!

  • …] Safire said he remains “optimistic,” and added, “One of these days I’m going to be right.”

    So he will, so he will… If he sticks to opining about the English language usage. That’s his strength, not politics 🙂

    Happy New Year everyone, and thanks for TCBR, Steve

  • “One of these days I’m going to be right.”

    Safire hit it on the head. He hasn’t been right for years. So why is he still even listened to? And how the hell can I, who has been far more right than Safire, get a media job?

  • obviously, he can never be right from now on. otherwise, he’d have to return his medal of freedom.

  • So why does the press treat Kate O’Beirne like a neutral commentator on Iraq, or invite her to comment on it at all, when she has a vested interest in putting lipstick on that pig? Her husband’s gatekeeping of the CPA, staffing it with frat boys and home-schooled twenty-somethings, had a lot to do with getting us to this FUBAR catastrophuck.

  • He brings really good cookies for when they get baked in the green room after the show.

    Looks like he’s been jumping the shark and getting pretty well zonked before the show too.

  • Asked to respond, Safire said he remains “optimistic,” and added, “One of these days I’m going to be right.”

    Is that like a success that hasn’t happened yet?

  • William Safire has forgotten more about journalism than most journalists will ever know, and he is well-educated man. His columns used to make me nearly shout out loud with rage, but they were always well-written, and more satirical than genuinely mean. Still, he falls into the idealogue’s trap of believing he can WISH a particular state into existence, much like his dream president, George W. Bush. Safire believes decisive action is an acceptable or even desirable substitute for thinking or planning, and that the latter are for lily-livered liberals. He and his hero also believe in the rightliness of a world ruled and governed by the United States of America.

    He’s still invited to talk-show forums because of his vast experience as a journalist, which is real and honestly acquired. He shouldn’t be there because he still believes almost exclusively in the use of force to shape the world.

  • OT.
    Remember the nut who insisted that Ellison should be sworn in on the Bible, not Koran? Here’s his LTE in today’s NYT. I guess nuttiness isn’t curable; now he wants Ellison to show up with *both* — the Bible and the Koran… The Congress should mandate that everyone has to show up with a whole stack of books — Bible, Koran, Torah, all the way down to Kamasutra, maybe.

    Published: January 1, 2007

    To the Editor:

    Regarding your editorial suggesting that I am “demanding that the entire nation follow one particular theology” (“Fear and Bigotry in Congress,” Dec. 23), I have never even hinted at such a thing.

    As a practicing Jew, I do not share Christian theology. I am interested in America’s moral and civic values, not its theology.

    And those values, including the religious liberty that made it possible for non-Christians like Keith Ellison, the newly elected representative from Minnesota, and me to freely practice our religions in America, have come overwhelmingly from the Bible as understood by America’s Christians.

    So I have suggested that Mr. Ellison bring a Bible along with his Koran to his ceremonial swearing-in — not to swear on it but to honor it, as has been done since George Washington’s inauguration.

    This gesture could make an important contribution to both American unity and the image of Islam in America.

    Dennis Prager
    Los Angeles, Dec. 27, 2006
    The writer is a nationally syndicated radio talk show host.

  • “I am interested in America’s moral and civic values, not its theology.”

    Does this jackhole realize the Founding Fathers would gleefully dip him in tar and feathers? America does not have a theology (yet). And since our moral and civic values include shutting up about other people’s religions because in Merrie olde England it led to riots and torture, perhaps Prager should study a bit more and speak a whole lot less.

    And why does Ellison (or any other person) have to give a flaming damn about the “image” of his religion? He’s a duly elected legislator, not a fricking ambassador. Neither should he have to serve as an apologist/whipping boy for a bunch of blood thirsty non-Americans because they said God X, rather than God Y told them to commit an atrocity. But to listen to Prager’s twaddle, non-Jewish people are allowed, in fact they very well ought to assume all Jewish people are obnoxious, vapid bigots because look, Prager is an obnoxious, vapid bigot. They all think alike ya know.

    Fuckwit.

  • have come overwhelmingly from the Bible

    The surrounding society may have been Christian. But the values of religious toleration and liberty came from liberalism and individualism as framed by Locke, Hobbes, and their social peers. The practice of deism by the founders shows that these ideologies transcended Christianity.

    If you want the objective / historical counterpart of it, the powerful class in Britain (and more broadly, Europe) found it was no longer in there interests to have endless Religious Wars, and so toleration was invented.

  • Safliar always amazes me. Why such a mendacious goon gets on TV? Look at who owns the stations. Conservatives. But Bill obviously needs to put down the crack pipe and enter rehab. No one thinks 20,000 more troops can pacify Baghdad. Our people are burning out, and Safliar wants to extend their tours. So for being as wrong as humanly possible, he gets… a medal of freedom, of course.

    Re the religion thread… Only a truly ignorant person could argue that democracy could be based on biblical principles. There is nothing but imperialist dogma in the bible, and Paul explicitly says that God selects our leaders. The Deists who founded this country were called atheists, and they practically were, compared to their Christian counterparts. To the Christians who claim that America was founded on Christian philosophy, I always say… read what Jefferson had to say about Christianity, you dipshits.

  • Deists aren’t atheists.

    I think Christ and the Apostles were supposed to be more like the anarcho-syndicalist commune in Ponty Python’s Holy Grail than any sort of imperialist promotion society.

  • The evidence of CNN ILLEGALLY tampering with the careers of black political candidates in order to bias our elections and mislead the American public:

    http://static.crooksandliars.com/2007/01/cnn-obama-osama.jpg

    A Valentine from America to YOU, CNN/TimeWarner.

    “February 14th 2007
    Music and Lyrics
    Warner Bros. Pictures”

    IN PUNISHMENT for playing dirty tricks against Barack Obama,

    Boycott ‘Music and Lyrics’ at the theaters this Valentine’s Day.

    Tell your friends.

    Even better, carry signs with this Obama graphic on it in front of a local theater, and pass out a flyer explaining to people approaching the theater why they should boycott ‘Music and Lyrics’ to help tell CNN/TimeWarner — IN CASH — how America won’t accept any more of their slap in the face RACIST programming.

    Let’s help CNN/TimeWarner have a Happy Valentine’s Day.

    BOYCOTT ‘MUSIC AND LYRICS.’

  • “Safire said he remains “optimistic,” and added, “One of these days I’m going to be right.” ”

    Yah, like Pat Buchanan claims to be “right” about Vietnam when he says it’s Ford’s or the Democrats’ fault that the south was overrun and not Nixon’s fault for fighting a war for six more years which we were already losing.

    Safire just means that ten or fifty years from now there will be some ass wingnut who will claim if America had just stayed in Iraq none of the problems that Boy George II’s invasion had caused would have happened. They are mixing up cause and effect here.

  • It’s important to remember that a lot of people really do believe we are winning in Iraq. I know this flies in the face of good sense, but it’s true.

    Hold your nose and visit PowerLine every once in a while. The people there believe this, as do many of the readers of this highly rated blog.

    Now, I’m going to wash my hands. PowerLine makes me feel ooky.

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