Only 79. At this rate the Young Republicans will be out of business before Thanksgiving.

Gotta say though that Safire’s description of conservative teabaggers as “hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history” was very apt.

But perhaps not quite as apt as the final verdict of his legacy as a perennial word-scold – in the last line of his NYT obituary, the writer inaccuratley describes the subjunctive tense as the conditional.

R.I.P. Safire. You were wrong but you had a brain and a love of language. The Pillsbury Pagliacco, white-trash weeper Glenn Beck now carries the banner for your beloved conservativism, and he probably thinks Norma Loquendi is Obama’s next Supreme Court nominee.

Damn. Do they do requests by any chance? I mean, I’d never wish for bad things to happen to anybody, but if the Panel Czars have quotas to meet, then a few names do come to mind…

Bill Safire did love the language, gotta give him that. As far as the Death Panels are concerned, I have a little list… They’ll none of them be missed…

De mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est, as Brother Pascal, my high school Latin teacher, taught us. Or maybe de gustibus non disputandum est, would be better.

It has been a very good year, hasn’t it?

Not to worry, they always have The Next Generation: Andy “Charlie” McCarthy, Jonah “Iron Pyrite” Goldberg, and Mark “Shit” Steyn.

It was, as far as I can tell, the only thing he loved other than naked power.

I suppose you’d say a more humane right-wingnut never did in U.S. exist…

I wouldn’t say it, though.

Rest in peace Gidget. The rest of them can rot in Hell.

Ou sont les neiges d’antan? There were pygmies in the earth then…

And yet Ann Coulter still hasn’t done a Karen Carpenter. Odd.

Thank you Marion for memories of a 70s Mad Magazine satire of the Watergate Nixon White House as a Gilbert & Sullivan musical —

“Titwillow” ==> “Dump Spiro”

Spiro saying “They’ll none of them be missed” re: “That nasty nest of reporters down at Newsweek and Time”

and

J. Edgar Hoover singing “I am the very model of a modern criminologist…for 47 years I have retained my place of residence, outlasting Walter Lippmann not to mention seven Presidents…”

good times, half-remembered and rose colored.

Aure entuluva!

Yes, I bemoan the fact that the man who gave us “nattering nabobs of negativism” and “pusillanimous pussyfooters” has shuffled off this mortal coil.

However, I do not bemoan the fact that the benefactor of the NYTimes first descent into “balance” on its editorial pages is gone. IIRC, the only reason for his hire was that the Nixon WH insisted it be so.

He wasn’t just wrong, he was dishonest. He used bullshit whisper campaigns against Clinton back in the day and he lied through his fucking teeth about Atta in Prague. He was an intellectual hack, a terminal liar and a professional Nixon apologist and the fact that he was capable with words only makes his political dishonesty that much worse.