September 29, 2009
From our Correspondent
Mr William Safire, the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and
former columnist of New York Times, died at the age of 79 of
pancreatic cancer.
Safire spent more than 30 years writing on the Op-Ed page of The
New York Times. In his “On Language” column in The New York Times
Magazine and more than a dozen books, Safire traced the origins of
words and everyday phrases such as “straw man,” “under the bus” and
“the proof is in the pudding.”
New York Times Co. Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said in a
statement: “For decades, Bill’s columns on The Times’s Op-Ed Page
and in our Sunday Magazine delighted our readers with his
insightful political commentary, his thoughtful analysis of our
national discourse and, of course, his wonderful sermons on the use
and abuse of language. Bill will be greatly missed.”
Safire remained one of the
few critics of MM Lee who managed to get away for lampooning him
without being sued. He once described Lee as a “tinpot
dictator”.
In October and November 1996, he wrote two commentaries
criticising the Nixon Centre for Peace and Freedom, a Washington
think-tank, for conferring on Mr Lee, then Senior Minister, the
Architect of the New Century award.
Mr Safire finally met and interviewed Mr Lee at the World
Economic Forum in Davos in January 1999. The long interview resulted
in two columns, headlined ‘The Dictator Speaks’ and ‘Danger:
Chinese Tinderbox’.
Three years earlier, also at Davos, Mr Safire raised the issue
of nepotism in Singapore’s leadership. Though then Deputy Prime
Minister Lee Hsien Loong threatened to take him to court if the
speech was uttered in Singapore, no action was taken against
him.
In August 2002, Mr Safire lambasted the Bloomberg News Service
for bowing to pressure and ‘kowtowing’ to Singapore’s leaders after
the news agency apologised unreservedly for an article that insinuated
that Mr Lee Hsien Loong’s wife, Ms Ho Ching, clinched the top job
at Temasek Holdings because of nepotism, rather than on
merit.
In his column, he heaped scorn on the apology and the US$340,000
(S$482,000) payout in damages: ‘In kowtowing to the Lee
family, the Bloomberg News Service… has just demeaned itself and
undermined the cause of a free online
press.’
With the demise of Safire, MM Lee will have one less detractor
in the world who dares to criticize him fearlessly with few
repercussions.
http://temasekreview.com/2009/09/29/william-safire-staunch-critic-of-mm-lee-dies-aged-79/