William Safire 1929-2009

Words cannot not describe.

America lost probably it's best writer today and we will probably never see the likes of someone like him again.

William Safire, the Pulitzer Award winning journalist died today of Pancreatic Caner, he was 79.

Mr. Safire was a college drop-out who with his writing, embarrassed even the most educated writers of our time.

A wordsmith and a linguist, Mr. Safire could make an ordinary sentence describing cow dung being spread over a field read like a Shakespeare sonnet.

In a career that was what some would call "diverse," Mr. Safire started out as a corespondent for the US army before taking a job as a publicist for a home builder, the same one who exhibited a model home in Moscow. It was the very model where Nixon and Khruschchev had their "kitchen debate."

Serving as a speechwriter for Nixon, Mr. Safire was responsible for Spiro Agnew's famous "Nattering Nabobs of Negativism" line.

Mr. Safire joined The New York Times as a columnist in 1973 and instantly became "required" reading for those in power, or political junkies.

Ironically, soon after joining the Times, Safire learned that he had been the target of "national security" wiretaps authorized by Nixon. After noting that he had worked only on domestic matters, wrote with what he characterized as "restrained fury" that he had not worked for Nixon through a difficult decade "to have him - or some lizard-lidded paranoid acting without his approval - eavesdropping on my conversations."

His writings in the New York Times transcended parties, being a "must read" for conservatives, liberals, democrats and Republicans. So influential was his writings, George W Bush in 2008 awarded him the "Medal of Freedom."

Mr. Safire was a novelist as well, writing several best selling novels. While I could probably write for hours about Mr. Safire, this corespondent will not even attempt to memorialize Mr. Safire for fear of being embarrassed even from the beyond by Mr. Safire's writing.

Words cannot describe the magnitude of his contributions.

Mr. Safire was truely the greatest writer of our time and he will be missed.

God's Speed Mr. Safire.