Safire and anti aircraft fire

I might get some flak for this post, but come on readers -- I want to remind both of you that this blog is supposed to be random thoughts and thoughts don't get much more random that this one.

William Safire was the very model of a modern major pundit. He used his NY Times column with as much respect as he used his underwear. Among many other things, he used it to critisize, attack and libel Henry Kissinger. Now it is very very hard to libel Dr Kissinger, since it is hard to imagine any claim about him which is worse than the truth*.

And it gives me great pleasure to reflect on how Mr Safire became so very angry with Dr Kissenger that he used the NY Times to attack him. Once they were friends (or at least Mr Safire thought so) then Mr Safire learned that Professor (on leave) Dr Kissinger PhD had Mr Safire's phone tapped. Realistically, Mr Safire should have understood that this indicated that Dr Kissinger knew he had a tongue and friends who worked for the NY Times, but Mr Safire thought that Dr Kissinger was his friend. Now Mr Safire was certainly intelligent and the fact that he seems to have thought that Dr Kissenger was capable of friendship just reminds us that extremely intelligent people can also be total idiots. But those of us who are older than 10 know that already.

How did Mr Safire convince himself not only that Dr Kissinger was capable of friendship but also that he was a friend of Mr Safire ? It has to do with FLAK.
Once upon a time, long ago and in a country far away from me (the USA) Dr Kissenger asked Mr Safire to provide Dr Kissenger with the definition of "flak". Mr Safire decided that he would not give useful information for nothing so he replied that FLAK was an acronym for a German phrase related to destroying allied airplanes which he remembered and I don't have a fucking clue.

Dr professor (on leave) Kissinger noticed that he wasn't the only employee of the USgov who knew a bit of German, and also this Safire guy can play dumb as well as actual idiots, so he must be smart. Ergo we can have some fun together.

Like Ms Lewinsky, Mr Safire has a thing for powerful men, so a realy hot infatuation (with nothing to do with semen or ejaculation or orgasms as far as I know) followed.

Then it turns out that Dr Kissenger is willing to tap the phones of people who know a bit of German and are willing and able to act dumb when it is time to act dumb so it it is necessary to use a NY Times column to settle personal scores.

I am sure that serious analyses of these events by responsible persons might be useful, but I can't grasp (or spell) the concepts of serious or responsubel at the moment














* by the way, I think the high point in judicial history was the time that lawyers for some organization sued by Ariel Sharon for libel argued that the case should be dismissed, since it was not possible to harm Ariel Sharon by libelling him. Their assertion was that his reputation was so bad that nothing anyone could say, true or false, could harm him by making it any worse. Now this was a frivolous motion as they knew perfectly well that it would be rejected. It was a deliberate insult made for the fun of it. But it was sooooo fun.

I am perfectly able to understand that Brown vs Board of Education and Marbury vs Maddison contributed more to human welfare than the pure pleasure created by that motion, but that pleasure was very very pure and I am eternally grateful to the legal team (I forget which) which made that motion on behalf of their client (I don't remember who they are either).

I am an atheist, but conditional on the assumption that we have a Lord and Creator, I think that legal team was one of the best servants of said Lord and Creator, because if He or She exists, it is clear from the signs in His or Her creation that He or She must be principally motivated by a really Sick and Twisted sense of Humor.