Asymmetrical Information

do I misremember ?

I thought it was a member of the media who used the term "Seven Dwarves"

...and I thought Safire had been clueless and out-of-touch for years. His stuff always seemed a bit pointless to me, always something that had been better put by others. YMMV, IMHO, etc.

Let's get our slurs straight.

When you accuse Mr. Safire of "mailing it in", you are claiming that his work product is perfunctory -- that he's worn out and didn't give it his best.

When you call Mr. Safire's column "Dowd-ish" (Dowdy would have been a better word choice -- at once likening it to the work of Ms Dowd while at the same time suggesting it is frayed and faded, thus continuing the "worn out" metaphor), you're suggesting his column was mean-spirited and shrewish.

If you don't like Mr. Safire and just wanted to slip in a couple of gratuitous shots, then ignore this note. If you really meant to be objectively critical of his piece, then read on.

I'm a regular reader of Mr. Safire. He is careful with his words and, with the notable exception of his parenthetical whimsies, wastes few of them. He writes complete sentences and groups his thoughts in paragraphs. His columns are thematic. He has a point to make and drives it home at the end. He always has something to say.

Ms. Dowd has deteriorated markedly over the last few years (she has been accused of gargling with bourbon). She writes scatter-shot and rarely puts more than two sentences in a paragraph. She usuually has nothing to say -- and almost all of it nasty and insulting. Shrewish better describes her than waspish. And, she is ALWAYS gratuitous.

Mr. Safire can be critical and demeaning -- but only when he MEANS it (he famously called Hillary a "congenital liar"). In the current column, he in fact appologizes for his put-down of Senator Edwards.

My take on Mr. Safire's current column? Fine work -- punchy and informative.

1. I generally like Safire and often agree with him.
2. I don't agree with Mr. Krupp's generalization about his work.
3. This column doesn't really have a point, and it ends with a concluding paragraph that is a dead ringer for Dowd's prose.
4. Is it shrewish? I didn't think about that much, but isn't the disavowal of the seven dwarves slur a bit back-handed?

At any rate, #3 is what I was reacting to.

I'm glad, at least, to be an equal-opportunity offender.

The point of Mr. Safires's column?

Mr. Safire builds on the 1988 caricature of the field of democrat would-be presidential nominees as "the Seven Dwarfs" (this locution was not his own and he had no need to disavow it) by casting Hillary in the role of Snow White. His last sentence (and last paragraph) drives it home and provides the necessary symmetry to his opening paragraph.

What's mean-spirited about it?

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