Safire (NY Times) really does deserve this slap in the face!

10.18.04
William Safire Discovers the Cut and Paste Function Jeff Stanger
(2:14PM) link
Maybe I'm the last one on the planet to notice, but William Safire has outright forgotten how to think for himself. I had to blink, rub my eyes and read slowly again Safire's demand that John Kerry apologize for his statement of fact about Dick Cheney's daughter's sexual orientation during the final presidential debate, which by the way was part of a longer answer that sounded curiously like tolerance and understanding, concepts completely foreign to the Republican party that is stuck in the mud somewhere around 1956.
This from an apologist for the administration that wouldn't know a statement of fact if it was bulging from the back of its $2500 suit? This from a columnist whose chums believe they never have and never will make a mistake? Rather than regurgitating his pals' press releases, shouldn't Safire be using his ink to demand an apology from his president on behalf of the 1101 families that are now minus their daughters, sons, wives and husbands because of the biggest mistake imaginable?
More relevant, since we're on the issue of tolerance, shouldn't Safire be demanding an apology on behalf of the 21,242 victims of bias-motivated offenses ("hate crimes") in the first two years of the Bush presidency? Shouldn't Bill be pounding his manual typewriter in defense of the 3,177 victims of sexual-orientation motivated hate crime in those same years (i.e., the real kind of gay-bashing, rather than the rhetorical flavor practiced by conservatives), 478 of them specifically victims of anti-female homosexual offenses including forced rape, assault and intimidation? (FBI hate crime statistics)
Let's count the number of people who are dead because of Kerry's statement of fact...I thought so. Let's count the number of people who got a little lesson on how to shut their mouths and open their minds on October 13...fifty million. Let's count the number of tolerant, intelligent, enlightened, truly compassionate presidential candidates on the stage during last week's debate...one (hint: the tall dude on the left of your screen).
William Safire, here's $1.50 for a ticket on the time-traveling clue bus. Join us in 2004. Here are some extra tokens for the rest of your party.