Safire

Take a break from checking your e-mail, and put those cell phones away. Keynote speaker William Safire offered that advice to graduates at Loyola College's 152nd commencement yesterday, reminding them that human beings need to set aside time to think. At the 1st Mariner Arena downtown, 813 Loyola students were awarded bachelor's degrees, and another 831 earned master's or doctoral degrees. More than 400 students at St. Mary's College of Maryland also graduated yesterday in southern Maryland.

The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time, by William Safire. Simon & Schuster. 408 pages. $27. Safire, political columnist and language cop for The New York Times, continues to demonstrate superhuman productivity. This latest collection of materials, first published in his "On Language" column in the Times' Sunday magazine, is his 24th book. (There are three others, done with a co-author, and a great speeches anthology.) If you aren't already familiar with Safire's loving defense of grammatical discipline, which seems unlikely, this could be a splendid introduction.

Since the preposterous plot is not meant to be taken seriously, even by the characters who struggle in its contradictory meshes, Safire concentrates his considerable energies on stuffing their mouths with knowing references to journalism, publishing, high finance, the CIA and KGB ... One hinge of his plot involves the workings of presidential covert-action findings, no very mysterious process, but one that Safire is determined to get wrong ... His ignorance...

Take a break from checking your e-mail, and put those cell phones away. Keynote speaker William Safire offered that advice to graduates at Loyola College's 152nd commencement yesterday, reminding them that human beings need to set aside time to think. At the 1st Mariner Arena downtown, 813 Loyola students were awarded bachelor's degrees, and another 831 earned master's or doctoral degrees. More than 400 students at St. Mary's College of Maryland also graduated yesterday in southern Maryland.

The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time, by William Safire. Simon & Schuster. 408 pages. $27. Safire, political columnist and language cop for The New York Times, continues to demonstrate superhuman productivity. This latest collection of materials, first published in his "On Language" column in the Times' Sunday magazine, is his 24th book. (There are three others, done with a co-author, and a great speeches anthology.) If you aren't already familiar with Safire's loving defense of grammatical discipline, which seems unlikely, this could be a splendid introduction.

Minutes after Bobby Inman backed out as the next secretary fTC of defense because New York Times columnist William Safire was mean to him, I called 10 acquaintances and did a fast poll.I picked these 10 people because none are in the news business, politics or work for government. They are all reasonably well-educated and informed but are not news junkies. All are Midwesterners.To each, I put the same question: "Did you read what Bill Safire wrote about Bobby Inman?"Here are the results of that quickie poll.

WASHINGTON -- Perhaps the most baffling aspect of the surprise withdrawal of Bobby Ray Inman as President Clinton's nominee to run the Pentagon was the apparent willingness of this veteran of official Washington to believe that a conspiracy existed between the Republican leader of the Senate and a newspaper columnist to do him in.The allegation, denied by both of the supposed conspirators, Sen. Bob Dole and William Safire of the New York Times, was so...

IT PLAYS OUT like a country-western song.Somebody calls your wife a liar. You threaten to punch the guy in the mouth. Nobody calls in the cops because you're president of the United States, and besides, you didn't bring along boxing gloves in case some fool might want to fight.You're Bill Clinton, and this is a good day.You get to be Trumanesque. To those critics who say you're short on backbone, you get to show some spine. Some testosterone, too.In the fight -- no punches thrown -- between you and the big-time, New York Times columnist, you're the clear winner.

OUT OF TIMER.E.M. (Warner Bros. 26527)Once a band makes it to the big time, it usually loses its sense of adventure. Not R.E.M., however; if anything, the group seems more willing than ever to take chances. With "Out of Time," the band tinkers with its instrumentation and toys with a variety of pop styles. Yet no matter how far afield these go, R.E.M. never loses its identity or sense of direction, whether it's dabbling in old-time country with "Half a World Away" or flirting with funk in "Radio Song."

FROM THE "To err is human" file comes this: A William Safire column on belated moves to honor former Maryland governor and U.S. vice president Spiro Agnew had a noticeable error when it was published on the op/ed page of Monday's New York Times.Mr. Safire, who often comments on others' flubs in his language dTC column in the Times, referred to Maryland's Democratic governor Parris Glendening as a Republican. In fact, Mr. Safire, a former Nixon White House speech writer, seemed to infer that it took a Republican governor to get Mr. Agnew's portrait hung in the State House along with previous governors, "something the last two Democrats refused to do," he wrote.

MOSCOW -- A glow of satisfaction was radiating from some official Moscow circles yesterday, thanks to Russia's jowly foreign minister, who had taken out the old, rusting superpower credentials and burnished them a bit by defusing a world crisis over Iraq.Yevgeny M. Primakov had wrung a promise from Iraq to allow United Nations weapons inspectors to proceed with their work, apparently heading off what could have turned into an armed confrontation if Iraq had persisted in refusing to allow Americans in as part of the inspection team.

WASHINGTON -- Next Monday will mark the 24th anniversary of the Watergate break-in, and the Republicans are still trying to diminish the dimensions of that super-scandal and all its associated crimes by comparing lesser screw-ups with it.The latest example is Bob Dole's comparison of Watergate with the disclosure that the FBI conducted background reports on some leading Republicans and turned them over to the Clinton White House. ''I remember Watergate, all the things that happened in Watergate because of these kind of tricks,'' Senator Dole said.

Since the preposterous plot is not meant to be taken seriously, even by the characters who struggle in its contradictory meshes, Safire concentrates his considerable energies on stuffing their mouths with knowing references to journalism, publishing, high finance, the CIA and KGB ... One hinge of his plot involves the workings of presidential covert-action findings, no very mysterious process, but one that Safire is determined to get wrong ... His ignorance...

Consistent, credible political criticismAs first lady, and as an active participant in her husband's administration, Hillary Clinton is obviously fair game for public criticism. Beyond this fact, anyone in public life should be subject to public scrutiny regarding the propriety, and the legality, of their activities.Criticism and scrutiny, however, are frequently all too appropriate for at least some of the critics.Too often, there exists an enormous gap between those who criticize and the consistency or credibility of the criticism.

WHILE I ABHOR violence, the idea of President Clinton punching New York Times columnist William Safire in the nose does have some appeal. Mr. Safire has called Hillary Rodham Clinton "a congenital liar" regarding Watergate -- I'm sorry, that was the affair of Mr. Safire's former boss, Richard Nixon; I meant Whitewater -- and Mr. Clinton is alleged by his spokesman to have refrained from a pugilistic response to this insult only because he is, after all,...

IT PLAYS OUT like a country-western song.Somebody calls your wife a liar. You threaten to punch the guy in the mouth. Nobody calls in the cops because you're president of the United States, and besides, you didn't bring along boxing gloves in case some fool might want to fight.You're Bill Clinton, and this is a good day.You get to be Trumanesque. To those critics who say you're short on backbone, you get to show some spine. Some testosterone, too.In the fight -- no punches thrown -- between you and the big-time, New York Times columnist, you're the clear winner.

OFFICIAL Washington has always had an edgy relationship with the media that covers it. Lately, though, things have taken a strange turn.The journalists and politicians who live along the Potomac have been saying nasty things about each other since the days of Thomas Jefferson. Always before, however, there has been an unspoken understanding that neither group could get along without the other.In modern times, this relationship has taken on aspects of a game both sides know how to play, like the old cartoon about the sheepdog and the wolf who fight all day and get along famously after hours.

COLLEGE PARK -- When the first batch of the papers of Spiro T. Agnew, the first American vice president to resign in disgrace, were opened to researchers at the University of Maryland the other day, you might have expected at least a respectable showing of the curious. But only three newspaper reporters and some television cameramen to do quickie interviews turned out for the occasion.The rest of American journalism must have been tipped off. The files of Agnew's tenure as Baltimore County executive, governor and vice president were almost entirely boilerplate stuff -- public speeches, press releases, trip itineraries, lists of official gifts received, and the like.

"Sleeper Spy," by William Safire. New York: Random House. 451 pages. $24 Where James Bond led the way, almost every spy thriller has followed: At the center of every spy story is the spy, the man whom every woman wants and all men envy, an ultimate secret agent man, whose cool good looks, suave manner, superbly tailored dinner jacket, swift cars and gorgeous women put the escape in escapist fiction.Trust William Safire to pull-off the impossible: to pen a palpitating spy novel, the hero of which is not a spy at all, but a journalist and a nasty, frumpy old fellow at that.

FROM THE "To err is human" file comes this: A William Safire column on belated moves to honor former Maryland governor and U.S. vice president Spiro Agnew had a noticeable error when it was published on the op/ed page of Monday's New York Times.Mr. Safire, who often comments on others' flubs in his language dTC column in the Times, referred to Maryland's Democratic governor Parris Glendening as a Republican. In fact, Mr. Safire, a former Nixon White House speech writer, seemed to infer that it took a Republican governor to get Mr. Agnew's portrait hung in the State House along with previous governors, "something the last two Democrats refused to do," he wrote.