Like a lawyer, William Safire understood the voodoo involved in the use of language. It could cast spells. A mesmerized jury or economic summit could make decisions affecting life and death, prosperity or recession.
Now he is gone as national watch dog of language. The timing couldn't be worse as we go through a paradigm shift caused by digital technology. How we use language is being turned inside out by tweets and text messages. When it comes to the legal profession, regulators, the public, and even lawyers are demanding the end to that insider language and a migration to plainspeak. Who in law or public policy will protect what is most meaningful in legal discourse and supervise the trashing of what's only serving to obscure?
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