[finder] We must reverse the damage to the timestream!

[dot_fennel]

In July 1969, William Safire (then a presidential speechwriter) wrote a short speech for Nixon to give if the Apollo astronauts were unable to leave the moon:

"Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace..." (Read more.)

There must be countless other speeches like this, and now I want to read them.

Comments

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

Oooh, that gives me shivers.

It looks like there are three undelivered presidential speeches in William Safire's new book, but that's not enough. I want to read a whole collection.

[montacute.livejournal.com]

this is really good.

what should a piece of text like this be called? sitting awkwardly in the timestream like that; you know what i mean. i mean, i'm sure bruce sterling has a name for it or something but it would inevitably suck.

[pseydtonne.livejournal.com]

I teared up. I didn't cry when I read that, but only because I looked away and reread passages. That man can just hit one out of the park. I wonder what his "screw y'all, I'm decalring martial law like Marcos just did" speech would have been had Nixon snapped the other way in 1974.

I am a jaded bastard. When I think of Safire, I think of him mocking something in his old column in the New York Times Magazine on Sundays. One time he pretended to be the censor from a local indie TV station, bent on ruining every good movie by using advertising to ruin the pace. He described the pleasure of carving up the lockout scene from 2001.

I think of Safire's politics, with which I usually disagree. Then again, he's like Paul Fussell or P.J. O'Rourke: if you agreed with 'em, you wouldn't be captivated and you wouldn't learn anything.

-more more, Dante

pretty sure i read an article about such speeches

[(Anonymous)]

and pretty sure it was in the New Yorker. can't find a reference now, but the ol memory says that it cited this Apollo speech, as well as a contrite speech Clinton could have opted to give in lieu of the "I did not have sexual relations with that woman..."

but I think the premise of the article was "wouldn't it be nice if someone wrote a whole book about this history-that-didn't-happen stuff!" a cry for help that continues to go unanswered...

what's this, they're selling a DVD archive of 4000 New Yorker issues? dude.

llisa