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Why use a modifier to set straight a not-quite-right noun when the right noun is available?

William Safire

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William Safire
Age: 79 †
Born: 1929
Born: December 17
Died: 2009
Died: September 27
Author
Columnist
Journalist
Writer
New York City
New York
William Lewis Safire
Right
Writing
Noun
Nouns
Straight
Available
Quite
Use

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I could get a better education interviewing John Steinbeck than talking to an English professor about novels.
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In lieu of those checks and balances central to our legal system, non-citizens face an executive that is now investigator, prosecutor, judge, jury and jailer or executioner. In an Orwellian twist, Bush's order calls this Soviet-style abomination 'a full and fair trial.'
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When duty calls, that is when character counts.
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The most successful column is one that causes the reader to throw down the paper in a peak of fit.
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Gridlock is great. My motto is, 'Don't just do something. Stand there.'
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In dealing with Syria's dictator...only force counts. No cease-fire was attainable in Lebanon until the 16-inch guns of the battleship New Jersey started shelling Syria's proxies suddenly, sweet reason prevailed in Damascus.
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At a certain point, what people mean when they use a word becomes its meaning.
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Adjective salad is delicious, with each element contributing its individual and unique flavor but a puree of adjective soup tastes yecchy.
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Cast aside any column about two subjects. It means the pundit chickened out on the hard decision about what to write about that day.
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Sir Alec Douglas-Home, when he was British Foreign Secretary, said he received the following telegram from an irate citizen: To hell with you. Offensive letter follows.
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[Senators John Kerry & John Edwards] have risen high in Democratic polls with a brand of class resentment and soak-the-rich rhetoric rooted in the old-fashioned liberalism of Ted Kennedy.
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Different regions may require different strategies, as President Bush has noted, but not different basic principles. It's either collective security or selective security.
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Carter is the best President the Soviet Union ever had.
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A reader ought to be able to hold it and become familiar with its organized contents and make it a mind's manageable companion.
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When articulation is impossible, gesticulation comes to the rescue.
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A reader should be able to identify a column without its byline or funny little picture on top purely by look or feel, or its turgidity ratio.
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I want my questions answered by an alert and experienced politician, prepared to be grilled and quoted -- not my hand held by an old smoothie.
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Color and bite permeate a language designed to rally many men, to destroy some, and to change the minds of others.
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Previously known for its six syllables of sweetness and light, reconciliation has become the political fighting word of the year.
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After eating, an epicure gives a thin smile of satisfaction a gastronome, burping into his napkin, praises the food in a magazine a gourmet, repressing his burp, criticizes the food in the same magazine a gourmand belches happily and tells everybody where he ate a glutton empraces the white porcelain alter, or more plainly, he barfs.
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