George Will
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George Frederick Will (born May 4, 1941) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning, conservative American newspaper columnist, journalist, and author.
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[edit] Education and early career
Will was born in Champaign, Illinois, the son of Fred and Louise Will.[1] Fred was a respected professor of philosophy, specializing in epistemology, at the University of Illinois.
George graduated from University Laboratory High School of Urbana, Illinois, and attended Trinity College, in Hartford, Connecticut (B.A.). He received his M.A. from the University of Oxford and his Ph.D. in political science from Princeton University. His 1968 Ph.D. dissertation was entitled "Beyond the Reach of Majorities: Closed Questions in the Open Society".
Will then taught political philosophy at Michigan State University and the University of Toronto. He taught at Harvard University in 1995 and again in 1998. From 1970 to 1972, he served on the staff of Senator Gordon Allott (R-CO).
[edit] Career in journalism
Will served as an editor for the conservative magazine National Review from 1973 to 1976. He joined the Washington Post Writers Group in 1974, writing a syndicated twice-weekly column, which became widely circulated among newspapers across the country. In 1976, he became a contributing editor for Newsweek, writing a biweekly backpage column. As of 2006, Will still writes both columns.
George Will was widely praised by liberals for condemning the corruption of the Nixon presidency.
Will won a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for "distinguished commentary on a variety of topics" in 1977. Often combining factual reporting with conservative commentary, Will's columns are known for their erudite vocabulary, allusions to political philosophers, and frequent references to baseball.
Will has also written two best selling books on the game of baseball, three books on political philosophy, and has published eleven compilations of his columns for the Washington Post and Newsweek and of various book reviews and lectures.
Will has also appeared as a news analyst for ABC since the early 1980s, and was a founding member on the panel of ABC's This Week with David Brinkley in 1981 (now titled This Week with George Stephanopolous). Will was also a regular panelist on television's Agronsky & Company from 1977–1984.
George F. Will has become the rare journalist-pundit well-known enough to have entered American popular culture. In Season 6 of the famous sitcom Seinfeld, Kramer comments on Will's handsome appearance. While Elaine says "he's smart", Kramer comments that he has never considered him to be "that bright".
In the early 1990s, George Will's personality and wit were the subject of humor in a sketch on Saturday Night Live. The sketch was based on his book about baseball, Men At Work: The Craft of Baseball, and consisted of a trivia game with famous baseball players trying to answer questions in an exaggerated, faux-erudite version of Will's elegant but somewhat pompous writing style. George's character in the skit was played by Dana Carvey.
Will was spoofed in the 1992 episode of The Simpsons, "A Streetcar Named Marge." A Will-looking character, introduced as syndicated columnist William F. George, was a judge at the Miss American Girl pageant.
[edit] Criticism of the Bush administration
George Will served as one of the opponents within the Beltway media of the nomination of Harriet Miers to the United States Supreme Court.
In a Washington Post column published in October of 2005, he argued that "there is no evidence that she is among the leading lights of American jurisprudence, or that she possesses talents commensurate with the Supreme Court's tasks." In addition to criticizing what he perceived as her lack of legal acumen and inability to exercise sophisticated discernment with respect to interpreting grave Constitutional issues, he also leveled criticism at what he viewed as the crass tactics pursued by administration officials and other Miers supporters, asserting that harping on the gender of Ms. Miers would only backfire for the administration, which was simultaneously maintaining that her professional accomplishments entitled her to a seat on the Supreme Court. [2]
Will has also recently expressed reservations about the policies the Bush administration has chosen to pursue with respect to Iraq, and has become openly critical of what he perceives to be an unrealistically optimistic set of political scenarios outlined by the White House.
In March 2006, in a column penned in the aftermath of the apparently sectarian bombing of the Askariya Shrine, Will challenged the Bush administration-and the representatives of the U.S. government stationed in Iraq-to be more honest about the difficulties the United States faced in rebuilding and maintaining order within Iraq, comparing the White House's rhetoric unfavorably to that of Winston Churchill during the early years of World War II. The optimistic assessments delivered by the Bush administration were described by Will as the "rhetoric of unreality." [3]
Will repeated this criticism of the Bush Iraq policy and broader White House and congressional foreign and domestic policymaking, as part of his keynote address for the Cato Institute's 2006 Milton Friedman Prize dinner.
[edit] Awards
In addition to more than 15 honorary degrees:
- 1977—Pulitzer Prize for Commentary
- 1978—Headliner Award for consistently outstanding feature columns
- 1979—Finalist for National Magazine Award in essays and criticism
- 1980—Sliurian Award for editorial writing
- 1991—Sliurian Award for editorial writing
- 1991—First Place in Interpretive Columns: Clarion Awards from Women in Communications
- 1991—Cronkite Award, Arizona State University
- 1992—Madison Medal Award, Princeton University
- 1993—William Allen White Award, William Allen White School of Journalism at the University of Kansas
- 2003—Walter B. Wriston Lecture Award, The Manhattan Institute
- 2006-Champion of Liberty Award, Goldwater Institute
(http://www.city-journal.org/html/14_1_can_we_make_iraq.html)
[edit] Works
- The Pursuit of Happiness and Other Sobering Thoughts. Harper & Row, 1978.
- The Pursuit of Virtue and Other Tory Notions. Simon & Schuster, 1982.
- Statecraft as Soulcraft: What Government Does. Simon & Schuster, 1983.
- The Morning After: American Success and Excesses, 1981–1986. Free Press, 1986.
- The New Season: A Spectator's Guide to the 1988 Election. Simon & Schuster, 1987.
- Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball. Macmillan, 1990.
- Suddenly: The American Idea Abroad and at Home. Free Press, 1990.
- Restoration: Congress, Term Limits and the Recovery of Deliberative Democracy. 1992.
- The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric: 1994–1997. Scribner, 1997.
- Bunts: Pete Rose, Curt Flood, Camden Yards and Other Reflections on Baseball. Simon and Schuster, 1997.
- With a Happy Eye But...: America and the World, 1997–2002. Free Press, 2002.
[edit] References
- "Briefing Book Baloney", Washington Post, August 10, 2005 (Will's column refuting briefing book allegation)
- President Carter interview, Fresh Air, Thursday October 21, 2004 (Carter alleges Will's role in briefing book theft, about 28:30 into the interview)
- Auburn paper: http://www.theplainsman.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/07/28/42e82902e1f1f
- Carter Letter: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/30/AR2005083001763.html
- SNL Sketch: http://snltranscripts.jt.org/89/89qsportsmachine.phtml
- What We Owe What We Eat: Why, Matthew Scully asks, is cruelty to a puppy appalling and cruelty to livestock by the billions a matter of social indifference? http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8525632/site/newsweek/
[edit] Quotations
- "In the war against the militias, every door American troops crash through, every civilian bystander shot—there will be many—will make matters worse, for a while. Nevertheless, the first task of the occupation remains the first task of government: to establish a monopoly on violence".—"A War President's Job", Washington Post, April 7, 2004. [4]
[edit] External links
[edit] Biography
[edit] Works
- Archives from the Washington Post
- Columns from Newsweek
- Column Archives from October, 1999, to the present
