"You're welcome" turns 100?

[bapopik at AOL.COM]

This Sunday's NY Times "On Language" column by William Safire has this:
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"The warm old phrase you’re welcome is rapidly disappearing from the language of civility. Though the word welcome first appeared in “Beowulf,” the O.E.D. notes that the whole phrase surfaced in print in 1907. We have now come to the 100th anniversary of the birth of our acknowledgment of someone’s expression of gratitude."
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Uh, no.
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The guy writes one column a week, and he allegedly has an assistant to help him with this. Some trusted member of this group should write to Safire, maybe not to tell him straight up that this is embarrassing every week to our profession, but maybe ask Safire if he'd like to spend more time on his golf game.
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As everyone here knows, the OED hasn't updated "welcome" in quite some time. So "you're welcome" is likely to be way, way off. Any computer database should be able to easily beat this 1907 date. A quick check of Wright American Fiction (1850-1875) shows about 125 hits for "you're welcome," starting in the 1850s. I could probably find earlier citations without a problem.
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So what Safire is really saying here is that this is not the "100th anniversary of 'you're welcome,'" but that this is a poor researcher relaying obviously outdated information to an uninformed general public. This is a joke.
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Doesn't The New York Times have any journalistic standards?
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Thank you, you're welcome, my pleasure, and good night.
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