In my mind i imagined it to be a passive stop that stops the recoil from sliding the juicy bit of your hand meat up into the hammer and slide situation at the exact moment that those parts are doing some sliding and hammering (or right after that moment i suppose).

On a 1911 that same part does both. On other firearms it's just a grip safety. The colloquial term for getting your shooting hand caught by the slide is "slide bite." You'll see firearms with a "beaver tail" on the back to help prevent that. It's usually not a problem unless you have meaty hands, but some pistols are worse about it than others. Still others have interchangeable back parts of the grip with smaller or larger ones.

You allude to these mechanisms being hard to reach for normal hands, is that correct?

The designer was taller than most. The joke was intended as how he designed it around his own hand, but it's nothing out of the ordinary. People's hands sizes are all relative so it's hard to make sweeping statements. You can compare a 1911 against a Glock 20 Gen 4 here. Both of those are on the large side, but if you look at the stacked view you can see the grip angles are different. Some people have strong opinions about that, about which one "points" more naturally, etc. Either one can be trained to, so it's a matter of preference in my opinion.

And why do you suppose it is such a popular weapon if it has the safety issues as you describe? Is it because it looks cool? Or is it simply some sort of patriotism?

Probably not a lot of people think that's a safety issue. I just said that in my opinion it wouldn't make a good first pistol and used that as the one reason I mentioned. There are others out there with decockers (lowers the hammer safely without removing the manual safety), no manual safety, striker fired vs hammer fired, decocker only, single action only with no safety or decocker (Tokarevs are like that). If someone forced me to teach someone how to shoot I would just start with something other than a 1911. Probably a 22 revolver.

As for the rest, I think it looks cool AND it's got a lot of patriotism associated with it. It's a design that's over 100 years old now, and was the service pistol for the US through two world wars. They're reliable when clean and accurate. You can get custom handmade ones if you feel like it and hate having spare money. I'm sure a lot of people have more general reasons and some might have more personal reasons. We're at a stage now where service 1911s are being passed from generation to generation (I think you could buy yours from the government at one point). There's just a lot of history there the same as with old cars.

So if this weapon is THE iconic american sidearm, why is it not the standard police issue? Is the glock a safer weapon?

Going to be some subjectivity here: ammo capacity is probably the main driver. A 1911 with standard magazines holds seven or eight rounds of 45ACP while a Glock 17 hit the market with 17 rounds of 9mm Parabellum. The other driver is probably going to be weight. Police have to carry them all day, and a full sized 1911 is almost a pound heavier than a Glock 17 when they're fully loaded. Opinions and training methods change through the years, and hollowpoint construction got very good at some point so a lot of police forces in the US moved back around to 9mm after trying a few things. Try this video, for example as to rationale surrounding the Miami Dade shootout. Realistically the science says that shot placement (i.e. hitting the target) matters more than caliber or what firearm a projectile came from, and 9mm is sufficient to meet what the FBI thinks is a good standard for projectiles while being easier to control and with less recoil (see "shot placement" above) than other calibers. You'll find plenty of anecdotes that argue that 9mm has failed to stop people in the past who are on mind altering substances and set on hurting people, and arguments for stronger cartridges to give more lethality with a single shot. There are a lot of opinions and data to work with, and a lot of options on the market. You won't find a "right" answer that fits every case.

Is the glock a safer weapon?

Again, subjectivity: anything's a danger if the person using it isn't being safe. The manner of arms is completely different between them. Glocks have internal safeties, but no manual safety switch, so it's unlikely to go off if dropped, but if you keep your finger inside the trigger guard while holstering you're likely to discharge it, maybe into your leg. There's video of that happening floating around. A 1911 has that manual switch, so if you're rigorous about that it should also be good to go. Youtuber Garand Thumb did a drop test of several pistols, and some of the specialty competition guns that have light-as-possible triggers fired when dropped. People have made a show out of abusing Glocks and them still working. They're just well thought out and well implemented. All things considered the training and care of the user is going to matter most. That said, the Glock has decades of design, manufacturing improvements, rust prevention treatments, training styles, and metallurgy over the 1911. Yes modern 1911s capture a lot of that, but there's a reason the 1911 isn't normally issued these days.