Cynicism and Dishonor All 'Round
At the time Watergate was raging, I was in the third grade. I knew who the President was by the playground limerick we kids used to sing: "Nixon, Nixon, he's our man; McGovern's in the garbage can." I didn't know what that really boring stuff was that permeated all four TV channels. And frankly, even now I doubt I'd be able to understand a third of what Senator Sam Ervine was saying.
Like any politicohistorically literate adult American, I've read up on the Watergate kerfuffle since then. And the bare bones of the affair are that there was nobody involved on any side that didn't stink. President Nixon, a stunningly petty man (not without some justification) who was naive enough to both believe that he could play by the same dirty-tricks rules as his Democrat predecessors and never realize the full extent of the trouble he was in, such that he was two or three steps behind the curve the whole way down. The various and sundry Beltway power centers, all of whom had a great deal to lose by a successful second Nixon term and all of whom were stunned to have their despised enemy's self-destruction fall into their laps like overripe fruit. The Extreme Media (then the Monopoly Media), already caught up in self-righteous moral supermacism, and sent into such paroxysms of messiahnism by their feat in bringing down a president that they have never realized in all the time since that Watergate was the "perfect storm" of scandals, highly unlikely to ever be repeated in their lifetimes and virtually impossible to artificially manufacture.
And now Deep Throat, one ex-Fed Mark Felt, who turns out to be a senile old man being used as a meal ticket by his money-grubbing family before the "honor" can become a posthumous one, and to have been a man every bit as small, petty, and dishonorable as the president on whom he played stoolie.
In the current context, it's a battle as to whether the Felts' greed or the Extreme Media's toxic nostalgia is the more nausea-inducing. Though I'd vote for the latter, since they had an organized crime syndicate in the White House for the bulk of the 1990s and fellatingly served as its gleeful propaganda arm.
That's an awfully long preamble for the introduction of a link, but I've had those thoughts rattling around inside my cranium for a few days, and none of the ton of text about this supposed "sensation" that has passed before my bloodshot eyes has really captured them.
Until now, that is, with James Bowman's piece in the American Spectator today. I think it strikes the right note without the baggage of personal involvement brought to it by ex-Nixonites like Ben Stein and Pat Buchanan. The moral of JB's story? Everybody in Watergate was tainted. And the whiff lingers to this day.
Like any politicohistorically literate adult American, I've read up on the Watergate kerfuffle since then. And the bare bones of the affair are that there was nobody involved on any side that didn't stink. President Nixon, a stunningly petty man (not without some justification) who was naive enough to both believe that he could play by the same dirty-tricks rules as his Democrat predecessors and never realize the full extent of the trouble he was in, such that he was two or three steps behind the curve the whole way down. The various and sundry Beltway power centers, all of whom had a great deal to lose by a successful second Nixon term and all of whom were stunned to have their despised enemy's self-destruction fall into their laps like overripe fruit. The Extreme Media (then the Monopoly Media), already caught up in self-righteous moral supermacism, and sent into such paroxysms of messiahnism by their feat in bringing down a president that they have never realized in all the time since that Watergate was the "perfect storm" of scandals, highly unlikely to ever be repeated in their lifetimes and virtually impossible to artificially manufacture.
And now Deep Throat, one ex-Fed Mark Felt, who turns out to be a senile old man being used as a meal ticket by his money-grubbing family before the "honor" can become a posthumous one, and to have been a man every bit as small, petty, and dishonorable as the president on whom he played stoolie.
In the current context, it's a battle as to whether the Felts' greed or the Extreme Media's toxic nostalgia is the more nausea-inducing. Though I'd vote for the latter, since they had an organized crime syndicate in the White House for the bulk of the 1990s and fellatingly served as its gleeful propaganda arm.
That's an awfully long preamble for the introduction of a link, but I've had those thoughts rattling around inside my cranium for a few days, and none of the ton of text about this supposed "sensation" that has passed before my bloodshot eyes has really captured them.
Until now, that is, with James Bowman's piece in the American Spectator today. I think it strikes the right note without the baggage of personal involvement brought to it by ex-Nixonites like Ben Stein and Pat Buchanan. The moral of JB's story? Everybody in Watergate was tainted. And the whiff lingers to this day.
posted by JASmius at 11:07 PM
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