“The Nixon Library has a history of extreme politicization — the library has seldom hosted serious historians, who tend to be at least somewhat critical of Nixon, more typically showcasing assorted Nixon apologists and right-wing pundits — and so the imminent transfer remains worrisome.” Historian David Greenberg explains how, over thirty years after Watergate and on the eve of finally joining the official presidential library system, the Nixon Library is still trying to resuscitate its namesake’s image, to the detriment of sound history.
Category: The Seventies
Republican Publicans.
“More alarming were Richard Nixon’s last years at the White House. After a good many evening martinis, he would call Henry Kissinger, and the secretary of state would grin silently as he passed around the telephone so that others could listen to their commander in chief’s unbalanced ramblings. Since Nixon was in a position to blow us all up, this suggests a somewhat esoteric sense of humor on Kissinger’s part.” With the fall of Britain’s Charles Kennedy, Slate‘s Geoffrey Wheatcroft very briefly surveys the sordid history of alcoholism in politics. (He could, I think, have done more with The Alcoholic Republic.)
A thin grey line.
Seen tonight with Jarhead: The trailer for Steven Spielberg’s Munich, with Eric Bana, Geoffrey Rush, and Daniel Craig, on the aftermath of, and Israeli response to, the murders at the 1972 Olympics. From this brief clip, it looks to be a very timely meditation on means and ends in the war on terror.
The Race Card Shell Game.
“Some Republicans gave up on winning the African American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization. I am here today as the Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong.” (And, now that we’ve got all the racist white freakshows definitively in the bag, we’re coming for you…) RNC Chair Ken Mehlman will apparently apologize for the “Southern Strategy” before the NAACP today. Well, I presume there nobody will fall for this ridiculous ruse…Just ask Katharine Harris.
From Mars to Munich.
“‘Viewing Israel’s response to Munich through the eyes of the men who were sent to avenge that tragedy adds a human dimension to a horrific episode that we usually think about only in political or military terms,’ [Spielberg] said. ‘By experiencing how the implacable resolve of these men to succeed in their mission slowly gave way to troubling doubts about what they were doing, I think we can learn something important about the tragic standoff we find ourselves in today.'” War of the Worlds complete, Steven Spielberg moves on Vengeance.
Throat Cleared.
As suspected by several journalists and at the ripe young age of 91, Deep Throat reveals himself to Vanity Fair as W. Mark Felt, the FBI’s #2 man during Watergate. “‘I don’t think (being Deep Throat) was anything to be proud of,’ Felt indicated to his son, Mark Jr., at one point, according to the article. ‘You (should) not leak information to anyone.’” Update: With great hullabaloo, the Post confirms. Update 2: Nixon weighs in, as do Slate‘s Tim Noah (multiple times) and David Greenberg.
One More Crusade.
Moving a long-awaited project closer out of development hell, George Lucas approves the new Indy IV script. If Harrison Ford also approves, Indy IV could get a 2006 start, after Spielberg finishes both Vengeance, his Munich Olympics film with Eric Bana and Daniel Craig, and his Liam Neeson Lincoln biopic, based on a forthcoming book by Doris Kearns Goodwin.
Walt Nixon World.
“Bringing Kutler to the library was going to be like Nixon going to China.” The Nixon library in Yorba Linda — the only presidential library under private management — incurs the wrath of the historical community by spiking a conference on the Vietnam War that would undoubtedly have been critical of Tricky Dick. Whatsmore, “historians still did not have access to about 800 hours of tapes and 50,000 documents withheld by the Nixon estate on the grounds that they deal with personal or political, rather than presidential, matters.” That represents a significantly larger gap in the historical record than 18 and a half minutes.
All the President’s Men.
Journalism then and now: As Slate writer and Nixon historian David Greenberg reports in from the opening of the Watergate papers, Salon‘s Eric Boehlert surveys the strange case of “Jeff Gannon”, a.k.a. James Guckert, fake newsman for Dubya.
Shambling to the polls.
By way of Quiddity, Film Threat examines the uncanny correlation between Republican administrations and excellent zombie movies. You do the math. (Adding fuel to the fire, the new Romero, Land of the Dead, is set for October 21.)