Pretty much everyone knows about or has seen the famous 1977 Richard Nixon interviews, for those that haven't I've found 10 minutes of 'highlights' on YouTube. It was headline news back then as David Frost, who was not known that well in America but still a well accomplished journalist, some how got a full confession and an apology out of Nixon for the Watergate scandal. It's been deemed as one of the great interviews of the 20th century!
What I didn't know was the story behind the interviews was made into a west-end play which in itself was surprising. Today I learned a movie has been made based on the play, apparently it premiered this week at the BFI film festival (alas no invite) so I looked up a trailer for it. It looks great, unfortunately it's not out until January next year so I'm just going to have to wait.
Nixon resigned in 1974 after 'Watergate', when I first read about this, trying to figure out what was bad that the president of the United States would have to give us his post! Nixon was the only US president to have done this to date, Bill Clinton didn't do this after it was found that he outright lied to the American people.
After a bit of light reading, I picked up a copy of 'all the president's men' (I'd recommend it if you like thrillers) by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward who were the two journalists who bought the scandal to the public eye. Admittedly the story wasn't that easy to follow and I was just waiting for the big revelation that would tell me why the president stepped down. The revelation never came and it took me a while to realise why, I think as members of the public, we've been desensitised to scandal over the years.
What Nixon and his men did, wasn't that bad considering what we read about about today but I guess people had more faith in their public officials in the 70s. It's unfortunate that a scandal that would only just raise an eyebrow today was big enough to overshadow all of Nixon's great (yes there was quite a few) achievements back then.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
You're right that it doesn't seem that bad these days. What a cynical world we now live in!
Yes, people harp on about the good old days and how things are all messed up now, but that's not always true. Tolerance and understanding have increased greatly in the past two decades and we all benefit from that. There's still a long way to go of course, but we're moving in the right direction.
Isn't it just so. I mean, besides the Nixon Doctrine; besides the secret nod to obliterate Cambodians; besides full backing of commander Yeehaw's Operation Searchlight; I guess one could safely say that he was a jolly good fellow that none of us can deny.
After 8 years of Bush, and a month of watching McCain and Palin, it is surprising to see that not all republicans are/were idiots. Nixon sounded very eloquent in that youtube clip.
I think, leaders should still be held responsible of their actions. Personally, I think it is sad that our expectations have gone down when it comes to the next US president. Especially when Obama is criticized for being an elitist because of his Harvard credentials.
Ariane, indeed but we try to remain optimistic.
Graham, I think the jury's still out as to weather dub-ya is an 'improvement', time will tell.
Muhamad, I'm not saying everything he did was perfect in-fact I can think of a few more examples without delving into conspiracy theories about Cambodia (at worst they sat back and did nothing). As for Operation Searchlight, I wasn't aware the US gave their 'full backing' (these problems go back much further than the 70s) but in that cold war paranoid climate, can you blame him? It was "go against the USSR and all it's allies (in this case, India) at all costs".
You can list just the negatives of any world leader and paint a bleak picture but why not balance it out?
Zany, I think doing Nixon impressions was all the rage at the time..... I'd have to agree, to be full accepted in the states you have to dumb your self down but Palin has taken it too far!
The sad thing is I don't even think Palin is dumbing down anything. I think she's just being herself.
My good chap, I didn't say, "the US". I was thinking of the mensch, Kissinger, and Nixon.
I understand...something of a schlimmbesserung, something of a rôle model?
Post a Comment