Re: Re:Possibly Unpopular Post....

[Guest guest]

I am old enough to remember the Nixon " watergate " scandal although I was too

young to know what it was.

I remember in particular being in catechism class and the nun who was our

teacher clasped her hands and announced we would discuss current events. We

didn't normally do that.

She asked the class if anyone knew what Watergate was as we had all probably

heard it being talked about endlessly in the news.

I knew it was a code name that stood for something-but couldn't figure out

why. I remember one boy raised his hand and said something to the effect,

'isn't it water flowing around a gate?'

Me, being literal had somehow even known that he was wrong, that it was

bigger than that and far more important.

The nun laughed and tried to explain what it meant but I still could not

fully grasp it.

To me Nixon had always been a parody of himself...after a while the Laugh-In

show jokes were the same as seeing him on tv. Those peace sign fingers and

Cosell type voice..as if he was constantly spoofing himself.Yet that

was the real him! An amazing silly corrupt character that made me laugh at

the time.

I never fully understood it and had to learn later in my twenties about the

man, the deep throat the whole nonsense.

Now its just 'water under the gate' to most people.

K

>

> A friend of mine once got a ticket for jaywalking. He

> didn't have the money to pay the fine, so he had to do

> 24 hours in jail. Ever since then, he reminds people

> that he did more time for jaywalking the Nixon did for

> all his crimes. That said, I miss the time when

> presidents were able to do their job according to

> whatever their ability was and to be themselves.

>

> Reagan & Co. invented the perpetual campaign, and

> every statement and action on virtually ever day of

> work was planned for its PR effect. Ford and

> were above that, and they deserve credit for that. I

> don't think those days will return. People are so

> used to being told what they want to hear that their

> desire for 'straight talk' is hokey. Americans have

> dumbed-down like they were supposed to, and they ended

> up with dummies.

>

> I guess Ford wasn't the brightest bulb in the

> Christmas tree string, but he was genuine. He also

> didn't expect Betty to act like those glazed-eyed

> Stepford wives of Nixon, Reagan, and II staring

> at their husband-presidents as if at pharaoh-gods. He

> had some ideas that were silly but not dangerous, like

> the WIN buttons and the swine flu vaccinations. I

> just wish he had never hired the comedy team of Cheney

> & Rumsfeld. He was also involved in the Indonesian

> invasion and massacre of two hundred thousand people

> in East Timor when the Portuguese pulled out. (Though

> maybe Kissinger had manipulated him.)

>

> I guess it's hard to reconcile all this. His allowing

> a TV crew to film him making himself an English muffin

> was too amateurish to qualify as a publicity stunt,

> and it was sure refreshing. And having Nixon go to

> jail wouldn't really have done us any good. But he

> was weak and ineffective. This reminds me of the old

> insult, " If you had brains, you'd be dangerous. " It

> took the current president to cure me of that

> expression.

>

> __________________________________________________

>

[Guest guest]

wrote:

>To me Nixon had always been a parody of himself...after a while the Laugh-In

>show jokes were the same as seeing him on tv. Those peace sign fingers and

> Cosell type voice..as if he was constantly spoofing himself.Yet that

>was the real him! An amazing silly corrupt character that made me laugh at

>the time.

He made a compaign stop at the college I was attending (the one I

dropped out of before finishing the first year) back in 1967-68. My

only point of contact with the campus was an anti-war group, and a

bunch of us decided to attend Nixon's speech as " conservative hippies

for Nixon " (satire). At that point, I had broken my glasses in a

meltdown and was not fully sighted. But it amazed me, as I stood at

the foot of the stage where he was speaking, how much he resembled Ed

Sullivan (for those too young or non-U.S. to know about Sullivan:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Sullivan) -- who always seemed to me

like a man made out of wood. I am faceblind and rely on body

shape/size/motion to recognize people. That recognition system can be

less than 100%, of course, and one way it screws up is by producing

" false positives, " people who don't look anything alike to " normals "

(those with normal ability to recognize faces) but whose " auras " are

very similar. For a faceblind person using the " essence " method of

recognition, Ed Sullivan and Nixon could have been twins.

Odd to think now about how little security there was for a

presidential candidate back then.

Jane