Memories

August 9^th 1974, a date that will live in obscurity. On Television the previous evening, Richard M. Nixon announced that he would resign the following day and for once, he kept his promise.

I recall that in his speech, Nixon mentioned that being an old salt, he knew that the rear end of a boat was called the bow. At that point I began to feel sorry for him as I might for anyone who couldn’t tell his bow from his stern, but of course that feeling has long since faded away, just like the outrage over a President, who was, despite his protestations, a clumsy crook. Old salt or not, he swore like a sailor, particularly when drunk on the job. Of course he was also without any moral compass, a borderline megalomaniac with paranoid tendencies and perhaps a wife-beater as well.

Perhaps I’m one of a dwindling few who remembers some early releases of transcripts of his tapes. His fellow partisans were quite sure that the “liberal Press,” the scapegoat Nixon and his ward Spiro Agnew (he’s not a crook either) so often used, would somehow pervert the innocent words by some nuance of tone and so it was read on the air in a dead-pan voice by actors with far less emotional content than the voice synthesis chip in my answering machine. The tapes were damning anyway and more revolting with every new release; from the “let’s sic the IRS on those Jews” to his stunning conversation with Billy Graham (he’s not a crook either) about how the Jews were ruining the country.

Even when the Clinton Presidency was under siege in a fashion designed flamboyantly to duplicate the outing of Nixon’s felonious administration, nobody seemed ever to mention August 9^th. No surprise that the Republicans have swept it under the flag, but the loyal opposition, now that we have an administration that’s as corrupt as any in our history, remains silent, as though the shame were theirs alone.

Perhaps one day, George W Bush’s nefarious and Nixonian scheme to make lies into truth and truth into lies will also fade from memory. After all any kind of accurate memory is the enemy of pernicious consumerism and consumerism has become a force of nature, not to be resisted. Still, I remember bow from stern and port from starboard too. Let the rest of the passengers dance the night away, Captain Fogg knows where the lifeboats are.

Vide et scio – I saw and I know.