Remember Rosemary Woods? Perhaps I should give my customary sigh and ask if you're even old enough to remember Richard Nixon's secretary who, as she claimed was dextrous enough 'accidentally' to erase a potentially incriminating tape seven times! that was long before e-mail but she gave many months of material to the comedians of the mid 70's when Republicans were heavy handed thugs and bungling burglars as well as ordinary liars, crooks and cheats. the psychotic religious mystics and professional manipulators came later. Somehow we became inured to such executive chicanery by the time the Bush White house lost some 22 million e-mails. Losing data was part of the nature of things said Darryl Issa and how "shameful" of the Democrats to whine about it.
They've become so smooth, of course, that we no longer hear the tables turn and turn they do and the White House press secretary nor any Democrat can dismiss the whole lame story by saying "we screwed up" and get away with it. Once again, it's the old Republican refrain "It's OK when we do it" and of course, making a bombastic fuss about e-mails is a convenient diversion from the fact that there really is no evidence of any scandal. Sad to say, too many people still see fires when the sleazemeisters light their smokescreens.
It works so well that all the smoke about Benghazi has obscured the fact that the ten embassy attacks and 60 dead during the Bush/Cheney years have disappeared from the American consciousness, even now that the elderly warmongers have risen once again like Nosferatu from his foetid coffin, seeking to spill more American blood. Does anyone have a stake?
I'm tempted to write my Democratic senator to suggest a new national anthem: Smoke Gets in Your Eyes. I've always liked the tune.
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2 comments:
Two things:
1. I'm really not quite old enough to remember the "Rose Mary Stretch," but since my mid-20s, I've be fascinated with the Nixon White House and have written many puppet plays based upon it. I actually have a weird kind of love for Nixon. How did a man like that ever become president? His paranoia served him well for many years! Also, can you image losing a presidential election, going home and losing the election for governor ("You don't have Nixon to kick around any more"--which I know he meant as a joke, but he was charmingly hopeless in that area), and then going on to win two presidential elections?! It's amazing.
2. Tuesday night, The Daily Show did a terrible segment on the IRS missing email. Not only was it misinformed, there wasn't much humor there--just a whole bunch of "ain't the government incompetent" jokes that were tired during the Nixon administration.
I'm afraid I have a hard time watching the Daily Show any more.
It forces me to watch Fox clips which gets me so angry I can't sleep and yes, like many of our liberal causes, we're so used to laughing at and snarking at the Republicans, we forget our own weaknesses.
But how Nixon got elected is something I've been obsessing about since he slithered into the White House. I'm quite old enough to remember and not old enough to forget. His "secret plan to win the war" which consisted of doing what hadn't worked until a miracle happened fooled no one but the American public, but public revulsion for the social movements of the 60's helped him immensely and indeed it still shapes the current image of the "hippie." He convinced the business types that he was "good for business" which meant he was hostile to unions and of course the "don't change horses" cliche was very effective because as he said, the lights of freedom would go out all over the world if we lost Vietnam. Ahhh excuse me, I'm hyperventilating here.
But really, how the hell did W get elected twice? Ignorance, stupidity, hatred and greed -- fool me twice and I'm an American.
In my opinion Nixon never left or even died, just like Joe Hill and he still lurks somewhere behind the Right, like Nosferatu in his coffin.
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