Strengthening Constitutional Self-Government

No Left Turns

Deep Throat, for the last time

This is Bob Woodward’s lengthy article on how Mark Felt became Deep Throat. Woodward and Bernstein are already saying that they have the book on all this in the works--which means it was mostly written before the Felt story broke, as was the Post article. So, we’ll be hearing a lot more about this for many months to come, Woodward and the Felt family will be making a lot more money, and all the journalists and reporters brought up on the Sixties and Watergate will keep talking about themselves and the good old days. They were all over the TV talkies this morning. And it got boring very quickly. One of them, full of inuendo and pride, actually asked where are the investigative reporters now, when they’re really needed, given that we have this all-too-secretive administration, etc. You get the point. So I’m going to pay attention to any of this only to the extent that I pay attention to archeology: Sometimes dead things merit some study only because they are dead; that is, not much. Peggy Noonan is on a semilar point, and she says it better than I can:

Is the Deep Throat story over? Yes, in the sense that it will no longer be treated as a mystery. In spite of the million questions we’ll be hearing--and there are and will be many serious questions--the MSM will stick with the heroic narrative. Mr. Felt was Deep Throat. Deep Throat was a great man who helped a great newspaper put the stop to the lies and abuses of an out-of-control White House. End of story. Why? Because in celebrating this story in a certain way journalists of a certain age celebrate themselves. Because to bring unwelcome and unwanted skepticism to the narrative would be to deny 20th-century journalism--and 21st-century journalists--their great claim to glory. Because the MSM is still liberal, and the great Satan of all liberals, still, is Richard Nixon. And because, as Ben Bradlee might say, It’s a goddamn good story.

Or as they put it in yet another John Ford masterpiece, "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," "When the legend becomes the fact, print the legend."

Discussions - 2 Comments

Noonan writes: "Because the MSM is still liberal, and the great Satan of all liberals, still, is Richard Nixon."

Hmm, the "great Satan" is the guy who gave us Keynesian economics, Earth Day, OSHA, the Environmental Protection Act, school desegregation via forced busing, and a whole slew of other progressive (and expensive) programs, not to mention "Peace with honor"?

I am of the opinion of Garry Wills, who, in NYT review of Schlesinger’s 1973 impeach the bastard Nixon tome The Imperial Presidency, concluded that Democrats, in their quest to "get Nixon," were attempting to "fix the weather by breaking the thermometer." If history is any guide, let it be duly noted that between FDR’s New Deal and Nixon, Democrats occupied the White House 28 out those forty years. Since 1973, the GOP has held the great lion’s share of "occupation."

Meanwhile the weather keeps getting nastier and nastier. I am quite surprised that Noonan holds that [Adolph] Bush has not managed to eclipse [Darth Vader] Nixon’s Death Star.

They are fixated on Nixon because most of the residual energy in the American Left is firmly rooted in the experiences and worldviews of the Baby Boomers. It’s the 60’s, man...can you dig it?

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