Ship of Fools: Tricky Dicky (or how much is an election worth)

Thread: Tricky Dicky (or how much is an election worth) Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Jay-Emm (# 11411) on :

My first question is why this story seems to be such low news
bbc magazine
and related to that why no thread, already. It may be the answer is that there isn't any way to go about it (I know my attempt to make it debatable is rather lame).

Secondly, what does this do to the whole cold war narrative, is there more to come?

Any other thoughts and consequences?

Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jay-Emm:
My first question is why this story seems to be such low news
bbc magazine

In part because it's not news. The events took place forty-five years ago and most of the key players are dead, so it's "olds". It doesn't even make us re-assess the character of Richard Nixon, who most of us considered criminally deceitful if not downright traitorous well before this recent revelation.

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

Its not even news that just broke - this came out some years ago (and I'm pretty sure Nixon was suspected of such things way back)

Might be a movie in it though, what with Anna Chennault involved. You could have her played by Lucy Liu.

Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :

quote:
Originally posted by ken:
Its not even news that just broke - this came out some years ago (and I'm pretty sure Nixon was suspected of such things way back)

That's my recollection, too. But Nixon inspired such visceral hatred in some folks that these rumors were mostly dismissed as coming from that.

--Tom Clune

Posted by Jay-Emm (# 11411) on :

quote:
Originally posted by ken:
Its not even news that just broke - this came out some years ago

That explains it (a bit anyway, now I wonder what inspired the article).
Cheers.

Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jay-Emm:

quote:
Originally posted by ken:
Its not even news that just broke - this came out some years ago
That explains it (a bit anyway, now I wonder what inspired the article).
Cheers.

Basically it's along the lines of "now we've got audio-taped evidence of what we've known for years".

A good rule of thumb is that whenever you hear the words "Nixon" and "tapes" in close proximity to each other, you should prepare to be appalled.

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jay-Emm:
... now I wonder what inspired the article.

BBC programme about Charles Wheeler, who was a well-known journalist and worked for the BBC. So they are getting out his old tapes out of the archives and playing some of his greatest hits on the radio.

The BBC is the oldest broadcasting network in the world, and its got a lot of archive to work through if it wants to fill a few hours! (a pity they lost so much Dr Who [Disappointed]

)

[ 19. March 2013, 20:15: Message edited by: ken ]

Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jay-Emm:
My first question is why this story seems to be such low news

what does this do to the whole cold war narrative?

Perhaps because many old left-wing Cold Warriors have grown up and realised that:-

1. While Nixon was a fairly unpleasant character, he was no worse than countless other politicians in the US and other Western democracies.

2. The real villains of the era were communist dictators whose icons they paraded through the streets, from "Uncle" Ho (who was abut as avuncular as his hero "Uncle" Jo Stalin) to The Great Helmsman, history's worst mass murderer.

Perhaps they have realised that they would be better off protesting against Vietnam's current appalling human rights record rather than nostalgically raking over stale news about their radical heyday.

(I demonstrated against the Vietnam War in the late Sixties, because I believed that the suffering of the Vietnamese people from the fighting was a greater evil than a communist dictatorship, but I never deluded myself into believing that the imposition of neo-Stalinism on Indo-China was anyrthing other than an evil).

[ 20. March 2013, 00:31: Message edited by: Kaplan Corday ]

Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :

"Not as bad as Stalin" is almost the definition of damning with faint praise.

For me, the more interesting recent Nixon revelation was in Robert Bork's posthumously published book, in which Bork claimed Nixon offered him a seat on the Supreme Court if he'd fire Archibald Cox. What appalled me most about that particular revelation was how open Nixon felt he could be about offering a bribe in the subversion of justice. And how eagerly Bork accepted.

Of course, by the time the next Supreme Court vacancy opened up Gerald Ford was serving the remainder of Nixon's term and appointing the Cox-sacker would've been politically dicey. Since Bork's book came out I've started wondering if Reagan appointed him to the court because Bork was a Republican "made man" for the Saturday Night Massacre, or if it was just that the Saturday Night Massacre reassured Reagan that Bork was a good Republican footsoldier, and if there's any real difference between those two things.

Posted by Porridge (# 15405) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
In part because it's not news. The events took place forty-five years ago and most of the key players are dead, so it's "olds". It doesn't even make us re-assess the character of Richard Nixon, who most of us considered criminally deceitful if not downright traitorous well before this recent revelation.

You left out mentally ill. He was pretty paranoid.

Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :

quote:
Originally posted by ken:
(a pity they lost so much Dr Who )

[tangent]
They lost a lot less of Dr Who than they did of most other programs. Everyone just knows about the Dr Who losses.
[/tangent]

Posted by Jane R (# 331) on :

quote:
...now I wonder what inspired the article...

Anyone with any specialist knowledge whatsoever quickly learns to be sceptical of the phrase 'Startling new evidence reveals...'. It often turns out to be something you read about as an undergraduate 20 years ago. If it really is new evidence, it's not usually as startling as the journalist makes out; not to anyone with a smattering of prior knowledge (eg 'Startling New Evidence Reveals... Macbeth was a Good King!')

The BBC have to fill that 24 hour news channel somehow.

Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Porridge:

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
In part because it's not news. The events took place forty-five years ago and most of the key players are dead, so it's "olds". It doesn't even make us re-assess the character of Richard Nixon, who most of us considered criminally deceitful if not downright traitorous well before this recent revelation.
You left out mentally ill. He was pretty paranoid.

Hate to put in a good word for him, but on social policy he was AIUI pretty progressive (by which I suppose I mean comparatively left-wing)- rather more so than any President since.

[ 20. March 2013, 10:22: Message edited by: Albertus ]

Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jane R:

quote:
...now I wonder what inspired the article...
Anyone with any specialist knowledge whatsoever quickly learns to be sceptical of the phrase 'Startling new evidence reveals...'. It often turns out to be something you read about as an undergraduate 20 years ago.

The startling thing for me was that Johnson had planned to throw his hat in the ring at the Chicago convention. I don't recall ever having heard so much as a rumor about that...

--Tom Clune

Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
Hate to put in a good word for him, but on social policy he was AIUI pretty progressive (by which I suppose I mean comparatively left-wing)- rather more so than any President since.

Not exactly. Nixon was willing to sign fairly progressive domestic legislation put in front of him by Congress because he didn't care that much about domestic policy, not because he cared deeply about the environment or drug rehab. In other words, most of the progressive things Nixon is often credited with doing were things he didn't care enough about to get in a fight with Congress over. In this regard he was kind of the opposite of Lyndon Johnson, who didn't care that much about foreign policy but put most of his presidential energy into the Great Society programs and civil rights reforms.

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

Kaplan wrote:

quote:
2. The real villains of the era were communist dictators whose icons they paraded through the streets, from "Uncle" Ho (who was abut as avuncular as his hero "Uncle" Jo Stalin) to The Great Helmsman, history's worst mass murderer.

It should be read into the record that Nixon not only met with that mass murderer(something which, by itself, could be viewed as little more than a diplomatic courtesy), but began the process in which the Chinese and American foreign policies were synchronized to an incredibly high degree, backing the same side in Angola, and later, most notoriously, in Cambodia. This alliance more or less continued up until the collapse of the mutual Soviet enemy in the late 80s/early 90s.

Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
the mutual Soviet enemy

It's called realpolitik, and was scarcely unique to Nixon.

It was most famously practised by Churchill and Roosevelt when they allied themselves with Stalin to defeat the commom enemy Hitler.

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