Watergate and Me
I've failed all week to get all excited about the incarnation of "Deep Throat." It's interesting. To me, it's interesting like finding Amelia Erhart's remains would be interesting.
But I'm in the media, I'm supposed to care passionately about this; Woodward and Bernstein are supposed to be my heroes.
No, sorry, that was the previous generation of media. The people who were getting started in the trade when Watergate broke, or who were in college then and switched majors to get into the media because it was the only power on earth that could stare down Nixon.
I've worked for them most of my career. They're absolutely obsessive about Nixon and Watergate. This, for them, was a story as big as the Second Coming.
But before Watergate, other stories got caught in the minds of newsies and never let go. They churned through their gray matter like addictive pop music. The Kennedy assassination, and before that Pearl Harbor, and before that the Hindenberg crash, the Lindbergh baby, the Zimmerman telegram, the XYZ Affair.
Pickett's Charge. That moment when Woodward meets Deep Throat is lodged in the minds of my old editors like the moment Faulkner described:
Watergate for me? It changed my life. All through that long, hot summer, every afternoon, the deadly dull House hearings possessed the television set. One gray man after another came forth and testified, each one grayer than the last. I was 12. I stopped watching TV. I went out and played more, but mostly I started reading books. Books and books, and I've never really turned on the TV again.
[ed. -- Except for women's prison flicks on USA Up All Night. Yea, but that's another story]
But I'm in the media, I'm supposed to care passionately about this; Woodward and Bernstein are supposed to be my heroes.
No, sorry, that was the previous generation of media. The people who were getting started in the trade when Watergate broke, or who were in college then and switched majors to get into the media because it was the only power on earth that could stare down Nixon.
I've worked for them most of my career. They're absolutely obsessive about Nixon and Watergate. This, for them, was a story as big as the Second Coming.
But before Watergate, other stories got caught in the minds of newsies and never let go. They churned through their gray matter like addictive pop music. The Kennedy assassination, and before that Pearl Harbor, and before that the Hindenberg crash, the Lindbergh baby, the Zimmerman telegram, the XYZ Affair.
Pickett's Charge. That moment when Woodward meets Deep Throat is lodged in the minds of my old editors like the moment Faulkner described:
"For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it's still not yet two o'clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it's all in the balance, it hasn't happened yet, it hasn't even begun yet, it not only hasn't begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armistead and Wilcox look grave yet it's going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn't need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose and all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory the desperate gamble, the cast made two years ago ..."
Watergate for me? It changed my life. All through that long, hot summer, every afternoon, the deadly dull House hearings possessed the television set. One gray man after another came forth and testified, each one grayer than the last. I was 12. I stopped watching TV. I went out and played more, but mostly I started reading books. Books and books, and I've never really turned on the TV again.
[ed. -- Except for women's prison flicks on USA Up All Night. Yea, but that's another story]
Labels: Watergate
