MetaChat - “You’re Jewish, aren’t you, Seymour?”.

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06 June 2005

“You’re Jewish, aren’t you, Seymour?”. In all our previous conversations, I’d been “Sy.” I said yes. “Let me ask you one question, then,” Haig said. “Do you honestly believe that Henry Kissinger, a Jewish refugee from Germany who lost thirteen members of his family to the Nazis, could engage in such police-state tactics as wiretapping his own aides? If there is any doubt, you owe it to yourself, your beliefs, and your nation to give us one day to prove that your story is wrong.”
That was Watergate, circa 1973. The Times printed the story the next day, and Kissinger did not resign.
Seymour Hersh, WATERGATE DAYS

post by: matteo at: 15:38 | 14 comments

god, i just loved all the watergate players. a novelist couldn't invent those characters or the scenes they played out. my favorite was kissingers own recollection of a drunken, weeping nixon asking him to pray on his knees with him. of course none of them were quite given to honest self-appraisal, but what drama!

posted by quonsar 06 June | 15:48

all sick threatening fucks--every one of them.

I would like to add tho, that that era was the last gasp of it being acceptable to openly talk like they did about us Jews in the US in public (altho now we might be swinging back, as in so many ways). See Archie Bunker for another exmple in the same years.

posted by amberglow 06 June | 15:55

this is why my new yorkers keep gathering dust on the floor

posted by ethylene 06 June | 16:00

sometimes the use of antisemitism in books, old and new, is jarring
then i look around and remember why i can't get a decent bagel

the way some books will turn me off initially for their "guy tone" or "girl tone"

but as a kid i never felt rebuffed by the the main character being a boy or a girl or a robot

posted by ethylene 06 June | 16:43

Ditto quonsar: the first thing I thought of, while reading matteo's quote, was "Henry, pray with me Henry".

posted by orthogonality 06 June | 16:53

Many people in government were outraged by the sheer bulk and gravity of the corrupt activities they witnessed in the White House.

Well, there's one thing that's not a problem any more.

posted by warbaby 06 June | 17:05

There was a funny passage I think in Woodward's book that described how Nixon was unable to open a child-proof pill bottle and had to ask someone (an aide?) to help him, and the aide (?) reported that it looked as if Nixon had been trying to chew the top off of it.

posted by carter 06 June | 17:07

We Have Met Deep Throat, and He Is Us
by David Kuo *
*former Special Assistant to President George W. Bush and Deputy Director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

posted by matteo 06 June | 17:50

now i can't stop picturing nixon gnawing off the tops of bottles
*runs off to appt*

posted by ethylene 06 June | 17:53

Hehe, quansar.

I don't know if Nixon was really a Christian or not, but I bet it's hard to keep a straight face when Bush asks.

posted by Balisong 06 June | 18:15

Er you know, Quonsar...
(Dang, I've fuppet your name up twice now...Don't take it personal!)

posted by Balisong 06 June | 18:17

Nixon's Henchman Lecture Us on Ethics.

Nixon would make a great name for a dog (Jrun, too).

posted by mlis 06 June | 18:30

An aphorism for anyone old enough to live through both events:

Everybody remembers where they were when they heard Kennedy was shot but nobody knew where they were when they woke up on the morning after Nixon resigned.

*In Seattle, the Comet Tavern had a standing offer to serve free beer the day Nixon resigned. They went through eleven kegs that night.

posted by y2karl 07 June | 01:14

Sequestered in his home, a disgraced President Richard Milhous Nixon arms himself with a bottle of scotch and a gun to record memoirs that no one will hear. He is surrounded by the silent portraits of Lincoln, Eisenhower, Kissinger, and his mother, as he resurrects his past in a passionate attempt to defend himself and his political legacy. Based on the original play by Donald Freed and Arnold M. Stone, and starring Philip Baker Hall in a tour de force solo performance, Robert Altman’s Secret Honor is a searing interrogation of the Nixon mystique and an audacious depiction of unchecked paranoia.

posted by matteo 07 June | 09:29

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