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June 06, 2005
Speaking of cults . . .
I still haven't seen the latest "Star Wars," but I'm glad to see that the brilliant Mark Steyn has made it relevant to the pressing political and religious issues of the day: ....''Revenge of the Sith'' is a marvel of motivational integrity compared to ''Revenge of the Felt,'' the concluding chapter in that other '70s saga, Watergate. Before the final denouement last week, there were a gazillion guesses at the identity of ''Deep Throat,'' but all subscribed to the basic contours of the Woodward and Bernstein myth: that he was someone deep in the bowels of the administration who could no longer in good conscience stand by as a corrupt president did deep damage to the nation. So Darth Throat, a fully paid-up Dark Lord of the Milhous, saved the Republic from the imperial paranoia of Chancellor Nixotine by transforming himself into Anakin Slytalker and telling what he knew to the Bradli knights of the Washington Post.The above I found linked in Jay Rosen's brilliant analysis of the quasi religious aspects of Watergate. Like many cults, the Woodward and Bernstein Watergate cult denies its existence: It was after Nixon was exiled, after my brief journalism career was aborted, and after the movie of All the President's Men--a commercial hit--came out that I returned to look more closely at Watergate, but now at the meaning it held for journalists. During graduate school (mid-80s) I reviewed the social science research on the American press, trying to understand what made it the way it was, what kept it from changing into something else. As I followed different leads in my research I would invariably run into the Watergate Mythos, a force field affecting all ships.(Don't miss Mr. Rosen's essay on journalism as a religion, by the way.) That there is a religion of journalism -- and religious orthodoxy -- explains the obstinate, even irrational opposition to any questioning (much less reexamination) of what happened in Watergate. Actually, reexamination is the wrong word, because a lingering question about Watergate is, simply, what were the burglars doing at the Watergate, and why? For years I heard tales about "bugging Larry O'Brien's office," yet it turned out that no bug was ever installed there (it couldn't have been heard from the listening post if it had been), and the desk and phone targeted by the burglars belonged to one Ida Maxwell ("Maxie") Wells. To merely inquire about these matters (which were overlooked despite the information being in FBI files) is to risk being called a nut, or to be likened to a Holocaust denier. Why is that? Because it would help rehabilitate the evil Nixon? Not by a long shot. Nixon's crime was in covering up the burglary. He was incredibly stupid to do it (and the sexual nature of the burglary, if true, only shows him to be more stupid, not less). Covering up is obstruction of justice, and that's why he had to resign, and why he was lucky that President Ford pardoned him. None of this will save Nixon, and I don't know anyone who claims it would. Instead, the painstaking research by others which raised questions about John Dean's possible personal sexual motivation of the burglary renders the orginal reporting of Watergate less than thorough (and, of course, John Dean less than heroic). If, as Mr. Rosen argues, modern journalism is a religious cult which arose from Watergate (with Woodward and Bernstein as "Cardinals"), then any questioning of their thoroughness is akin to heresy. Raising questions about sloppy reporting is heresy? Well, I'm a heretic and I make no bones about it. When I read Secret Agenda and Silent Coup I was stunned, because I had always assumed that the Watergate burglary involved simple political dirt digging, and to see evidence that it was more complicated than that -- that a media hero had sent the burglars in on his own personal mission -- just shocked me to the core. Then I saw the fanatical opposition to any consideration of this new evidence. Lawsuits were filed against the authors of Silent Coup, against people who discussed the book's evidence, the book was labeled a "right wing wacko tract," (notwithstanding the liberal backgrounds of the authors), and when the lawsuits were abandoned, dismissed, or rejected by a federal judge and jury, why, the silence of the press was deafening. It's the kind of reaction I'd expect from a religious cult.
What’s being punctured, one pinprick at a time, is the image of lone heroes acting heroically.That should have been the job of journalists decades ago. posted by Eric on 06.06.05 at 08:35 AM
Comments
"....What's being punctured, one pinprick at a time, is the image of lone heroes acting heroically...." If he's only talking about those particular reporters in this one particular case, I might agree. But if he's talking in any more general sense, then I must violently disagree. From Gilgamesh to Odysseus to Sigurd to Giordano Bruno to Howard Roark to Whittaker Chambers, the grand myth, the eternal archetype, of lone heroes acting heroically will never "go out of style" because it is style. Steven Malcolm Anderson the Lesbian-worshipping man's-man-admiring myth-based egoist · June 6, 2005 03:14 PM |
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I'll stick to the theory that "Deep Throat" was actually two teen-age girls. The style of President Nixon. The style of the Watergate imbroglio.
I have to say that I'd be very disapointed if this all turned out to be over something as overtly sexual as a prostitution ring. The Clinton administration and its scandals never held nearly as much interest for me, precisely because it was so explicitly and Naturalistically sexual. While some of President Clinton's economic policies (particularly regarding welfare) were actually considerably more conservative than were Nixon's, his whole style was quintessentially liberal, "loose" and "hip". Which is why conservatives hated him so much and still hate him. That is why they sought to impeach him.
President Nixon and his administration, by contrast, was sexually repressed and sublimated, Jehovanistic in style. His policies, both domestic (environmentalism, introduction of affirmative action, wage and price controls, proposed guaranteed annual income) and foreign ("detente" with the Communists) were very liberal. But his whole style was quintessentially conservative, "uptight" and "square". Which is why liberals hated him so much, and still hate him. That is why they sought to impeach him. And that is precisely why I like him. Call me a Jehovanistic-style Gnostic. (I weighed in against Naturalistic sex education on the Queen's blog.)
The one thing I have to severely criticize President Nixon for, however, unfortunately, was his recognition (and therefore legitimation) of the Communist regime in mainland China. The Maoists Communists murdered some 30+ million people, and they supported Pol Pot. And yet most of Nixon's critics never criticize this. Only those of us on the Far Right, such as the John Birch Society, have dared to oppose President Nixon's disastrous legalization of Communism in China. Tragic. He started out as a strong anti-Communist, helping Whittaker Chambers to expose Alger Hiss. Which is another reason why President Nixon, even after his China blunder, was and is still hated by the Left, why they sought his impeachment.
I have observed and concluded that the only people in America who equal or surpass President Nixon and his men (Agnew, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Liddy, etc.) in style are those of the John Birch Society (Robert Welch, Gary Allen, Allen Stang, G. Edward Griffin, E. Merrill Root, etc.). I admire E. Merrill Root in particular, a profound poet and philosopher, himself an admirer of Whittaker Chambers and of Ayn Rand, of G. K. Chesterton and of Friedrich Nietzsche and of Oswald Spengler, of the Bible and of the Eddas. In this, he reminds me very much of Camille Paglia, but with a very different style.
In his excellent book Collectivism on the Campus (1955), exposing Political Correctness long before that term became fashionable, Professor Root outlined an interesting spectrum. He wrote of a spectrum of collectivists from International Socialists (Communists) on the Left to Fabian Socialists in the Center to National Socialists (Nazis) on the Right. But, to this, he contrasted a parallel and opposing spectrum of individualists. As examples of these, he chose Henry David Thoreau for the Left, Thoreau's friend Ralph Waldo Emerson for the Center, and Senator Robert A. Taft for the Right. I, too, see such a spectrum of individualists. I think of my friend Jeanine Ring as the Left, Camille Paglia (and also my friend Eric Scheie) as the Center, and E. Merrill Root himself as the Right.