News
Blago Invokes the Old Man
Thirty-four years after his resignation, RN continues to obsess Democrats. The day before his arrest, Blago responded to a report that investigators had been taping him: "I should say if anybody wants to tape my conversations, go right ahead, feel free to do it. I...
Bill Ayers: Still Dissembling, Now Selling
In his column in today's Washington Post, Charles Lane writes about Bill Ayers --- the terrorist who won't just won't fess up and just won't go away. As Mr. Lane explains: "He's got a book to sell and a misspent youth to rationalize." (Fugitive Days:...
Ivies and Intellectuals
Quoting a tape in which RN complains to Henry Kissinger about the presidents of Ivy League institutions, a New Yorker article adds: David Skorton, the president of Cornell, was apprised of Nixon’s comments over the phone. “My mouth is open,” Skorton said, after the...
The F/N Drumbeat Goes On
Today's Daily Beast offers a veritable Nixon cornucopia ---in fact, a pretty mixed bag, but none of it uninteresting--- of F/N- and RN-related features.
F/N Gathering Its Rosebuds While, And Where, It May
As RN often equably observed, his books could always count on at least a couple of hundred thousand sales because the cons ---who were eagerly anticipating delicious new Nixonian excesses and outrages--- were as likely to buy them as were the pros ---who were...
The Creature From The Oval Office
In today's Washington Post Peter Marks interviews Ron Howard, the director of Nixon/Frost, and Peter Morgan, its writer. On C-SPAN's Washington Journal the other day Howard assured viewers that the film, already playing in New York and Los Angeles and scheduled to...
Genius List: 90% Perspiration 10% Inspiration 100% BS
Back in middle 1980s, when I was a magazine editor, we would sit around my office one night shortly before each deadline and concoct each issue's all-but-obligatory lists ---Who's Hot, Who's Sexy, Who's Who, etc., etc.--- that would fill a double spread and be...
Plus Ca Change Plus C’est La Meme Chicago
"With a little bit of luck, and the help of a few close friends, you're going to carry Illinois." ---1960 phone call by Mayor Richard J. Daley "[The Illinois Senate Seat] is a [expletive deleted] valuable thing. You just don't give it away for nothing." ---2008...
The Who’s On First For Kennedy Center Award
(Politics breeds strange box fellows: flanking the Presidential Box at the Kennedy Center at last night's Kennedy Center Awards: from left, Twyla Tharp, Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend, Barbra Streisand, Morgan Freeman, George Jones, The First Lady, President Bush.)...
A One Time Only Invention
In today's New York Times, veteran science correspondent William A. Broad previews two new books that combine to do some rewriting ---or at least some major revision--- of the atomic history. The Nuclear Express: A Political History of the Bomb and its Proliferation...