Now that the long decades have passed, Nixon is so very … Nixon … whatever that is. Fascinated now, when I come across small pieces of him. Was there ever a man so uncomfortable in his own skin as Nixon?
It’s easier to look at him with curiosity rather than nausea, now that the bomb craters are mostly grown over, and the worst parts of politics are played by different players. .
It pains me that NPR seems to have lost the tape of Nixon’s latest announcement of his presidential candidacy, which was broadcast on April 1, 1992; a collaboration between John Hockenberry and Rich Little. The story’s broadcast supposedly caused a temporary but complete lockup of the phone system in Washington DC. http://hoaxes.org/af_database/permalink/nixon_for_president
Below is a link to Rich Little doing Nixon at a fundraiser. I can’t find a clip of the NPR announcement, which included expert commentary and reactions from other campaigns, but I remember hearing it broadcast, and pulling over to the side of the road to listen.
And Nixon’s private visit to the Lincoln Memorial at dawn during a massive Vietnam War protest on May 9, 1970, shortly after the US invasion of Cambodia and 5 days after the National Guard shot and killed 4 students on the campus of Kent State University in Ohio.
"I Am Not A Kook" (from The Atlantic) https://www.google.com/amp/www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/248443/
@cranky1950
I think every single thing associated with Nixon just gets weirder and weirder the harder you look.
The Sawyer-Nichols link is just one more. If you can look away from the policy and ethical issues, Nixon starts to look like the “Area 51” presidency.
The fact that Nixon got involved in the 1969 football championship filtered down thru several decades thru the Longhorns and thru Elvis to a tiny spinoff - I got to spend an part of an evening in I think 1989? with Keith Richards and Ron Wood.
On that evening I had no idea of the connection - just that I knew a girl whose BF who knew the Stones, and got me into a tiny party. Later, I found out the Elvis and Nixon links to history from the BF, who had played on the 1969 Longhorn team.
Growing up in Texas, with a grandmother who was Always Right and who was perfectly capable of putting fear into Rep Jim Wright (and who thought the John Birch Society might be a bit pink, if you knew what she meant), I heard the story of Ballot Box 13 a thousand times.
The story kept growing tentacles in my mind, and prob now has far more connections, to true historians - the links to the power of Olde Tyme Radio, esp in rural depression America - LBJ never ran an honest election in his life, starting as a college student if not before - LBJ was out-stolen in the special Senate election of 1941 (not by the winning candidate, Pappy O’Daniel, but by the Texas democratic machine who would have bribed the Kremlin or the devil to get O’Daniel out of the governor’s mansion) and Landslide Lyndon determined never to be out-stolen again - and an odd side-consequence that got teenaged poor-kid Ross Perot a slot at Annapolis (this part was honest and innocent).
@ELUNO @RiotDemon
Somehow the people doing the 11th Emmys broadcast got Nixon to show up and praise “freedom and television.”
I wonder if Nixon wanted to retract the praise after the Senator Sam Ervin became a media star and the United States Senate Watergate Committee hearings were broadcast.
@cranky1950
She was completely inappropriate to a hyped-and-overblown feast of self-congratulation, sort-of represented a genuine issue of that era, was good looking and articulate, and was totally out of place. And stood in for a megastar who could barely speak, and according to legend, could no longer remember his lines when on set. WIN.
Why can’t all film-industry awards shows be jointly designed by the descendants of Salvador Dali and Hunter S Thompson?
@cranky1950
For anyone who has not seen this:
From the Academy Awards 1973.
Marlon Brando has been nominated, and during the ceremony won, the Best Actor award for his performance in The Godfather.
Reportedly, during the filmmaking, Brando could not or would not remember his lines. So the lines were pasted everywhere visually hidden from the camera, including on other actors’ costumes.
The actors announcing the award were Roger Moore, who had just signed to be the next Bond, and the incandescent Liv Ullman, Ingmar Bergman’s muse.
Sacheen Littlefeather’s remarks:
After Littlefeather’s brief remarks on-stage, she read the entire 15 page speech written by Marlon Brando (reportedly with assistance from Russell Means and Dennis Banks) to the assembled press corps.
And to connect back to other musings in this thread, at the time of the Godfather’s filming, and this awards ceremony, of course, Nixon was president.
Littlefeather was applauded and denounced. John Wayne, backstage, was reportedly so furious he wanted to remove her from the stage himself. She was also denounced for “being a woman doing a man’s job.” The action killed her acting career.
Reportedly, the FBI was furious, because the DOJ had banned the press from the area surrounding Wounded Knee, SD, which had been occupied in Feb 1973 by members of the Lakota tribe in protest against corrupt tribal government and bad faith in the tribe’s relations with the BIA and the federal government. Brando and Littlefeather’s use of the Oscars ceremony to publicize the 71 day occupation led to massive public and press interest, and the occupation changed relations between Native Americans and the rest of the US.
OMG. As the man says, we’re fortunate!
Let’s do the Time Warp again!
Thx!
/giphy ROFLMAO
I am impressed. That was even worse than I expected!
Gotta luv Utube!
I guess the show’s producers felt like they needed a nice Nichols & May palette cleanser after that Nixon horribleness.
@SSteve
Now that the long decades have passed, Nixon is so very … Nixon … whatever that is. Fascinated now, when I come across small pieces of him. Was there ever a man so uncomfortable in his own skin as Nixon?
It’s easier to look at him with curiosity rather than nausea, now that the bomb craters are mostly grown over, and the worst parts of politics are played by different players. .
It pains me that NPR seems to have lost the tape of Nixon’s latest announcement of his presidential candidacy, which was broadcast on April 1, 1992; a collaboration between John Hockenberry and Rich Little. The story’s broadcast supposedly caused a temporary but complete lockup of the phone system in Washington DC.
http://hoaxes.org/af_database/permalink/nixon_for_president
Below is a link to Rich Little doing Nixon at a fundraiser. I can’t find a clip of the NPR announcement, which included expert commentary and reactions from other campaigns, but I remember hearing it broadcast, and pulling over to the side of the road to listen.
One if my favorite Nixon stories is that of his legendary night-time “one-on-one interview” with Hunter Thompson as recounted in Fear And Loathing On The Campaign Trail '72.
http://upriser.com/posts/why-was-hunter-s-thompson-nixon-s-biggest-critic-picked-to-ride-with-nixon-on-a-private-drive-to-the-airport-during-the-1968-election
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1451691572/ref=mp_s_a_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1472746869&sr=1-4&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=Dr.+Hunter+S.+Thompson&dpPl=1&dpID=51m74hame4L&ref=plSrch
Another fascinating bit of Nixon weirdness comes from his involvement in who was the NCAA #1 football team of the 1969 season; of course Nixon’s wading into that just made everyone mad at him as well as the other contenders.
http://www.trbimg.com/img-5499bace/turbine/mc-penn-state-football-nixon-1969-season-001/900/900x506
When Nixon named Texas the national champion over Penn State
http://www.mcall.com/sports/college/psu/nittany-lines/mc-penn-state-football-nixon-1969-season-story,amp.html
Tricky Dick’s Trick Play
In 1969, President Nixon was the decider of the national championship
http://grantland.com/features/texas-arkansas-face-president-richard-nixon-1969/
And Elvis got involved
http://m.ocregister.com/sports/-85343--.html
A telling of that is here: (esp the much later vignette of Nixon in retirement, as recounted in the forward)
Terry Frei
Horns, Hogs, & Nixon Coming: Texas vs. Arkansas in Dixie’s Last Stand
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/516HCWEzG2L.SY400.jpg
https://www.amazon.com/Horns-Hogs-Nixon-Coming-Arkansas/dp/1589791290
And, from the surreal, there’s this: Elvis wants a medal from the Bureau of Narcoticsand Dangerous Drugs
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/when-elvis-met-nixon-69892425/
And Nixon’s private visit to the Lincoln Memorial at dawn during a massive Vietnam War protest on May 9, 1970, shortly after the US invasion of Cambodia and 5 days after the National Guard shot and killed 4 students on the campus of Kent State University in Ohio.
"I Am Not A Kook" (from The Atlantic)
https://www.google.com/amp/www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/248443/
Stephen E. Ambrose’s 3 volume bio of Nixon is on my list, but I’ve still got to get back to Robert Caro’s multi-volume LBJ bio and finish more of those first.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/s/ref=is_s_ss_i_0_9?k=ambrose+nixon&sprefix=ambrose+n
@f00l
@cranky1950 Nixon is the baby’s father?
@ELUNO That’s what she said!!!
@cranky1950 My Speech instructor had this hanging in her cube back then.
@SSteve Interesting that Nichol’s future wife (Diane Sawyer) was Nixxon’s press secretary.
@cranky1950
I think every single thing associated with Nixon just gets weirder and weirder the harder you look.
The Sawyer-Nichols link is just one more. If you can look away from the policy and ethical issues, Nixon starts to look like the “Area 51” presidency.
The fact that Nixon got involved in the 1969 football championship filtered down thru several decades thru the Longhorns and thru Elvis to a tiny spinoff - I got to spend an part of an evening in I think 1989? with Keith Richards and Ron Wood.
On that evening I had no idea of the connection - just that I knew a girl whose BF who knew the Stones, and got me into a tiny party. Later, I found out the Elvis and Nixon links to history from the BF, who had played on the 1969 Longhorn team.
@f00l Where is the TL;DR?
@compunaut
Oh you want me to go on and on and on now? You do now? Hmmmm.
You know, some doors, once opened, can’t be closed again
/giphy the lady or the tiger
@f00l Everything with most Presidents just gets weirder and weirder the harder you look.
@Pavlov
Warning:
Am in a tl;dr mood
Weirdness:
Growing up in Texas, with a grandmother who was Always Right and who was perfectly capable of putting fear into Rep Jim Wright (and who thought the John Birch Society might be a bit pink, if you knew what she meant), I heard the story of Ballot Box 13 a thousand times.
The story kept growing tentacles in my mind, and prob now has far more connections, to true historians - the links to the power of Olde Tyme Radio, esp in rural depression America - LBJ never ran an honest election in his life, starting as a college student if not before - LBJ was out-stolen in the special Senate election of 1941 (not by the winning candidate, Pappy O’Daniel, but by the Texas democratic machine who would have bribed the Kremlin or the devil to get O’Daniel out of the governor’s mansion) and Landslide Lyndon determined never to be out-stolen again - and an odd side-consequence that got teenaged poor-kid Ross Perot a slot at Annapolis (this part was honest and innocent).
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/02/11/us/how-johnson-won-election-he-d-lost.html
The last known sighting:
And so down the years, from Brown and Root to Halliburton on onward.
I’m confused as to what I watched.
@RiotDemon I watched it last night but was afraid to confess that I didn’t quite get it either.
@ELUNO The 1st Emmy Award for the most mediocre work done in Television.
@ELUNO
@RiotDemon
Somehow the people doing the 11th Emmys broadcast got Nixon to show up and praise “freedom and television.”
I wonder if Nixon wanted to retract the praise after the Senator Sam Ervin became a media star and the United States Senate Watergate Committee hearings were broadcast.
@cranky1950 Is that Emmy still given away?!? I know many shows that deserve it!
@f00l Quality TV!
@ELUNO I dunno. I stopped watching awards shows about the time of Sacheen Littlefeather.
@cranky1950
Would you rather watch her give a speech, or Brando accept or denounce an award (during his incoherent phase)?
To me, kinda tossup.
@f00l Probably her Brando and Orson Wells were both trying to out mumble one another around then.
@cranky1950
She was completely inappropriate to a hyped-and-overblown feast of self-congratulation, sort-of represented a genuine issue of that era, was good looking and articulate, and was totally out of place. And stood in for a megastar who could barely speak, and according to legend, could no longer remember his lines when on set. WIN.
Why can’t all film-industry awards shows be jointly designed by the descendants of Salvador Dali and Hunter S Thompson?
/giphy Hollywood
@cranky1950
For anyone who has not seen this:
From the Academy Awards 1973.
Marlon Brando has been nominated, and during the ceremony won, the Best Actor award for his performance in The Godfather.
Reportedly, during the filmmaking, Brando could not or would not remember his lines. So the lines were pasted everywhere visually hidden from the camera, including on other actors’ costumes.
The actors announcing the award were Roger Moore, who had just signed to be the next Bond, and the incandescent Liv Ullman, Ingmar Bergman’s muse.
Sacheen Littlefeather’s remarks:
After Littlefeather’s brief remarks on-stage, she read the entire 15 page speech written by Marlon Brando (reportedly with assistance from Russell Means and Dennis Banks) to the assembled press corps.
And to connect back to other musings in this thread, at the time of the Godfather’s filming, and this awards ceremony, of course, Nixon was president.
Littlefeather was applauded and denounced. John Wayne, backstage, was reportedly so furious he wanted to remove her from the stage himself. She was also denounced for “being a woman doing a man’s job.” The action killed her acting career.
Reportedly, the FBI was furious, because the DOJ had banned the press from the area surrounding Wounded Knee, SD, which had been occupied in Feb 1973 by members of the Lakota tribe in protest against corrupt tribal government and bad faith in the tribe’s relations with the BIA and the federal government. Brando and Littlefeather’s use of the Oscars ceremony to publicize the 71 day occupation led to massive public and press interest, and the occupation changed relations between Native Americans and the rest of the US.
Her take on all this today:
http://nytlive.nytimes.com/womenintheworld/2016/02/27/43-years-later-native-american-activist-reflects-on-rejecting-marlon-brandos-oscar/amp/
@f00l One wonders how much positive change might be effected if we were all as gracious, elegant and respectful as Littlefeather in our remarks.
@Pavlov
!
She was, in a tough moment, a class act. But classiness in public discourse is not the way of things among certain of TPTB, then or now.
I’m not familiar with the type of thing I’m seeing.