Wallowing in Watergate:Deep Throat Revealed

So this past week was exciting with the revelation the that W. Mark Felt was the elusive Deep Throat source for Woodward's and Bernstein scathing revelations of the Nixon White House, wasn't it? And what a scoop Vanity Fair had. The great Post reporters who scooped every other news organizations in the early 70s with the Watergate stories had the rug pulled out from under them by Vanity Fair and Mark Felt.

I remember Watergate, OK I was 7 years old, but I still remember it. I remember thinking at first that it was a TV show that preempted all the cartoons and kids programs that I loved. My father watched the Watergate trials every day on TV, much to my frustration. Hey, cut me a break, I was 7, for crying out loud. My parents did try to explain to me that Watergate meant that the President had committed a crime and was trying to hide it by using the government to cover it up. As a result, I came to understand that Watergate had very serious implications and resulted in the resignation of our President. It wasn't until I was much older that I saw the movie All the President's Men and studied it in history class that I learned what the facts were in the Watergate case.

While I may have had difficulty really understanding the full implications of Watergate as a 7 year old child, Watergate, in combination with other events of the 60s and 70s, did drastically affect how I view American politics and especially the republican party. And recent news coverage of the Watergate break-in and subsequent trials have really brought that realization to the fore in my thoughts.

I grew up with the knowledge that the republicans in my youth were against the civil rights struggle and pro Jim Crow and pro racism, against anti-poverty initiatives and pro rich, against women having equality in the workforce and in the home and pro misogyny, basically against anything that ensured human dignity and equality for average people. And when they were not sure that they could win on their intolerant political platform, they relied on criminal activity, such as bugging the headquarters of their political opponents and using their positions in power to cover it up and intimidate anyone who would reveal the information, to get their own way. And as far as I can tell not much has changed, except that they have gotten better at fooling the American people. Whatever Mark Felt's intentions were, he was right to make sure the American people knew what Nixon was up to.

It was very disheartening for me to see Chris Matthews (again, Matthews) have the criminals, yes criminals, who were involved in the Watergate break-in come on his show and decry the activity of the man who saw to it that their behavior, criminal behavior, was revealed and that they went to jail. G. Gordon Liddy, E. Howard Hunt, John Mitchell, John Dean, Charles Colson, John D. Ehrlichman and H. R. Haldeman are all convicted felons. They all went to jail because Felt gave the Washington Post information that revealed their crimes to the world. To see them on TV defending their actions and diminishing the Washington Post (you know, the 'liberal' media) and Mark Felt makes me sick. These men broke the laws of this country and abused their positions of power in ways that makes being suck off by an intern in the oval office (heinous and repugnant as that was) pale by comparison. And Pat Buchanan is a liar who relies on jingoism and hyperbole to spread his bullshit. None of these people should be trusted to give an accurate account of what happened. And the fact that MSNBC, CNN and other networks have had many of them on TV decrying the media, Felt, Woodward, Bernstein and the Post is simply disgusting.

Make no mistake about it. When GWB and his administration go after Newsweek and CBS News as well as the New York Times and the Washington Post as the 'liberal' media they are trying to head off the type of scrutiny that the press can bring to an administration that is bereft of any moral character because they saw what happened to Nixon. We need that press to keep a check on absolute power. If Watergate has taught us anything, it is that in a democracy, we need to know what our government is doing. And we should be wary of a government that is afraid of the press because they may very well have something to hide.