So Ron Howard, one of my favorite directors, is making one of the boldest and most corageous moves of his career: he is openly attacking a dead president that everyone already hates.
I am including a quote from former Nixon Attorney Ben Stein (Bueller?) from an article he wrote for The American Spectator in 2005, in which Mr. Stein reflects on why we hate Nixon so much.
Can anyone even remember now what Nixon did that was so terrible? He ended the war in Vietnam, brought home the POW’s, ended the war in the Mideast, opened relations with China, started the first nuclear weapons reduction treaty, saved Eretz Israel’s life, started the Environmental Protection Administration. Does anyone remember what he did that was bad?
Oh, now I remember. He lied. He was a politician who lied. How remarkable. He lied to protect his subordinates who were covering up a ridiculous burglary that no one to this date has any clue about its purpose. He lied so he could stay in office and keep his agenda of peace going. That was his crime. He was a peacemaker and he wanted to make a world where there was a generation of peace. And he succeeded.
That is his legacy. He was a peacemaker. He was a lying, conniving, covering up peacemaker. He was not a lying, conniving drug addict like JFK, a lying, conniving war starter like LBJ, a lying, conniving seducer like Clinton — a lying, conniving peacemaker. That is Nixon’s kharma.
So the next time you hear Nixon committed the worst crime in US History, get over yourself.
Tags: Nixon
December 8, 2008 at 1:23 am |
[...] Rob over at Leaning Right comments on Ron Howard’s Nixon fetish. Dude, it happened 35 years ago, and Clinton did far worse by actually getting impeached. Get over it! This entry was posted on Monday, December 8th, 2008 at 7:23 am and is filed under Articles, Directors, Politics. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site. [...]
December 8, 2008 at 1:39 am |
Someone’s been blogging with ClearEyes.
Wooow.
(meant strictly as a compliment.)
December 8, 2008 at 5:35 am |
Interesting post – and that quotation’s certainly got a lot of truth to it (I think I first read it when I was very bored and was researching the characters on The Wonder Years) – but you’re making the assumption that to have once, in a person’s past, taken drugs, automatically condemns them for life. It does not. I haven’t ever taken drugs and I hope I never do, but you can’t judge someone because of it.
And as for Clinton, well, he’s not a liberal anyway, so I couldn’t care less if he gets what’s coming to him – an explanation that he screwed up, big time. But he also did a lot of good, big time, if you will. The phrase ‘prosperous US economy’ comes to mind.
Also, you shouldn’t judge a political philosophy by its supposed leaders. And whilst you’re not necessarily intending to do so, it is something I think a lot of people do.
But JFK has to be, perhaps bar Lincoln and FDR, the greatest president in US history. Of course, this will probably have changed by the time President-elect Obama leaves office. And RFK would be on the list if he hadn’t been murdered.
December 8, 2008 at 5:37 am |
That, of course, is my 2 cents, and nothing more.
Which is perhaps irrelevant since I’m a Brit — maybe it’s my two pence (geez … that sounds snobby)
December 8, 2008 at 8:03 am |
Nixon’s real transgression is that he was a Republican. The stuff he was accused of is ameteurish compared to Slick Willie.