Tricky Dick

(Don't worry, this isn't another post about my dick. In fact, that's the only time in this post that I'll say those words together.)

There isn't a President of the United States that people love to hate more than Richard Milhous Nixon.

First of all, he's an ugly cuss, so that makes tearing him up a lot easier, and I can respect that on some basic level. We respond to peoples' physical traits a lot more than we might like to admit. If Adolf Hitler looked like Leonardo DiCaprio, my family tree might never have gotten planted.

I wouldn't dare go on record claiming that Richard Nixon didn't do shitty things-- he did, and I think most of us can agree on that. He did some very shitty things, at a very shitty time in our country's history.

We should all probably hate the thoroughly corrupt and endlessly contemptible Warren G. Harding just as much, if not more, than we hate Richard Nixon, but we don't. Presumably, this is because Warren Harding did shitty things a long time ago, and, let's face it, he was more handsome than Richard Nixon, so it's kind of harder to hate him.

See? Pretty-like.

Don't you want him to be your grammpaw?

In spite of his immaculate suit, thoughtful demeanor and his distinguished eyebrows, you've got to admit that he does look infinitely capable of some seriously dirty deeds, no?

Every now and then, new Oval Office audio tapes are released from the Nixon era that reignite the nation's obsession with getting a serious hate-on for Dick Nix. On Friday, they released tapes of Nixon going off about blacks and Jews. If you don't know by now that Richard Nixon was a happily profane bigot, then you need to go back to 7th grade, immediately. If you're already in 7th grade, I feel a little wrong about your reading this blog. Stop it.

Here's a few of the choice items from the new tapes about Jews:

* “The Jews are just a very aggressive and abrasive and obnoxious personality.”

* “I don’t want any Jew at that dinner [with then-Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir] who didn’t support us in that campaign. Is that clear? No Jew who did not support us.”

* “Most Jewish people are insecure. And that’s why they have to prove things.”

Nixon also implied that most Jews avoided the draft in Vietnam.

* “I didn’t notice many Jewish names coming back from Vietnam on any of those lists; I don’t know how the hell they avoid it. If you look at the Canadian-Swedish contingent, they were very disproportionately Jewish. The deserters.”

There wasn't much about African-Americans that was especially juicy on these latest tapes-- there's been good (well, bad) stuff before. This time, he stated that he thought blacks could improve and strengthen our country "in terms of 500 years. I think it’s wrong if you’re talking in terms of 50 years. What has to happen is they have be, frankly, inbred. And, you just, that’s the only thing that’s going to do it."

Nice, yeah?

Oh, and it sure doesn't help that he looked like this:

"One of these days, Alice... straight TO THE MOON!"

Anyway, as an insecure Jew who is the son of an aggressive, abrasive, obnoxious Jew, I just want to say that, Dick, I don't hate you. You were human. You were mortal. You were an ignorant, ill-informed, uncultured yabbo from the dusty shitstorms of Yorba Linda, California and your mother was whacked out and you lost your brother early on in life and your power went to your head and, brother, you were one fucked up cookie.

And it's okay. Because I'd be willing to bet that, if there were cameras and bugs on every one of us, we'd all hear ourselves and our loved ones say stuff that would turn our skin green and curl our toenails.

I know WikiLeaks sounds like big news now, but nothing ever changes. Nothing is new. We're all quite awful sometimes. The only thing that saves us is that, usually, nobody's listening.