Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Nixon: "Gays caused downfall of British empire"

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    Nixon: "Gays caused downfall of British empire"

    Even by his standards, this is pretty stunning:
    Nixon loves this subject. He is nearly unstoppable on it. His top aides H.R. "Bob" Haldeman and John Ehrlichman are in the room, but they barely speak beyond monosyllabic sycophancies. It takes the president a while to get to the point, which begins with his review of a popular TV sitcom he has just watched, apparently for the first time:

    "Archie is sitting here with his hippie son-in-law, married to the screwball daughter. . . . The son-in-law apparently goes both ways."

    Nixon seems to have concluded, against all evidence, that Meathead is bisexual. Possibly it is the length of his hair. Another character in the show, Nixon reports, is "obviously queer. He wears an ascot, and so forth."

    The president is outraged that this filth should appear on TV:

    "The point that I make is that, goddamn it, I do not think that you glorify on public television homosexuality. You don't glorify it, John, anymore than you glorify, uh, whores."

    The president asserts that America is in jeopardy from this Archie Bunker gay thing:

    "I don't want to see this country to go that way. You know what happened to the Greeks. Homosexuality destroyed them. Sure, Aristotle was a homo, we all know that, so was Socrates."

    Ehrlichman interrupts to reassure his boss. Socrates, he says, "never had the influence that television had."

    Precisely, precisely. Nixon is on a roll, lecturing like a history professor:

    "Do you know what happened to the Romans? The last six Roman emperors were fags. . . . You know what happened to the popes? It's all right that popes were laying the nuns."

    Someone laughs nervously. Nixon bulls on, not a hint of humor in his voice.

    "That's been going on for years, centuries, but when the popes, when the Catholic Church went to hell in, I don't know, three or four centuries ago, it was homosexual. . . . Now, that's what happened to Britain, it happened earlier to France. And let's look at the strong societies. The Russians. Goddamn it, they root them out, they don't let 'em hang around at all. You know what I mean? I don't know what they do with them."

    "Dope? Do you think the Russians allow dope? Hell no. Not if they can catch it, they send them up. You see, homosexuality, dope, uh, immorality in general: These are the enemies of strong societies. That's why the Communists and the left-wingers are pushing it. They're trying to destroy us."
    Nixon fascinates me. He's a wretched melange of insecurity, paranoia, bigotry, megalomania and cunning, someone who oozes shiftiness and deceit from his very pores, and yet he managed to be elected twice in country obsessed with "image" and "character" in its leaders.

    #2
    Nixon: "Gays caused downfall of British empire"

    I remember when the Nixon tapes were released a few years back and you're right, they're ghoulishly fascinating and you're not quite sure whether to laugh or despair that the President of the US was no more coherent than a ranting drunken redneck. The other thing that fascinates me - why did these informal chats get taped in the first place? It's like celebrities filming themselves having illicit sex and then being amazed when copies turn up on the internet. What are they thinking of? Are we going to be rewarded in 30 years with recordings of Cheney and Bush in the Oval Office?

    Cheney: George, we've got to destroy the goddam motherfuckers, bomb them back to the fucking Stone Age and then grab the oil.

    Bush: Er, Dick, can you move away from the TV? It's the Rangers against the Mets.

    Comment


      #3
      Nixon: "Gays caused downfall of British empire"

      Among the many ironies of that lunacy is that he got it almost completely backwards. The cultures he cites as "weak" were/are actually very resilient whereas the Soviet Union was rotting from the inside as he spoke.

      So perhaps widespread homosexuality is the key to a society's longevity.

      Comment


        #4
        Nixon: "Gays caused downfall of British empire"

        Ginger Yellow wrote:
        "He wears an ascot"
        Que?

        Comment


          #5
          Nixon: "Gays caused downfall of British empire"

          An ascot tie. Sort of half-way between a tie and a cravat, as worn with morning dress - as if that wasn't ostentatious enough.

          Comment


            #6
            Nixon: "Gays caused downfall of British empire"

            What really caused the downfall of the British Empire was the increase in coffee consumption, and the lack of people willing to queue in an orderly fashion. Fact.

            Comment


              #7
              Nixon: "Gays caused downfall of British empire"



              Aroooo!

              Comment

              Working...
              X