Even by his standards, this is pretty stunning:
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.
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."
"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."
Comment