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Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Nixon on Archie Bunker, 'Homos' and Hippies

There's a massive new book co-piloted by Doug Brinkley with excerpts from some of the Nixon White House tapes, and John Dean has a new Watergate book based on the tapes.  And there was another Nixon Tapes doc on HBO last night.  Last year it was Our Nixon.   It's based on recently released home movies shot during his White House years by top aides Haldeman, Ehrlichman and Chapin--before all three resigned and went to (country club) prison, that is.  The film includes snippets of dialogue from the Nixon tapes, and a highlight is the president, Haldeman and Ehrlichman discussing an episode of the new show "All in the Family."  Nixon had just stumbled on it, searching for a baseball game, and was shocked by its glorification of "queers," and the "hippie-son-in-law," over the "hardhat" Archie.

And: Just imagine what damage Aristotle could have wrought if he had had access to TV.   Nixon:  "Do you know what happened to the Romans? The last six Roman emperors were fags. The last six. Nero had a public wedding to a boy. Yeah."  And:  "You know what happened to the Popes? It's all right that, Popes were laying the nuns, that's been going on for years, centuries."

Here's the full conversation below.  Transcript here.  My well-known Nixon book here.

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