New candidate for sainthood - Dick Nixon!

[onager]

According to our old Opportun-Creationist buddy Ben Whine...er, Ben Stein, anyway.

Featured this week in the Discovery Channel documentary All The President's Men Revisited.

I almost skipped this show, thinking it would just be more self-congratulatory BS from Robert Redford et. al. But I was wrong - something Nixon never managed to say - and it was very well done.

When I saw Ben Stein on my TV, I literally couldn't believe the words coming out of his mouth. Granted, various experts estimate that Stein has not actually told the truth since he learned to talk. But this was way over the top.

About Nixon's resignation speech in 1974: "I think that's the most honest speech I've ever heard any politician give..."

Not even close. In that speech Nixon took not one bit of responsibility, and continued his spin that the whole Watergate thing was not really such a big deal.

But Ben was just getting warmed up...

"I don't think any President has been more wrongly persecuted than Richard Nixon..." (Google "Bill Clinton," Ben.)

And at that point, Ben actually started crying. On camera. Bueller...? Then came the money shot, er, quote:

"I just think he was a saint."

Really weird, since Stein is Jewish and the show featured some of Nixon's anti-Semitic rantings on his famous White House tapes. At one point Nixon bellows, "Get me the names of the Jews!"

You can watch the whole show at the link below, with lots of irritating Web-mercials. I'm sure the Discovery Channel will be showing it again, I think it just premiered recently.

At the end of the show James Carville made a good point. He said there was a lot of talk about Watergate "changing the whole climate in Washington," when it did no such thing. The climate is the same as it always was and always will be. Carville went on to say that a Watergate was bound to happen again, and about all we can do is hope we survive it next time.

http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/all-the-presidents-men-revisited

[Mr.Bill]

1. "Nixon was so crooked

he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning." - Hunter S. Thompson

[onager]

2. Yep. And from his fellow politicians...

Harry Truman: "Richard Nixon is a no good, lying bastard. He can lie out of both sides of his mouth at the same time, and if he ever caught himself telling the truth, he'd lie just to keep his hand in."

”I never liked Kennedy. I hated his father. Kennedy wasn’t so great a Senator…However, that no-good son-of-a-bitch Dick Nixon called me a Communist and I’ll do anything to beat him.”

John F. Kennedy: ”He’s a conservative…and if he became President, we could expect Republican policy would switch to the right…He is a filthy, lying son-of-a-bitch, and a very dangerous man.”

Lyndon B. Johnson: "I may not know much, but I know chicken shit from chicken salad…(Nixon is) like a Spanish horse, who runs faster than anyone for the first nine lengths and then turns around and runs backwards. You’ll see — he’ll do something wrong in the end. He always does.”

Jimmy Carter: “In two hundred years of history, he’s the most dishonest President we’ve ever had...I’m a long-time Nixon hater from way back. I lived in California when he ran against Helen Gahagan Douglas. It’s not in the nature of that man (to resign).”

[progressoid]

3. Add his ridiculous creation movie to this performance and you see a guy that has lost it

When he started crying I kind of felt he'd gone off the deep end. Err...well, the deeper end.

[BillStein]

4. I don't pay attention

to uncle ben anymore