Old video...Nixon's piano...on Jack Paar show

[madfloridian]

Run time: 02:52 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCsGSMze_6Q   Posted on YouTube: August 20, 2006 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: August 11, 2007 By DU Member: madfloridian Views on DU: 1717

 
The DNC blog has this up as part of the series of archived political moments.

Trouble is when I see the words "Nixon" and "piano" together...I think of some segments from a book which I never read.... NIXON'S PIANO: PRESIDENTS AND RACIAL POLITICS FROM WASHINGTON TO CLINTON

This is from a review by CJR:

http://backissues.cjrarchives.org/year/96/4/books-nixon.asp

"Absolutely determined that a good time would be had by all, and equally determined to bring down the house, Richard Nixon appeared as the final act at the Gridiron Club's annual spring dinner. The curtain pulled back to reveal the president and Vice President Spiro Agnew seated at two modest black pianos (Dwight Chapin at the White House had requested grand pianos or at least baby grands but the Statler Hilton could only manage uprights). This was the first time a chief executive had appeared on the Gridiron stage, and Nixon opened by asking:"What about this 'southern strategy (of reaching white voters at blacks' expense') we hear so often?" "Yes suh, Mr. President," Agnew replied, "Ah agree with you completely on yoah southern strategy." The dialect, as Roger Wilkins observed, got the biggest boffo.

After more banter with the "darky" Agnew, Nixon opened the piano duet with Franklin Roosevelt's favorite song ("Home on the Range"), then Harry Truman's ("Missouri Waltz"), then Lyndon Johnson's ("The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You"). Agnew drowned him out a few bars into each with a manic "Dixie" on his piano, and the Gridiron crew got louder and louder. "The crowd ate it up," Wilkins observed. "They roared."

Someone talked about Nixon's Southern Strategy in 2003, but it did not get much attention.

http://blackcommentator.com/68/68_cover_dean.html

In 1968, Richard Nixon won the White House. He did it in a shameful way – by dividing Americans against one another, stirring up racial prejudices and bringing out the worst in people.

They called it the "Southern Strategy," and the Republicans have been using it ever since. Nixon pioneered it, and Ronald Reagan perfected it, using phrases like "racial quotas" and "welfare queens" to convince white Americans that minorities were to blame for all of America's problems.

The Republican Party would never win elections if they came out and said their core agenda was about selling America piece by piece to their campaign contributors and making sure that wealth and power is concentrated in the hands of a few.

To distract people from their real agenda, they run elections based on race, dividing us, instead of uniting us.

[MADem]

1. I haven't seen that footage in years. It's fascinating, still, to see the guy before he went over

completely to the dark side! Before the bitterness took over! Before all shreds of his conscience were obliterated!

What I find interesting about your discussion of the Southern Strategy is that when Nixon was President of the Senate (VP under Ike) he was actually part of a cadre that was trying to get some meaningful legislation through Congress with regard to southern voting rights, but he was stymied by Dick Russell's group of future Republicans, the Southern At-the-Time Democrats. The legislation was watered down terribly to the point that it was almost useless (and it would have failed ENTIRELY had it not been for LBJ, ironically). The only thing it DID do was put a crack in the dam--once you get one bit of legislation through, it's easier for others to follow.

Funny how the guy who was on the side of voting rights (back when southern Blacks voted GOP, of course) could wander down the road a ways, and without any qualms, flip sides and play the hatred-hardball game. What thought processes allow that kind of shift?

[jgraz]

2. Funny how even then he was hooked by a tape recording

I just about choked when Paar started talking about Pat Nixon's "covert" taping of her husband's piano playing.