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The New York Times, R.W. Apple Jnr.
Like Haynes Johnson at the Post
and Hunter S. Thompson, R.W. Apple is a veteran reporter
of Richard Nixon. Like Johnson, Apple is a university-educated historian
who, as a journalist, covered the civil rights struggle in the South in
the 1960s, and "has known and interviewed every President since Lyndon
B. Johnson." [1]
But unlike Haynes Johnson, Apple's obituary for Richard
Nixon is remarkably sympathetic. For Apple, Watergate
is only "a spot that would not out" and
Nixon himself "never completely dispelled
the sense of shame that clung to his last days in the White House."
Missing from this description is Johnson's argument that Watergate was
not simply a single 'spot' but what "began
with Watergate ... spread to other areas. Eventually it encompassed a series
of acts, either criminal or unethical: surveillance operations, bugging
teams, surreptitious entries, 'deep sixing' of evidence, obstruction of
justice, perjury, blackmail, hush money, enemies' lists, fabricated polls,
doctored documents, falsification of presidential records, using the FBI,
the CIA, the IRS, and the Justice Department for political purposes, the
Pentagon spying on the White House, the White House spying on itself."
Indeed, in his sterilised obituary of Richard Nixon's
life, Apple launches a veiled attack on Democrats and critics of Nixon.
On Watergate, Apple adopts Nixon's own excuse that the political espionage
of that era 'didn't begin with Watergate', but "earlier
deceptions about Vietnam under previous Administrations of both parties."
Additonally, according to Apple, Nixon "wrought
foreign policy accomplishments of historic proportions that had proved
beyond the reach of his Democratic foes." Apple even dismisses the
early anti-communist paranoia whipped up by Nixon to secure congressional
and senate victories, as well as Nixon's subsequent
defeats, by quoting Nixon himself: "Without
risks you will suffer no defeats. But without defeats you will win no victories."
Ignoring the role Nixon played in the
escalation of the Vietnam war, Apple describes Henry
Kissinger as "a partner in so many of
Mr Nixon's proudest foreign policy achievements". Overall, in the way
Apple presents Nixon's life as a series of triumphs over adversity - "he
had an extraordinary resilience" - he is contributing to the mythology
of Nixon as a "Great Man" of history, ignoring the uncertain defeats and
setbacks Nixon also endured for much of his life.
[1] http://www.harrywalker.com/speakers
http://www.unc.edu/news/newsserv/univ/apr01/apple040401.htm
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