Tricky Dick and Ruthless Rupert

7/23/2011

H/T to a well read reader who sent this article my way (I cannot take credit for having perused Justia).

John Dean of "there's a cancer growing on the presidency" fame has written this fine assessment and analysis of the Murdoch hacker scandal and its relationship to Watergate.

Dean is also on the speaker circuit these days and only last year addressed the high school students at my son's school. I regret that I didn't take time off to hear him speak.

Dean had a front row seat to history (as did Mo, with that hair) and hence, is poised to address political scandals of all sorts.

Click anywhere on Richard Milhous Nixon to read "Rupert Murdoch's Watergate: The Troubling Parallels."

11 Comments

Viola-Alex

7/23/2011 06:41:58 am

Ah, isn't it just the pot calling the kettle black? How clever of Mr. Dean -- an affluent Beverly Hills investment banker who kindly donates time helping others sort out the dizzying events of Watergate -- to position himself as an arbiter of justice.

Several books have been written about him, naming him as one of the many and most powerful cancers in the Nixon White House. The one who knew just when to jump the fence and point his finger back. We may never know the truth, particularly because we are Americans and we so want to believe that redemption makes a man new.

Did getting rid of Nixon change anything really? Will getting rid of Murdoch change anything really?

The vaccuum created by the public's collective idiocy will always suck another money-motivated opportunist into power. Anybody for William Randolph Hearst?

But we simple people just love to watch the big men (and women!) fall. And we love to find our heroes in once fallen men who take advantage of their second chance.

Be careful who you listen to. What is this man's motive for "helping" us to see the truth about Murdoch?

Laura Novak

7/23/2011 06:54:21 am

V-A, I guess it's the same sort of thing where RMN became a "statesman" and was remembered by some for his intelligence and skill at being able to see the world in a broader perspective than was typical at the time. Not defending Dean, who was quite the whippersnapper and heady on the power of being so young and so close to the presidency, but just sayin'. I suppose when they all reinvent themselves and dive into the third act, anything has to be better than becoming the born again minister in prison (Liddy was it?) For what it's worth, Dick is one of my all time favorite movies.

FrostyAK

7/23/2011 07:40:33 am

Everyone has a past they may or may not be proud of.

Why is it that we humans need to kill the messenger rather than take the message for what it's worth? Dean may indeed have been and still be a very sleazy character. Is this message comparing Murdoch to Watergate very far off the mark?

Bobcat Logic

7/23/2011 10:14:06 am

John Dean was indeed one of the bad guys during early Watergate but he had the cunning/scruples to turn on his co-conspirators -- which was a very good thing for the country.

He has since done a great deal of public service (IMO) by speaking out against the conservative ethical/criminal problems on Keith Olbermann's Countdown and elsewhere. He is the author of a book called "Conservatives without Conscience" and another "Worse than Watergate" about the Bush administration, neither of which, I admit, to having read, but I should.

Dean may be personally loathsome, I don't know. But he is very, very bright, and explains complicated scenarios and legal situations to lay audiences well. I always feel that he has said something important whenever I hear him speak. During Watergate, I found his testimony riveting and clear.

I expect Dean will be one of the best sources of coherent information as the Murdoch scandal continues to escalate (and it will).

I suspect, as does Dean, that Murdoch has a GREAT deal more to answer for than phone hacking!

I expect we'll also eventually learn that Palin is involved in Murdoch's evil-doing, as well as Saudi jihadists, Dominionists, and other important other threats to the US.

V ictoria link

7/23/2011 02:29:26 pm

Charles Colson is the born-again Christian. Liddy is a right-wing radio personality (who used to admire Hitler).

The parallels between Murdoch and Nixon are interesting. However, I don't know if it will be enough to topple the news empires. Perhaps in the UK - but in the US? I'm amazed that anyone watches tthe news when so many of them are little better than squawking parrots. Which is why I am not so sure that the Murdoch empire will collapse. The other side is not as strong as it should be.

Which is where people like you come in, Laura!

jeff

7/23/2011 06:53:02 pm

Laura,

It was Chuck Colson who found religion in the pokey. Liddy learned to steal hubcaps and hawk worthless investments like overpriced gold coins to low-info folks. The "Company" always take good care of their guys if they can salvage them, and Liddy was too stupid to do anything other than carry the water for the spook agency.

Given Ailes connection to the GOP, it's hard to know if he's benefited directly from the clandestine wing of the Party, because there's a schism there between some of the behind-the-scenes powers and the GOP hierarchy.

At some point over the years, I became convinced that Bush41 was helping Nixon's enemies that were hurt by all of the EPA legislation, Clean Water Act, etc. But I digress.

I remember going to one of those propaganda "movies" that featured Colson and his transformation at one of the huge, charismatic Assembly of God churches in high school.

I had asked the wrong gal to the Prom after my steady and I called it quits, and her parents used discussion of that "movie" as a body check to determine if my intentions for their daughter were in accordance with their principles of chastity. They gave me the creeps. I had done that dance many times, but I remember thinking "What will they say if I tell them that I just wanted to see Patti Jo naked?" just so I wouldn't be bothered with their judgmental scrutiny. Things went well despite the absence of camping tents and wine coolers.

At that time, I was still pretty involved with the Southern Baptist Church that I grew up in, but even then, I remember thinking that Colson was a bit of an opportunist. This was in Spring of 1979, around the time that Reagan was starting his stump speeches before he had actually declared for the GOP nomination.

Although I was living within the hotbed of the Southern Strategy taking hold in the Deep South, I was still oblivious to the power of the movement. But I was a bit of a political junkie, and I remember thinking that George H W Bush (or just Bush, at that time) was the "inside guy" for the GOP because he had been the CIA director and Reagan had no chance. Of course, Carter was going to lose bc of the Iranian hostage crisis and high inflation, gas fuel shortages, and depressed economic conditions.

In late summer of '79, I was at the Neshoba County Fair in Philadelphia, MS when Reagan barnstormed through and announced his candidacy. The rest is history.

Unfortunately, no one has paid much attention to the lessons of the failure of what was referred to dervsively as "Reaganomics", "trickle-down" economics, or as the term my favorite candidate at the time, Bush I, referred to as Reagan's economic platform, "Voo Doo Economics". Bush41 was right but try convincing the TeaBaghadists of today. That's why those dominionists want to change the history textbooks so they can change the FACTS of history.

I'll yield the floor to Floyd Orr if he comes by since he tells the story much better.

Jeff

P.S. NIXONLAND is one of the best political books I've ever read in my life, and it is like a handbook for what's happened politically in the US beginning with early Cold-War Politics.

Check it out AFTER you've read Laura's Finding Clarity. ;@)

Lidia17

7/23/2011 09:43:52 pm

@Laura, Chuck Colson was the Born-Again®™.

Liddy is the nutcase who has had a radio show and appeared on FOX a great deal… the one who held his palm over an open flame so often (to demonstrate his "WILL") that he damaged the tendons in his hand… the one who encouraged the shooting of federal agents in the head.

curiouser

7/24/2011 03:12:39 am

Thank you Laura and 'well-read reader'!

Perhaps understanding how Dean's insights apply to the Palin scandals would help alleviate some of our frustration with the 'spiral of silence'.

"Scandals, it seems, must reach a critical mass before they enter Professor Thompson’s next phase, where the transgressions become important to the general public. During phase one of the News Corp. scandal, most news organization were merely dismissing The Guardian and The New York Times stories as the work of Murdoch’s competitors—which of course, these newspapers are, in the UK and USA respectively." <snip>
"But the point that was missed was that the stories themselves were accurate, and what they reported was deeply troubling."

What could be Palin's 'Milly Dowler' that would take her scandals to the level of 'scandal proper'?

*****

A side note: John Dean used Bob Altemeyer's (University of Manitoba) studies on authoritarianism as a resource for "Conservatives Without Conscience". Later, he convinced Altemeyer to put his academic research into a form that could be easily understood. Voila! "The Authoritarians" and the "Postscript on the 2008 Elections" are available as free pdf downloads for those who haven't already read them.

http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

Laura Novak link

7/24/2011 03:43:12 am

Thanks, Curiouser, what a great link - how cool of you to know of it.

Yes, Coulson. I knew that but forgot that I once knew it. Also seemed to recall that Liddy had a real creep factor to him (get it, CREEP)!

It would seem that Palin has had plenty of Dowler incidents, but apparently not enough to move it to the level of crisis. Alaskan bloggers thought that would be the case with Troopergate, but apparently not.

And for what it's worth: Dean now is and looks like an old man. I would never have recognized him in person had I not known that was he who had come to speak at the school.

The comments on Justia seem evenly split between those who appreciate his historical and personal application to this situation, and those who recall the man as another crook in a sea of crooks. Someone who saved his own ass and then turned tail.

Ottoline

7/24/2011 06:14:51 am

Thanks for the Dean article. To those of you who are shooting the messenger: would you prefer that Dean had NOT squealed on his pals at Watergate? And had NOT written this right-on piece? Geez: it's not a perfect world.

The Dowler effect is not happening re Palin because of the gag on MSM discussing it. I recall reading that old Joe Kennedy paid lots of money re keeping JFk's infidelity stories out of the MSM -- he had an intuitive understanding of these stages of scandal and succeeded (with help from the culture of those times) in keeping that subject in the pre-scandal phase.

And so many other fat cats have a lot to lose if the Pain Hoax revelation moves past its current pre-scandal phase.

The really long comment (x-news employee) explains how the gag order works plenty well enough IMO.

Ottoline

7/24/2011 03:11:18 pm

Did Rockwell REALLY do that portrait of Nixon? He looks like a movie star! Not at all the sweaty weasel-like Nixon I remember.

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Tricky Dick and Ruthless Rupert

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