Sunday
Ugh. Awake this morning to a blizzard of radio news reports about the 40th anniversary of Watergate. Predictably, my old pal and next door neighbor, Carl Bernstein, and his partner, Bob Woodward, are talking about "new discoveries" about Nixon. These, says Carl and Bob, show that the Nixon White House was "basically a criminal enterprise" or some similar nonsense.
Of course, this all comes under the heading of what I would call "journalistic realism." Poaching on the genius idea of "legal realism" -- created at my alma mater, Yale Law School -- journalistic realism says that journalists will write, report, analyze in whatever way suits their political tastes and likes and dislikes.
Carl, a great guy and an extremely talented musician, had good reason to hate Nixon. He got to act on it, and that action made him well heeled and famous. Now, forty years have passed and in the spirit of what Irving Kristol (I think) called "intellectual entrepreneurship," Carl has to polish up his résumé by making Watergate even more dramatic than it was. I don't blame Carl at all. We all have bills to pay.
What I really do love is that at the same time that Carl and Bob are attacking Nixon, the peacemaker, they are "warning" journalists and legislators not to jump all over Mr. Obama and Mr. Eric Holder for their leaks about national security matters, orchestrated to make Obama look tough on defense matters.
Read more: http://spectator.org/archives/2012/06/11/nixon-and-the-pharisees
Ugh. Awake this morning to a blizzard of radio news reports about the 40th anniversary of Watergate. Predictably, my old pal and next door neighbor, Carl Bernstein, and his partner, Bob Woodward, are talking about "new discoveries" about Nixon. These, says Carl and Bob, show that the Nixon White House was "basically a criminal enterprise" or some similar nonsense.
Of course, this all comes under the heading of what I would call "journalistic realism." Poaching on the genius idea of "legal realism" -- created at my alma mater, Yale Law School -- journalistic realism says that journalists will write, report, analyze in whatever way suits their political tastes and likes and dislikes.
Carl, a great guy and an extremely talented musician, had good reason to hate Nixon. He got to act on it, and that action made him well heeled and famous. Now, forty years have passed and in the spirit of what Irving Kristol (I think) called "intellectual entrepreneurship," Carl has to polish up his résumé by making Watergate even more dramatic than it was. I don't blame Carl at all. We all have bills to pay.
What I really do love is that at the same time that Carl and Bob are attacking Nixon, the peacemaker, they are "warning" journalists and legislators not to jump all over Mr. Obama and Mr. Eric Holder for their leaks about national security matters, orchestrated to make Obama look tough on defense matters.
Read more: http://spectator.org/archives/2012/06/11/nixon-and-the-pharisees
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