Nixon in Hell:
Down in Hell, Richard Milhous Nixon is wincing. This time it's not from the searingly hot pitchfork used to shove reel after reel of audio tape into his asshole. He's gotten used to that pain. It's not from the constant pull of dead Cambodians and North Vietnamese on his flesh, ripping pieces of it off, only to grow back again, only to be ripped off again; such are the cycles of eternal damnation. No, Nixon is wincing because he always knew it would be a Jew who fucked him.

Nixon always suspected that W. Mark Felt, the second in command at the FBI, was "Deep Throat." When it was all starting to fall apart, Nixon stated so outright, according to one of those many tapes. And when Haldeman told Nixon that Felt was Jewish, the ol' anti-Semite-in-chief said, "Christ. [The bureau] put a Jew in there?... It could be the Jewish thing. I don't know. It's always a possibility."

As much as it pains him to see Felt lionized by so many on the enemies list, including the list in Hell he writes on the cave walls in his own bloody shit, it pleases Nixon to know that his living minions have been out in force. On Scarborough Country and every other goddamn MSNBC show last night, Pat Buchanan couldn't try to disgrace Felt fast enough: "Here's a man who has been entrusted with a high honor, deputy chief of the FBI, sneaking around at night, handing out materials he got from a legitimate investigation to The Washington Post, Nixon's enemy, in the middle of a campaign. And we find out from Bob Woodward that he is unhappy because he was passed over for director." Yes, Joe Scarborough egged on Buchanan in Buchanan's vicious anger over Nixon hatred, telling the former Nixon speechwriter that the left wanted to get back at Nixon for Alger Hiss. Buchanan agreed as eagerly as a retarded child at a pudding bar.

Nixon is pleased. Buchanan and Monica Crowley turned it around, blaming the press for the end of Nixon, that they covered up for other presidents while trying to destroy Nixon. Buchanan, so goddamned loyal that Nixon wishes he hadn't made Kissinger watch while he fucked Buchanan in the Oval Office all those times, says on Hardball that the Vietnam War was lost because of the people who went after Nixon: "The people who brought down -- Nixon was brought down by people who were a hell of a lot worse than he was." G. Gordon Liddy is everywhere, that fuckin' loyal nutcase, saying, essentially, that Felt is lying. And if it was Felt, "He is no hero. He is someone who behaved unethically," said Liddy.

The words will keep pouring out about Felt's motives back in the day - whether it was love of country or pissiness about being passed over for FBI Director after Hoover's death or fear that the FBI would become another arm of Nixon's treachery against his perceived enemies. Of course it's some combination of all of it. Who cares, you know? And, of course, the words will pour out over how important Felt's role was or was it just the glamorization of the book and film, All the President's Men, that Deep Throat became such a focus of attention. Again, who cares? Who cares if Felt's coming out now for money? None of that matters except for our tabloid-craving culture in which the motives of the truthteller must impugn the truth (see Scott Ritter, Paul O'Neill, Joe Wilson, Sibel Edmonds, and Richard Clarke).

And many, many columnists and bloggers will ask, oh, how they will ask, why is there no Deep Throat now? But the point is this: there have been Deep Throats, men and women who have been willing to tell the truth. See Scott Ritter, Paul O'Neill, Joe Wilson, Sibel Edmonds, and Richard Clarke. There have been reporters sussing out the story. The problem is that no one cares. And no news organization has been willing to take the risks that the Post did, not even the Post.

Yes, yes, yes, Nixon knows that his contempt for the truth has become de rigeur for this White House, and he knows that if he had been born into wealth, like that cocksucking Kennedy, like those fucking Bushes, he would have gotten away with it. The apparatuses of cover-up would have been in place a long, long time before he ever stepped his shit-covered foot onto the Presidential Seal on the carpet in the Oval Office. And he knows, he knows, Christ, how he knows: that if the media had been then the way it is now, there's no fuckin' way two nobody reporters with anonymous sources and hippie hair would have been believed. Nixon is a media junkie since the TVs in Hell are always tuned to Fox "news." O'Reilly, Hannity, and the rest? They'd've sliced and diced Woodward and Bernstein until "traitor" was the only word that stuck.

Alas, though, none of that is for Nixon. He is in Hell, his calendar filled with manure baths and piss saunas and banquets of rotting flesh. And his crimes are but pallid antecedents to the crimes that are going on now, crimes for which no one will ever be punished.

Clarification: Felt actually claims no religious affiliation, according to the Vanity Fair article. But Nixon was a raging paranoid Jew-hater, and Haldeman did tell him Felt was Jewish.