Photo-poem
This latest satire from Richard Neville is a photo-poem. As ever, a picture speaks a thousand words.
I was born in the new year, but it is a time I celebrate less as a birthday (being now of a certain age) than as the day Britain gets to hear of all the official secrets hitherto suppressed under a "thirty year rule". In recent times, these revelations have increasingly connected on my own actual memories and are the more fascinating as a result. When secrets slip out ahead of this schedule it is usually a momentous event in itself.
Amerika's new darling is now the self-confessed Watergate whistle-blower. Known as "deep throat" (presumably influenced by the oral indulgences of Linda Lovelace in a contemporary movie of the same name), his revelation is now of minor consequence in itself but rather a timely reminder that the president of the united states can indeed be brought to account for the abuse of power if need be. Nixon's downfall was ultimately messing with his legitimate demomocratic opposition rather than war in Vietman or other major issues.
Had Nixon had the foresight to abuse his position further by engineering a climate of fear amongst the populace, he might have managed to escape accountability - his "high crimes" could have been re-packaged under the auspices of strong leadership and the detail of the facts obscured by the "needs" of national security. Fortunately, in the 1970s, things didn't happen that way.
So history has become a new bit of fun for the media and a generation of old men congegrate around the airwaves like flies - all desparate to reminisce on matters barely remembered in today's world. The real sadness in all this self-indulgance is that none of the protagonists have seen fit to draw parallels between the events of their own heyday and those we face now.
Bush and Rumsfeld must be laughing at the culpability of their predecessors.
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