Tapes Reveal Nixon’s View of Abortion
That’s the New York Times headline for the article about the latest batch of released tapes from the Nixon White House. The tact is all on the part of the Times, not Nixon.
Nixon:
“There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white.”
Beautiful. He said stuff about Jews too:
“It may be they have a death wish. You know that’s been the problem with our Jewish friends for centuries.”
That’s in the article’s next-to-last paragraph. Context: Billy Graham had been saying that the Jews were chapping his butt about what the NYT calls “efforts to promote evangelical Christianity.”
In other revelations, a National Security Council brief discussed Israel’s secret nuclear program, and Nixon aides said Reagan was really happy about Nixon’s firing of the fellow who was looking into Watergate. Good old Reagan.
UPDATE: The headline The New Republic used: “Nixon: Abort Interracial Babies.”
UPDATE 2: I’m listening to the tape (available here) while I type changes into my Alan Moore column. A lot of murk and buzzing, but phrases surface here and there: “a black and a white” and “Stick it to the goddamn Left.” Horribly, it’s such a pleasure to hear his voice again. I guess that’s the power of nostalgia.
UPDATE 3: It turns out there are good Jews and bad Jews. The bad kind put out pornography and are known as the “Synagogue of Satan” (also the name of a biker gang — it gives Hebrew lessons in the afternoon, after regular school). The good kind are “God’s Timepiece” (also the title of a book that attempts to reconcile young Christians to the existence of earth’s fossil record).
I missed all that, but it’s what Billy Graham had to say when he and the President were talking. He was responding to this thought voiced by Nixon:
… this anti-Semitism is [???] strongly than we think, you know. It’s unfortunate, but this has happened to the Jews, it happened in Spain, it happened in Germany, it’s happening—now it’s going to happen in America if these people don’t start behaving.
Start behaving, you people. (Via Atrios at A Tiny Revolution.)