Nixon - 1995 Oliver Stone Film

[Ron Bulman]

Nixon and LBJ were the lowest scumbags on your short modern list.  Though GHWB is right up there with them.  jmho.

[David G. Healy]

here's the shorthand: America always get's what it WANTS and WHO it wants, majority rules.

We get what we vote for.

If you take seriously the human condition, they're all crooks, same for the electorate, not a savior amongst them.

We get what we vote for, majority rules.

That very thing the GOP is trying to eliminate these days, majority rule.

Your not going to rehabilitate Nixon's performance, nor any of the other presidential performances. We got what we wanted. 

Whether we understood that at the time is the other side of the story...

Edited March 8, 2021 by David G. Healy

[Guest]

7 hours ago, David G. Healy said:

here's the shorthand: America always get's what it WANTS and WHO it wants, majority rules.

We get what we vote for.

If you take seriously the human condition, they're all crooks, same for the electorate, not a savior amongst them.

We get what we vote for, majority rules.

That very thing the GOP is trying to eliminate these days, majority rule.

Your not going to rehabilitate Nixon's performance, nor any of the other presidential performances. We got what we wanted. 

Whether we understood that at the time is the other side of the story...

I think the trouble is, the choice is between Pepsi & Coke, everyone votes for one or the other, thinking the outcome will be vasty different, based on pre-election promises. When promises aren't delivered its blamed on being stifled by the opposition party and the president only being one man. It's theatre. 

[Guest]

13 hours ago, Douglas Caddy said:

Nixon was set up in Watergate. He was a patsy just like Oswald was. One day he will be rehabilitated in history when events and actions will be revealed that for national and international security reasons he could not disclose publicly. He carried this immense burden to his grave.

It certainly seems that way (re: Watergate being a setup). 

Edited March 8, 2021 by Chris Barnard

[Andrew Prutsok]

14 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

The original version of The Manchurian Candidate was really ahead of its time.  Especially when you consider that it  was made before the JFK assassination.

Condon must have had ties to intel to come up with that concept that early.  Way before the Church Committee.

That film has that famous scene, of the 360 degree pan where the scene changes.  And Frankenheimer says that was not done with photography, the set was all rearranged in real time.   If that is true, wow.

Plus you had Angela Lansbury in what was her signature role.  First rate.

 

PS Jamey, yes that is all true.  In fact, RFK was staying at Frankenheimer's house when he was killed.

 

And she was only 4 years older than Harvey and played his mother.

[Dennis Berube]

13 hours ago, Douglas Caddy said:

One day he will be rehabilitated in history when events and actions will be revealed that for national and international security reasons he could not disclose publicly. He carried this immense burden to his grave.

Good lord. So the aliens brought down JFK and Nixon now? We can thank the good whistleblower Hunt for enlightenment once again. 

[James DiEugenio]

Nixon will never recover his reputation now with the tapes out.

As Pat Speer and others have shown, the deal Nixon got in 1973 was pretty much the deal he could have had in 1969.  There was very little difference, and nothing substantial.

So what was all that about for four years then?  Well, its revealed in The Haldeman Diaries, Nixon was not going to be the first president to lose a war.

Therefore, he and Kissinger put on this smoke and mirrors show for those four years. And what they did was delay what they knew was going to happen anyway: Saigon would collapse without American troops there.  In other words, LBJ and Nixon caused the deaths of about 6 million people in putting off what Kennedy was going to do in 1965. 

I won't even talk about East Pakistan and the Blood Telegram.

Edited March 9, 2021 by James DiEugenio

[Joseph McBride]

The U.S. lost the Korean War too, according to no less an authority than

Lt. Gen. Lewis (Chesty) Puller, USMC, the most decorated Marine

in American history, who won his fifth Navy

Cross in Korea for commanding the rear of the First

Marine Division in the epic retreat from the Choisin Reservoir. In my book SEARCHING FOR JOHN FORD,

I quote Puller's comment when he heard the situation in Korea described as a stalemate

with the forces of Communist China: "Stalemate, hell! We've lost the first

war in our history, and it's time someone told the American people

the truth about it. The Reds whipped the devil out of us, pure and simple."

 

[James DiEugenio]

That's a great one Joe.

Never heard it expressed like that before.

So much for American Exceptionalism.

[Denny Zartman]

I was a bit of a Richard Nixon buff a few years back. I read a few biographies including the multi-volume one, and a few of his books. I visited the Nixon museum out in California a couple of times too.

It is a great film, weaving together many themes and threads in a complex narrative. I'll have to give it a watch.

It seems to me that Nixon's aides didn't always tell him the full story of what was going on with Watergate; sometimes to protect him (to give him plausible deniability) and sometimes to protect themselves. So, Nixon made a lot of bad decisions early on based on incomplete information. The discussions about what to do about Watergate got circular and increasingly confused. They would discuss what really happened in a particular incident, and then they would discuss what would be a believable lie to cover up what happened in that incident. Well, as time went on, it became harder for them to distinguish between the facts and the cover stories they had concocted. Often within one conversation they would have to go back and forth trying to clarify if they were talking about facts or the cover story used to obscure the facts. So, it was like sinking in quicksand.

It always gets me that Haldeman and Ehrlichman were mad at Nixon when he finally let them go, when they of all people should have realized that if Nixon had cut them loose right at the beginning, he very well might have survived. Nixon chose to side with the people who he thought were showing him loyalty and were doing all these things ultimately on his behalf. But he sided with them over siding with truth and with lawfulness. And when Nixon did eventually fire them, he definitely did not want to do it.

[Guest]

21 minutes ago, Denny Zartman said:

I was a bit of a Richard Nixon buff a few years back. I read a few biographies including the multi-volume one, and a few of his books. I visited the Nixon museum out in California a couple of times too.

It is a great film, weaving together many themes and threads in a complex narrative. I'll have to give it a watch.

It seems to me that Nixon's aides didn't always tell him the full story of what was going on with Watergate; sometimes to protect him (to give him plausible deniability) and sometimes to protect themselves. So, Nixon made a lot of bad decisions early on based on incomplete information. The discussions about what to do about Watergate got circular and increasingly confused. They would discuss what really happened in a particular incident, and then they would discuss what would be a believable lie to cover up what happened in that incident. Well, as time went on, it became harder for them to distinguish between the facts and the cover stories they had concocted. Often within one conversation they would have to go back and forth trying to clarify if they were talking about facts or the cover story used to obscure the facts. So, it was like sinking in quicksand.

It always gets me that Haldeman and Ehrlichman were mad at Nixon when he finally let them go, when they of all people should have realized that if Nixon had cut them loose right at the beginning, he very well might have survived. Nixon chose to side with the people who he thought were showing him loyalty and were doing all these things ultimately on his behalf. But he sided with them over siding with truth and with lawfulness. And when Nixon did eventually fire them, he definitely did not want to do it.

You could make that same argument about JFK's decision making too. He was reliant on CIA and Military Intelligence. The whole structure seemed to make it easy for a POTUS to be misled or manipulated, especially on foreign affairs. He seemed a very alone figure in bits of that movie (Nixon). 

[Matt Allison]

Nixon was his own worst enemy, not a victim. His bigotry, paranoia and lack of empathy are what doomed him.

[Calvin Ye]

9 hours ago, Matt Allison said:

Nixon was his own worst enemy, not a victim. His bigotry, paranoia and lack of empathy are what doomed him.

Nixon was  also racist and too pro-business

[Joseph McBride]

THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE was released on October 24, 1962, the Wednesday of

the Cuban Missile Crisis -- the country was, to say the least, distracted. October 27

was the climax, the night McNamara went to sleep thinking he might not wake the next morning.

[James DiEugenio]

What a good film, I think we discussed it already.

That and Frankenheimer's adaptation of The Iceman Cometh are his two best.

The Manchurian Candidate and The Parallax View are in their own class in the category of adapted American political thriller novels.

The remake of The Manchurian Candidate was a thundering disappointment.