Ben Stein was a speechwriter for Richard Nixon so we shouldn't be too surprised when he jumps forward to continue to spin for him when he's in his grave... but the assertions made by old Ben in the American Spectator are nothing short of Orwellian. The emergence of W. Mark Felt as the mysterious Deep Throat, during the era of the 24 hour news cycle, has shifted the paleo-cons into high gear spin mode. Buchanan, Liddy, Colson and now Stein are making the rounds trying to reframe Watergate and the history of the 20th century. Read all about it after the jump...
Benny starts out by throwing out a red herring, the idea that Felt was somehow violating anything by shortcircuiting the corruption of the Nixon administration.
Re: The "news" that former FBI agent Mark Felt broke the law, broke his code of ethics, broke his oath and was the main source for Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward's articles that helped depose Richard Nixon, a few thoughts.
Next he tries to maximize the heroic deeds and minimize the crimes of the sitting president...
Can anyone even remember now what Nixon did that was so terrible? He ended the war in Vietnam, brought home the POW's, ended the war in the Mideast, opened relations with China, started the first nuclear weapons reduction treaty, saved Eretz Israel's life, started the Environmental Protection Administration. Does anyone remember what he did that was bad?
Actually many of us do, he was involved in a criminal conspiracy to cover up the break-in at the democratic national headquarters... a crime that was meant to render the democratically held election of 1972 meaningless.
That is his legacy. He was a peacemaker.
Now this is where things turn almost surreal. Nixon a peacemaker. Hmm. Nixon, who decided to drop more bombs in southeast asia than anyone had ever dropped in the history of the world... a peacemaker. I can only be reminded of that under-used phrase. "bombing for peace is like fucking for virginity."
but then Benny makes a right turn into total freaking madness...
When his enemies brought him down, and they had been laying for him since he proved that Alger Hiss was a traitor, since Alger Hiss was their fair-haired boy, this is what they bought for themselves in the Kharma Supermarket that is life:
1.) The defeat of the South Vietnamese government with decades of death and hardship for the people of Vietnam.
2.) The assumption of power in Cambodia by the bloodiest government of all time, the Khmer Rouge, who killed a third of their own people, often by making children beat their own parents to death. No one doubts RN would never have let this happen.
So, this is the great boast of the enemies of Richard Nixon, including Mark Felt: they made the conditions necessary for the Cambodian genocide.
Right. Ben Stein is pinning the genocide in Cambodia on Mark Felt. I heard this balloon floated by Buchanan a few nights ago and I thought he was bats then... but to hear it now echoed and amplified is unbelievable. Nixon is spinning from his grave. It's important for those concerned with the factual retelling of history to stand up to these lies and this reframing of history. Mark Felt took the only course of action available to him in the face of a federal government that was monolithic, totalitarian, and corrupt.
He should be given his rightful place in history as a hero.