Where Hewitt Leads, Will Hollywood Follow?

"Frost/Nixon" gets a thumb-up from Hugh Hewitt, who served the former President in San Clemente immediately after the real-life interviews.

Bad Buzz

Christopher Orr says Frank Langella's just too good for Richard Nixon:

Though ["Frost/Nixon"] chronicles the moment when (in theory) the 37th president of the United States was cut down to size, the movie's presentation of him is utterly larger than life.

Too Ironic Even To Figure Out

John Dean, architect of the Watergate cover-up (and according to James Rosen, the break-in), is advising the PE on how to handle a scandal that may not exist:

Following your press conference, the Chicago Sun Times published a story of the refusal of Rahm Emanuel, your designated White House chief of staff, to respond to questions about his involvement with Blagojevich, and a Chicago television station is reporting Emanuel did, in fact, meet with Blagojevich to discuss filling your vacate senate seat. If true, as I read the transcript of the press conference, you have misspoken; if not true, in a post-Watergate world the burden is on you to prove it is not true - and you can only do this by having information from Emanuel explaining his actions in full. No one would be surprised if Emanuel or others did have discussions with Blagojevich or his office about your successor, but denying that such discussions took place will be the start of a cover-up. You should place the burden on your staff to give you all the information for cover-ups only compound problems, and if anyone withholds information, they should suffer the consequences.

Rehabilitation Speedier In Internet Age

In "Slate," the disgraced former governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer, about 17 seconds after not being prosecuted, suggests turning the Big Three into competitive suitors for Uncle Sam's love. Under the Spitzer plan, only two out of three would get lucky.

Punk Me Twice, Shame On Me

In which Steve Clemons, a big-hearted, level-headed foreign policy realist who was the first executive director of the Nixon Center, cheerfully acknowledges he got punk'd by a transcript of an imaginary conversation between White House chief of staff-designate Rahm Emanuel and his fellow Chicago pol Gov. Blagojevich.

Notwithstanding the f-bombs, it's someone's fantasy script of what they earnestly hope Emanuel would've said if Blagojevich put the squeeze on him. Wishful thinking (and I join in their wish, for the sake of the new administration's coherence) from the same left-wing web site that published the lie, later republished by a credulous Andrew Sullivan, that Gov. Palin and her minor daughter covered up Trig Palin's true parentage. In this new-media age, more than ever before, consider the source.

Bush II Is The New Hoover II?

In spite of Democratic setbacks in recent weeks -- a Senate win in Georgia and a stinker in Chicago -- no happy talk from Matthew Continetti at the neocon-leaning "Weekly Standard":

The GOP's problem is that it obstinately refuses to address the problems facing those Americans who do not listen to conservative talk radio. Also, the party is tied to the legacy of the most unpopular president since the advent of polling. Democrats were able to invoke Herbert Hoover's legacy for decades. How long will they be able to invoke George W. Bush's?

Perfect Songs: "Like A Rolling Stone" (1965)

Bob Dylan & the Rolling Stones

Blagogate And Jackson's Airport

Rep. John Campbell (R-Newport Beach, California) continues to fail to pull his punches in his must-read e-newsletter:

Several years ago I exposed an earmark requested by Congressman Jackson for $231,000 which was directed to a non-profit organization to develop a 3rd airport in the Chicago area. The problem is that no such airport exists even on a drawing board and that the organization was formed by Congressman Jackson and one of his Congressional staffers runs it. I offered an amendment to remove this clearly abusive earmark but it failed by a vote of 48-372. I also tried to get national news organizations to investigate it further but none did, and in one case the prominence of the Jackson name was cited as the reason why....

In my opinion this Blagojevich scandal will be on a par with Watergate and the House Post Office. The effects will reach many powerful people and will the issue will not go away any time soon. I hope that it causes the public to demand more stringent ethics of elected officials and for us to demand more of our colleagues. If that happens, Governor Blagojevich may have perversely helped us all.

Get Smart About Kennedy, Says Max

The bane of Kennedy assassination conspiracy hounds is Cold War historian and journalist Max Holland, who methodically eviscerates every bogus theory pointing away from the sole murderer, Lee Harvey Oswald.

His latest posting is about Gus Russo's just-published Brothers in Arms, which purports to offer "explosive new information" about an alleged Cuban link to the assassination. As Holland shows, a key Russo source, the late Marty Underwood, an LBJ advance man, just can't be trusted. Over the years he has tricked credulous historians and reporters into writing that he was in the Dallas motorcade at the time of the murder, on Air Force One as President Johnson was sworn in, and in Mexico in 1968 as LBJ's secret emissary. All were lies.

Among those Underwood duped over the years is Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Seymour Hersh. In The Dark Side of Camelot, Hersh wrote, based on Underwood's statements, that Kennedy mistress Judith Campbell had delivered a package from Kennedy to mob boss Sam Giancana. Underwood said he knew this because he'd been assigned to tail her. This too was a lie. Holland writes:

Proof that both Russo and Hersh had been duped came in the 1998 report of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), a special federal panel created in 1992 to make available all records pertaining to the Kennedy assassination. The ARRB investigated Underwood’s story as part of its mandate, and the former advance man recanted when sitting across from a government lawyer instead of reporters who were all ears and buying lunch. Underwood “denied that he followed [Judy Campbell] on a train,” the ARRB observed in its 1998 final report, “and [said] that he had no knowledge about her alleged role as a courier.”

An unchastened Hersh moved on to other stories.

Among them a false and an especially hurtful story, from an equally fishy source, that Hersh repeated publicly about President and Mrs. Nixon. Perhaps more later.

If Someone Asks "Habari Yako?", Say "Mzuri"

Back from a three-week mission trip in Kenya, a church friend, the globetrotting man of mystery Paul Arndt, lent me a copy of the English-language Nairobi Daily Nation dated Tuesday, Nov. 4.

Not much in the issue about Sen. Obama beyond the first 27 pages.

A thoughtful column was filed from Lancaster County, PA by Helen Wakinyue Nthambiri, a Kenyan immigrant. She made her '08 decision after Sen. Clinton forgot that all politics is retail even while she was retailing:

Initially I was an ardent supporter of Senator Hillary Clinton. That was the Hillary Clinton who refused to look me in the face as she was autographing my copy of her biography. Down went my support for the history-making woman candidate....

Then to Lancaster came Obama, who shook my hand with genuine warmth, and surprised me by responding to my "Habari yako?" greeting, with "Mzuri". My passionate entry into the political world of Obama began.

Google says the exchange means: "What is the news?" and "Fine." Sort of like when I ask my friend Steve, "What's the good word?" and he says, "Thunderbird."