Scriptwriting Nixon Out Of History

"West Wing" 3:9, "The Women of Qumar," is notable for C. J. Gregg's (Allison Janney) prophetic witness against U.S. arms sales to a Saudi Arabia-type country (I guess "The West Wing" didn't want to offend the Saudis, either), the beginning of the goofy flirtation between Josh Lyman and Amy Gardner (played by Bradley Whitford and Mary-Louise Parker, shown here), and President Josiah Bartlet (Martin Sheen) asking his aides when the U.S. had "passed" the Clean Water Act and finally answering the question: 1972. Why didn't teleplay writer and series creator Aaron Sorkin say it was Richard Nixon who signed it? Maybe for the same reason Sorkin's script for "The American President" said that "the courts ruled on" instead of "Nixon signed" Title IX, granting equality to women in collegiate sports.

Their Nixon

OUR NIXON (trailer) from Penny Lane on Vimeo.

You saw it here first (unless you visited "The New Yorker"s blog before I did): Filmmakers Penny Lane and Brian Frye are making a Nixon documentary based on the home movies of the late H. R. "Bob" Haldeman and his operatives. Since they're now in control of Nixon's foundation, maybe this will end up being the new orientation film at the Nixon library.

Keeping Secrets At The Formerly Nixon Center

Click here:

Commentary: An Announcement from the Publisher | The National Interest
Mar 11, 2011 ... On March 8, 2011, the Center announced its new name, Center ...

nationalinterest.org/commentary/announcement-the-publisher-5015 -

And you get this:

Access denied

You are not authorized to access this page.

Inspiration Without Intervention

Daniel Henninger makes a neo-neocon argument for the U.S. doing more to support democracy in Libya and elsewhere in the Middle East, saying:

Soviet-era dissidents have said and written that among the things that sustained them was that their heads were filled with the ideas drawn from America's freedoms.

And yet note that we didn't send in troops.
Hat tip to John Bode

We Can Equivocate About Libya Later

Help Japan now. Photos here.

Sunday Sermon: "Lights Of The Son"

Putting Christ on a pedestal or relying on the church to run interference for us? That's natural enough. The Incarnation? God-in-us? That's scary. My sermon for the Last Sunday after the Epiphany is here.

Photo: Afternoon sky on Monday over the Episcopal Church of the Angels in Pasadena

Brand niXon

The Washington Post calls the decision by Richard Nixon's think tank to abandon his name an "extreme makeover." The writer of the "Reliable Source" item also asks if the new name doesn't "sound like all those other generic, earnest D.C. institutes/think tanks/NGOs." Yep: Even Woodward and Bernstein's paper thinks dissing Nixon was a bad idea.

In reply to the Post's question, the Center said that it "felt strongly that the new name conveyed what we were about." But if Nixon's name was making the Center's work more difficult, it hasn't said so. If the Center has now adopted a policy perspective that differs from his, its recent statements say otherwise.

Though the Center implied earlier this week that the name change was an automatic consequence of the Center's independence from Nixon's Yorba Linda foundation, I know that to be untrue, and the Center's Post comments about its choice of a new name confirm it.

That leaves the possible and possibly related factors of money (the Center itself has mentioned its "new resources") and the hostility of the former White House operatives now controlling Nixon's foundation.

The Center also says this: "We believe that our new name unifies our existing 'brands' while avoiding confusion with the other two entities." It pains me that my former colleagues, thoughtful experts when it comes to matters of global significance, have been reduced to channeling "Mad Men" and George Orwell. Whatever's going on here, I'm definitely not feeling the unification. As for brand confusion, it doesn't seem to be vexing the proprietors of the many institutions and landmarks bearing Ronald Reagan's name. What the Center Formerly Known As Nixon has done is burn out its brand, and the aroma's not very pleasant.

You Broke Some Laws, But That's Not The Point

"West Wing" 3:7, entitled "Gone Quiet," contains an Aaron Sorkin teaching about the politics of presidential investigations that was probably inspired by the Clinton impeachment and trial (though not, one assumes, the Nixon near-impeachment and resignation).

White House counsel Oliver Babish (Oliver Platt) is questioning First Lady Abbey Bartlet (Stockard Channing) about her participation in the cover-up of her husband's MS. When she offers to make a deal with congressional investigators, but takes a surprising line:

You broke some laws, Abbey, and quite frankly you should be ashamed of yourself, but this investigation isn't about that. It's about the criminalization of politics, an attempt to do in the hearing room what they couldn't do at the ballot box.

NPR's "Morally Deranged" Critic

Jeffrey Goldberg is appalled by the NPR sting -- the sting part, not the NPR part:

This is a horrible story, and not because this silly man from NPR kept on chewing while his fake donors told him they represented an organization founded by Muslim Brothers, or that he seemed to agree with the anti-Zionist invective they spewed. What is horrible about this is that an NPR executive has lost his job (and his next job, apparently) after falling victim to a truly pernicious sting operation run by a morally-deranged individual. Schiller is being punished (everyone at NPR named Schiller is being punished, in fact) for saying a couple of dumbass things in private, and nodding in agreement to another set of dumbass statements. How about we turn this story around, and assert that these types of sting operations are what is morally egregious here; that humans often say stupid things; and that a person's life should not be destroyed for making the sort of statements made in the Schiller entrapment.

The Anglican Muslim

Zuhdi Jasser is an Arizona doctor and Muslim who appears on television regularly to warn Americans about the dangers of Islamic radicalism, but without going far enough for those who favor anti-Islam jihad. T. A. Frank writes:

To those on the left, Jasser wants to deliver a wake-up message that danger is afoot. To those on the right, Jasser wants to say that Islam is perfectly compatible with modernity and mainstream American life. In short, he wants to stress that Islamism is a more serious threat than we think and a less serious threat than we think. Not surprisingly, the nuances of such a message come through with less than perfect clarity on Glenn Beck.

The end result is that Jasser is unpopular with basically everyone. Many Muslims reject his message, and so do most Americans on the left. On the right, those on the extremes are equally unfriendly. The virulently anti-Muslim commentator Debbie Schlussel, for instance, accuses Jasser of “saying the usual bullcrap, i.e., that Islam is a peaceful religion.”

Amid such warring camps, it’s hard to say anything useful. Jasser, for his part, believes that both his country and his fellow Muslims are better off for his efforts. I doubt it. There’s a balance between reaching out to skeptics and allowing oneself to be coopted, and Jasser seems to have negotiated this balance unsuccessfully. Still, while the path he has chosen is lonely and perhaps all wrong, it takes undeniable courage to walk it.