Nixon Stupid Quotes

Can I just vote for the GIF?

"It certainly is a great wall."

haha what I was gonna post^

There's a tiny little Chinese takeout places not too far called Great Wall II. Such an odd successor to the original wall.

the autobiographical In the Arena is a treasure trove of goodies (so are those two books of interviews with Monica Crowley from the nineties). I'd quote from it but that would require checking it out of the library again.

funniest president ever

funniest AND weirdly Shakespearean

"well, if the president does it, that means that it is not illegal."

the Crowley book has Nixon ruminatin' aloud on the glories of Hegel.

"You won't have Nixon to kick around any more because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference."

sounds like nixon needed a break from ILX

hmmm I need something new to read, perhaps its time for a Nixon bio (I need something a little lighter and stuffed with chuckles after finishing "The Unknown Mao" and "The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and The Road to 9/11")

read Nixon at the Movies – excellent geocultural look at the Nixon administration and Hollywood.

fuck it, I may check out In the Arema anyway.

what a comedian

An embarrassment of riches here. I voted for "I would have made a good Pope", based on the vibrant combination of hubris, absurdity and cluelessness, all wrapped up in a tight, neat package of seven words.

Hey, if Ratzinger can become pope...

seven word nixon

If only Dan had played his cards right. He could have been pope *and* presidential candidate this year.

He changed his tone again and said, "Murphy Brown sounds like a man. Is that that Candice Bergen Show?" I answered him, and he continued, "I met her once when she was about sixteen and I went to a party at the Bergens'. Anyway, I cannot believe that a fictional character made it into the Oval Office. The press was wrong to ask Bush about as he was standing there with [Canadian prime minister Brian] Mulroney. `Oh, gee,' I would have said, `I don't follow the show. Next question."

christ, that old cocksucker?!

Nixon thrived on the gossip that swirled around the Clinton's personal life. He pretended that he was uninterested in the salacious rumors but fed off them enthusiastically. Bill's infidelity, Hillary's explosive temper, and their marriage of political convenience were fodder for Nixon's escapist imagination. "I heard," he said, sotto voce, on December 21, that they can't stand each other, that their marriage is a charade and that she planned to divorce him if he lost. Can you believe?" he asked with gleeful inquisitiveness. "He'll never dump her now because she is the tower of strength and intellect around there."

Richard Nixon, of course, is just the opposite: not very intense about issues, utterly without naïveté. He recently offered Clinton some advice on marketing Hillary. "If the wife comes through as being too strong and too intelligent," Nixon told the Times, "it makes the husband look like a wimp." Pat was unavailable for comment.

--"April Already?", Spy magazine, April 1992

I voted for Jews and Marijuana

I also voted for Jews and marijuana. Where would we be without that felicitous combination? Imagine, for example, a world without the Coen brothers.

Nixon: I still think we ought to take the North Vietnamese dikes out now. Will that drown people?
Kissinger: About two hundred thousand people.
Nixon: No, no, no, I'd rather use the nuclear bomb. Have you got that, Henry?
Kissinger: That, I think, would just be too much.
Nixon: The nuclear bomb, does that bother you?...I just want you to think big, Henry, for Christsakes.

Jews and Marijuana

lol Harold & Kumar's buddies

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

It's about time we wrapped this up.

Our long national nightmare is almost over.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

dude low turnout!

"This is a great day for France!" --Richard Nixon, while attending Charles De Gaulle's funeral 0

c'mon!

Morbo: Morbo will now introduce tonight's candidates... PUNY HUMAN NUMBER ONE, PUNY HUMAN NUMBER TWO, and Morbo's good friend, Richard Nixon.
Richard Nixon's Head: Hello Morbo, how's the family?
Morbo: Belligerent and numerous.
Richard Nixon's Head: Good man. Nixon's pro-war and pro-family.

the All in the Family review here is wild enough, but then he launches into the Greeks and Romans...

http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2009/02/the-nixon-tapes-richard-nixon-hates-all-in-the-family-1971.html

i v0ted 3 X

Fascinating to actually hear such batshit right-wing lunacy. Cartoons can be dismissed with a lol, and bloggers and even tv pundits are hard to take too seriously. This gives a real sense of 'omfg this is actually how these people think?!'.

that closing theory that hideous women's fashions are gay misogyny = ace

"God, he's handsome, and virile, and this and that..."

As usual Nixon's gushed admiration for strong fascist societies is charming.

EHRLICHMAN: Hot pants.
NIXON: Jesus Christ.

I'd read about this tape before, but hearing it is just... BEYOND.

I remember that AITF episode from when it first aired -- it was certainly the first gay thing I'd seen on TV -- and Dick is just a moron, given his groundless interp that Meathead "goes both ways" and that the fruity friend is gay.

biggest LOL may be Dick's concluding "we're smart."

what happened in pasadena? im intrigued.

Rose Bowl parade! one big cum dump.

hence the swimming pool?

So I decided to pass the WFMU link along:

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/03/and-now-your-mo.html

that closing theory that hideous women's fashions are gay misogyny = ace

Richard Nixon, radical feminist!!!??

The WFMU blog post was an insane trip to an unreal Disneyland, thanks for posting it.

wow @Sullivan.

Rchard Camille Paglia Nixon

wd love to have heard Nixon chatting with his daughter Tricia's obviously-a-fag wedding director.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Nixon_with_daughter_Tricia_marriage_1971.jpg

wonder if nixon ever heard of the cockettes' restaging of tricia's wedding?

probly was told at a Bohemian Grove meeting.

finally getting around to Nixonland

Ha, I finally finished it on Sunday night!

Loved it.

Follow it up with Willentz's The Age of Reagan.

I was actually planning on doing that very thing. A coworker of mine read the Willentz book but not the Perlstein; I'm going to see if he wants to swap.

I'm liking it a lot (how could I not, with all the gems of Nixonalia like him and his aide hopping a millionaire's fence to sleep in a poolhouse lolz) although I don't need to be reminded of how IMPORTANT the concept of "Nixonland" is every other chapter (like, I already bought the book dude, you can stop selling me on your central thesis)

Some of the Franklin vs. Orthogonian stuff gets a little tiresome after a while, but he mostly drops it halfway through.

finished this - pretty great, lots of stuff I didn't know (never read an account of the Newark riots before, for example). Perlstein's narrative style got a little too cutesy at points but that's just me. I like my historical writing dry and sardonic... kinda wanna get an actual Nixon bio tho, cuz I got the feeling a lot of the craziest stuff was not covered in-depth by Perlstein (probably a result of ending with the 1972 election). any recommendations?

More tapes, more fun:

Even as Nixon was contending with decisions of historic consequence in early 1973, the tapes reveal, he was seeking ways to shore up the Republican Party. On Feb. 23, 1973, he placed a call to George H.W. Bush, then the Republican National Committee chairman.

The call was “nothing of great importance,” Nixon said, but he wanted to inform Bush of what he witnessed during his recent visit to the South Carolina state legislature.

“I noticed a couple of very attractive women, both of them Republicans, in the legislature,” Nixon tells Bush. “I want you to be sure to emphasize to our people, God, let’s look for some... Understand, I don’t do it because I’m for women, but I’m doing it because I think maybe a woman might win someplace where a man might not... So have you got that in mind?”

“I’ll certainly keep it in mind,” Bush replies.

“Boy, they were good lookin’ and bright,” Nixon continues. And he had been informed, further, that “they’re two of the best members of the House.”

“Well, that’s terrific,” Bush says.

There's a great line in "The Final Days" where Haig or someone briefs Bush on what's about to happen with the presidency and the quote says something along the lines of "Bush opened himself into assholes and shit himself to death."

Nixon worried that greater access to abortions would foster “permissiveness,” and said that “it breaks the family.” But he also saw a need for abortion in some cases, such as interracial pregnancies.

“There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white,” he told an aide, before adding: “Or a rape.”

from the New York Times

Ah, as well:

The tapes also reveal that in February 1973, after Israel shot down a Libyan civilian passenger jet, killing 113 people, Nixon talked about his views of anti-Semitism in America in a phone conversation with the evangelist Billy Graham.

Mr. Graham complained that Jewish-American leaders had denounced efforts to promote evangelical Christianity, like Campus Crusade, and Nixon and Graham agreed that the Jewish leaders risked bringing anti-Jewish sentiment to the surface.

“What I really think is deep down in this country, there is a lot of anti-Semitism, and all this is going to do is stir it up,” Nixon said. At another point he said, “It may be they have a death wish. You know that’s been the problem with our Jewish friends for centuries.”

good times

“I noticed a couple of very attractive women, both of them Republicans, in the legislature,” Nixon tells Bush. “I want you to be sure to emphasize to our people, God, let’s look for some... Understand, I don’t do it because I’m for women, but I’m doing it because I think maybe a woman might win someplace where a man might not... So have you got that in mind?”

“I’ll certainly keep it in mind,” Bush replies.

“Boy, they were good lookin’ and bright,” Nixon continues. And he had been informed, further, that “they’re two of the best members of the House.”

“Well, that’s terrific,” Bush says.

this might be the most brilliant exchange I've ever read. A novelist couldn't have done better.

Our Jewish Friends.

My favourite is his attempt at small talk with David Frost. "Did you do any fornicating this weekend?"

no surprise @ nixon being an anti-semitic prick but fucking billy graham. what an ass-kisser.

how amazing

http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2010/02/the-richard-nixon-ray-conniff-incident.html

"the Spanish have wonderful profanity"

RMN OTM

great link - thanks morbs

that's probably the most relaxed I've ever heard Nixon on tape -- he knows the peacenik freaks can't touch him!

more reasons i hate nixon, from richard reeves' alone in the white house. after a big and unexpected drop in the unemployment rate (from 6.2 to 5.6%), the ass't comm'n of labor statistics -- harold goldstein -- explained that the drop was an aberration, and that the unemployment rate would go up again after high-school and college kids came home looking for summer work. innocent, honest commentary from a gov't official. so . . .

nixon's reaction was explosive: "that little jew cocksucker is the same guy who screwed us in the eisenhower administration . . . he's a radical left-winger who hates us." he took off from there, telling halderman and colson, not for the first time: "washington is full of jews . . . most jews are disloyal" -- he excepted kissinger, safire, and leonard garment -- "bob, generally speaking, you can't trust the bastards. they turn on you. am i wrong or right?

halderman said, not for the first time, he was right. colson added: "you just have to go down the goddamed list and you know they are out to kill us."

nixon transferred goldstein and issued an order to find out how many jews were in the bureau.

this charming little anecdote follows nixon loosing it after the supreme court ruled against prior-restraints in the pentagon-papers case. nixon's reaction: organize a plot to break-into the brookings institution, blow up its safe, gather all its stored, confidential data and bring it to the white house. and this is, i think, at least a year before the watergate break-in.

sadly, after 8 years of the bush administration, i've become a bit numb to these offenses.

uhhhhh . . . i meant "losing it," obv.

wow nixon and billy graham

(nixon) was raging again about the internal revenue service. "billy graham tells me an astonishing thing," he told halderman on september 13. "the irs is battering the shit out of him. some son-of-a-bitch came to him and gaven him a three-hour grilling. connally took the name of the guy . . . now here's the point. bob, please get me the names of the jews, you know, the big jewish contributors of the democrats . . . all right. could we please investigate some of the cocksuckers? that's all." there was more of the same the next day: "you see, the irs is full of jews, bob . . . that's the reason they're after graham. . . "

graham, in the office later to discuss holding his crusades in states critical to nixon in 1972, had his own ideas about such things, as recorded by halderman in his diary: "there was considerable discussion of the terrible problem arising from the total jewish domination of the media . . . graham has the strong feeling that the bible says that there are satanic jews and that's where our problem arises. . ."

reading Summers' "The Arrogance of Power" - oh man this brings the lolz. only 60 pages in and he's already wheeled out Mickey Cohen/Meyer Lansky/Frank Costello but also Howard Hughes, Dulles, Hoover (of course), Murray Chotiner... writing style is kind of terrible ("am I asking a rhetorical question in order to raise flimsy allegations? Let's dig into the previously unexamined evidence...") but engagingly trashy.

I read it a few years ago: he throws a lot of shit against the wall, and not all of it sticks, but it uses several years' worth of released tapes to fabulous effect.

was honestly not expecting all the organized crime stuff, this is all news to me. The Hiss/Chambers gay love affair insinuation also a novel approach.

this is like a James Ellroy novel

Love this guy.

At another point, in a long and wandering conversation with Rose Mary Woods, his personal secretary, that veered from whom to invite to a state dinner to whether Ms. Woods should get her hair done, Nixon offered sharp skepticism at the views of William P. Rogers, his secretary of state, about the future of black Africans.

“Bill Rogers has got — to his credit it’s a decent feeling — but somewhat sort of a blind spot on the black thing because he’s been in New York,” Nixon said. “He says well, ‘They are coming along, and that after all they are going to strengthen our country in the end because they are strong physically and some of them are smart.’ So forth and so on.

“My own view is I think he’s right if you’re talking in terms of 500 years,” he said. “I think it’s wrong if you’re talking in terms of 50 years. What has to happen is they have be, frankly, inbred. And, you just, that’s the only thing that’s going to do it, Rose.”

finished this - pretty great, lots of stuff I didn't know (never read an account of the Newark riots before, for example). Perlstein's narrative style got a little too cutesy at points but that's just me. I like my historical writing dry and sardonic... kinda wanna get an actual Nixon bio tho, cuz I got the feeling a lot of the craziest stuff was not covered in-depth by Perlstein (probably a result of ending with the 1972 election). any recommendations?

― The Citizen Kane of Alcoholic Clown Movies (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, May 5, 2009 6:11 PM

You've probably read it by now, but I loved Stephen Ambrose's three-parter: Nixon: The Education of a Politician 1913-1962 + Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician 1962-1972 + Nixon: Ruin and Recovery 1973-1990. It's been a few years since I read them, but my recollection now is that Ambrose was as mortified as anybody by much of what Nixon did, but that he at least had enough distance--or at least recognized that Nixon was, fundamentally, a serious person who should be treated seriously (unlike, to cite the most obvious example, Palin)--that he didn't lapse into cheap and easy shots, something I felt Perlstein sometimes fell prey to.

Nixon said some outrageously stupid things. But I also think there are a couple of lines from his staff farewell address the day he left office that are as evocative as anything said by any politician ever:

1) "Always remember: others may hate you, but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them. And then, you destroy yourself."
2) "The greatness comes not when things go always good for you. But the greatness comes when you’re really tested, when you take some knocks, some disappointments, when sadness comes."

Politicians usually don't hit upon phrases like "when sadness comes." And I suspect he wrote that entire address himself; actually, when you watch it, it seems like a lot of it was extemporized.

My favorite extended work is still Nixon Agonistes. Jonathan Schell's narrative excellent too (thanks, clemenza and J.D.).

1) "Always remember: others may hate you, but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them. And then, you destroy yourself."
2) "The greatness comes not when things go always good for you. But the greatness comes when you’re really tested, when you take some knocks, some disappointments, when sadness comes."

Politicians usually don't hit upon phrases like "when sadness comes." And I suspect he wrote that entire address himself; actually, when you watch it, it seems like a lot of it was extemporized.

its weird, those lines read like he's giving lessons he never had the wisdom to learn when they could have helped him.

Totally. I've written this before, but to me it's one of the great mysteries about Nixon: when he said the "And then, you destroy yourself" line, was he aware he had just summed up his entire life and everything that had led him to this one moment? I'm sure he would have realized that after the fact, but I've never been sure if the words were spoken as self-excoriation or if there was a disconnect there.

Disconnect. It's clear from the hundreds of post-Watergate interviews that he only felt bad about the "mess" he put "the country" and his supporters through.

I don't know. To come up with those words, he must have had some specific referent in mind. And if not himself, who? You might be right, but I'd say there's at least a 50/50 chance he momentarily let his guard down (it's back up again for the Frost interviews) and, for a brief few seconds, saw everything very clearly.

Nixon was not a stupid man. Just a bad, crazy one.

good thing we never had a heartless racist in the white house again

oh come on, obama's not entirely heartless

which post-nixon prez was a heartless racist?

Not saying I agree, but:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOu_zIiihPI

Shouldn't go looking for stuff on the internet. You will find it, it will cost too much, and you will succumb.

http://www.retropolitics.com/1972/Nixon/Nixon1972Shirt.png

http://spectator.org/archives/2012/03/16/pat-nixon-at-100/

ugh ben stein, so dreadful

who has centennial party plans tomorrow?

"I'll provide the entertainment!"

http://worstprofessorever.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/futuramanixon.jpg

looks like the big graveside party was Sunday (the photos suck btw)

http://photos.mercurynews.com/2013/01/06/the-richard-nixon-centennial-birthday-celebration-at-the-richard-nixon-presidential-library-4/

Formal dinner in DC tom'w night! (At the Mayflower, where I stayed in '74 two weeks before the resignation.)

Kissinger, Pat Buchanan AND Ben Stein speaking!

http://nixonfoundation.org/ai1ec_event/richard-nixons-centennial-birthday-gala-2/?instance_id=846

plenty of stupid quotes about him today

from the huffington post:

Richard Nixon endures as the commanding figure of American political life since the end of World War II. His style, achievements, and failures persist nearly two decades after his death. He is the most impressive political figure of the past 60 years.

puke.

People inevitably find genocide, sabotaging protest movements and your rivals' campaigns, and obstruction of justice a little abstract, so leaving behind tapes where he held forth on "traits" of racial, ethnic and religious groups may be Dick's greatest gift to history. Fuck you, scumbag.

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/01/happy-birthday-tricky-dick-85869.html

the gift that never stops giving:

"I don't know why any individual should have a right to have a revolver in his house," Nixon said in a taped conversation with aides. "The kids usually kill themselves with it and so forth." He asked why "can't we go after handguns, period?"

Nixon went on: "I know the rifle association will be against it, the gun makers will be against it." But "people should not have handguns." He laced his comments with obscenities, as was typical.

saw that Our Nixon thing the other night, pretty interesting. the Ray Conniff singers bit was o_0

anticipation!

http://www.salon.com/2013/08/21/last_nixon_tapes_to_be_released_cover_key_period_ap/

happy hunting

http://www.nixonlibrary.gov/forresearchers/find/tapes/complete/chronological_release5v.php

was about to post!

Among the international dignitaries present at Ghana's Declaration of Independence Ceremonies in 1957 were two Americans of very different persuasions, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Vice President Richard M. Nixon. King, Prime Minister Nkrumah's personal guest, made an eloquent speech condemning racial violence in the USA's Deep South. Echoing the euphoria of his Ghanaian hosts, Nixon slapped one man on the shoulder and asked him how it felt to be free. "I wouldn't know, Sir," came the memorable reply. "I'm from Alabama."

cold

Reminds me of the misadventures of Samuel Pierce, Reagan's HUD secretary and only black Cabinet member:

On June 18, 1981 during a luncheon for the US Conference of Mayors in Washington DC, President Reagan mistook Pierce as one of the mayors on the dais, with the famous Hello, Mr. Mayor, comment.

haha oh man

lol

More Nixon fun: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/10/11/secret-archive-offers-fresh-insight-into-nixon-presidency/

this is one of the most amazing things I have ever heard
http://chicagoradioandmedia.com/multimedia/audio/1521-wls-john-records-landecker-make-a-date-with-watergate-a-press-my-conference

Unfortunately this is not exactly true. Nixon called Indians "a slippery, treacherous people" and told Kissinger "the Indians need a mass famine." https://t.co/IhVxLWQ6JW

— Jon Schwarz (@schwarz) January 12, 2018

this town needs an enema

"It certainly is a great wall."

― Pleasant Plains, Monday, February 25, 2008 3:32 PM (nine years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha what I was gonna post^

― Dr Morbius, Monday, February 25, 2008 3:35 PM (nine years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol

http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=4zrU5GHyp4U

it's p amazing/depressing how much faster Nixon went down compared to Trump

Just rewatched Our Nixon last week. There's this running thing where, after every Oval Office address, Nixon calls up Haldeman and they go over which cabinet members, House leadership, party luminaries, etc. have called in with praise and support. They're keeping score. During one of these calls Nixon says, “Rockefeller called--well, the hell with him, but nevertheless.”

faster? it was the sixth year of his presidency...

He resigned over two years after the break-in; Trump's not even been president two years yet.

God, Slow Burn was a fantastic podcast

faster in the sense that Nixon's second term ended faster than Trump's first term will

xp

In the meeting where Nixon authorised the cover-up of Republican involvement in the DNC burglary, he was also informed about dramatic changes in European currencies related to the aftermath of the (unofficial) Bretton Woods collapse. This is how much he cared. pic.twitter.com/UHt2z4difu

— Pavlos Roufos (@PRoufos) May 9, 2024

'Yeah, OK. Fine.' is so good

relatable

Nixon otm.

https://i.imgur.com/F23RIgP.jpg

Man, he’s thinking so hard its twisting around his necktie into a corkscrew

I read the Graff Watergate book earlier this year and there were so many moments where I’m just like “lol at the audacity, lol at this man’s thought process”, Nixon seriously one of the most unintentionally funniest presidents

I know a lot of people think that, and a lot more say it, sir. But the peanut farmer, the community organizer with the funny name, and hell, the marble-mouthed Quaker… you just never know.

— Jimmy Midyette 🇺🇸 (@JimmyMidyette) May 13, 2025

What was that a response to?

It's a thread.