The Beautiful Pat Nixon by Ben Stein

this masterpiece deserves its own thread

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

"Patricia Ryan didn't have affirmative action that got her into an Ivy League college even if her grades were not good and got her a big scholarship. Her grades were great but she didn't have affirmative action. She didn't have anything given to her because she was a woman."

It wasn't organizing your community and asking the government to do things for you -- which is really just demanding that taxpayers do things for people who don't pay taxes.

Most people don't know this either, but Mrs. Nixon fought against racial prejudice all her life. She didn't see color or race. She saw the human heart underneath.

Loved the portrait of her in Mallon's new novel Watergate as a chainsmoking Cool Lady having an epistolary affair with a Manhattan executive.

And he added that in their modest circumstances, Mrs. Nixon did not have a mink coat. What she did have was "a respectable Republican cloth coat… and I always tell her she would look good in anything."

There is a little more to the note about the mink coat than you might think. Some Truman aides had gotten mink coats in return for favors for well-heeled contributors and RN wanted to distinguish his honest way of doing business from that of his opponents. But the point was much bigger than that: Mrs. Nixon was a respectable, hard-working woman. She did not need a fur coat the show off her status. She was a respectable woman and all she needed was a respectable coat that would keep her warm in the cold Washington winters.

this thread is not about Pat Nixon, it is about The Beautiful Pat Nixon by Ben Stein

All the while, the beautiful people, the pretty people in New York and Hollywood and Washington, were calling Mrs. Nixon names and making fun of her for being square and a loyal wife. In their world, "working" is a joke and so is loyalty to your husband. Not in Mrs. Nixon's world.

But the mockery did not stop her from traveling the world over helping lepers, helping the starving, helping the blind, helping the elderly. Mrs. Nixon just had too much love in her heart to be delayed in her missions by the mockery of the pretty people and the power players.

The jesters and mockers might mock, but Mrs. Nixon had to work.

A very smart friend once said that there are certain kids on the beach who can build sand castles -- and there are other kids who can knock them down. That was Watergate.

Mr. and Mrs. Nixon could build castles of peace and love. The beautiful people could knock them down -- and they did as much as they could. But the structure of peace Mr. and Mrs. Nixon made has lasted until now.

RN wanted to distinguish his honest way of doing business from that of his opponents.

this sentence is a thing of wonder

and THIS RIGHT HERE IS MONEY SHOT

Richard Nixon said in his autobiography, "I was born in a house my father built." The whole Western world now lives in a house of peace -- moment by moment -- that Richard and Pat Nixon -- the woman in the "respectable Republican cloth coat" -- built.

"In my father's house there are many mansions," says the carpenter. The most beautiful is the house of peace. God bless Richard and Pat Nixon.

shivers

Alan Brooks| 3.16.12 @ 12:07PM

Nixon called his mother a Saint the day he resigned as POTUS; yet as Kissinger pointed out, it was Pat who was the saint.

In retrospect, Nixon was too gentle to be president, it is a career for the hardboiled who do not cave in under pressure.

good writing in this:

That was because Richard Nixon worked, too.
They were both workers. They were workers among workers

Most people don't know this, but when she met Mr. Nixon...

Most people don't know this either, but Mrs. Nixon fought against racial prejudice all her life.

Most people don't know this either. But when Mr. Nixon was in the Navy in the South Pacific...

can see why this guy earns money from writing words

i know that ben stein is not a particularly smart guy but i thought he was like... a little smarter than this? i guess not

http://www.conservapedia.com/images/thumb/8/8b/Expelled.jpg/300px-Expelled.jpg

nope

"smart new ideas"

The jesters and mockers might mock, but Mrs. Nixon had to work.

if the jesters and the mockers are both mocking, who's minding the jesting?

gmdt

(grinding my damn teeth)

Stein also owns an apartment in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C., which he inherited from his parents.[48]

we all worked. That was what life was: work.

I happen to know that Pat Nixon saw the human heart underneath only with the aid of special glasses she got in a box of Post Toasties.

i know that ben stein is not a particularly smart guy but i thought he was like... a little smarter than this? i guess not

― max, Friday, March 16, 2012 12:55 PM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah in retrospect we're just constantly paying for that "he's not just a memorable bit player from a couple '80s movies, he knows TRIVIA!" moment in the '90s

that show always came on right after strangers with candy, and for that alone i can never forgive it - what a comedown

obsession with workers feels kinda communist imo

why the hell do I tell myself I couldn't be a writer

In Nixon's White House, there were seats for those who were waiting.

in my day you could sit while you waited

I never had a bone to pick with Pat Nixon. She did not touch my life one way or another. Ben Stein, otoh, is a dreadful person without a drop of humility in his body, who therefore deserves to be mocked, belittled and castigated at every turn.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4d/Mrs._Nixon_meeting_with_Big_Bird_from_Sesame_Street_in_the_White_House_-_12-20-1970.gif

Pat Nixon meeting Ben Stein.

ha this is great

appropriately nixonian i have to say. the woman's 100th birthday is the perfect time to talk about michelle obama and solyndra

yeah its a masterpiece isnt it?

She worked to get a Congress that would steer America in a pro-American direction after World War II.

thank god this brave woman was there to make america more 'pro-american'

I know everyone's seen this; you can catch Ben Stein at 16:30.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32GaowQnGRw

Wow, so this is actually a speech he gave. I'm imagining it and it's putting me to sleep. The dumbest sleep ever.

Don't want to derail the thread, but it's an amazing speech--even/especially if you despise Nixon.

Taking care of the house: work
Organizing your community: not work.

This is pretty amazing. I have to say tho, I've read the word "work" more times in the past 5 minutes than my entire life.

the ramifications of that "steering America in a more pro-American direction" sentence kinda make my head reel.

when i get home, i think that i shall post a Youtube clip of Pat Nixon's "appearance" during the Richard Nixon-Black Dynamite karate/nunchuks fight -- which is a thing of beauty in itself.

http://www.hark.com/clips/tkbzrcwcks-cannot-stand-pat

thx for the reminder to re-watch Black Dynamite, need some laffs tonight

on the off-chance anyone here hasn't seen black dynamite yet:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGAHvGFqD6w

"Keep your filthy black hands off the presidential dinnerware you moon cricket!"

TQ eisbaer as that clip is delivering much needed relief from teeth-grindingly awful ben stein feature

Patricia Ryan didn't have affirmative action that got her into an Ivy League college even if her grades were not good and got her a big scholarship. Her grades were great but she didn't have affirmative action.

still can't get beyond this thunderous opener

It's very confusing. Her grades were not good? Wait, did she get a big scholarship or not? Wait, her grades were great? Also, is Pat Nixon black? If not, then why so butthurt about her not having affirmative action?

Obviously, the point Ben Stein is trying to make is that Pat Nixon (nee Ryan) was rejected by the ivies, not because she had bad grades, but because she was a woman, and that womenof her time deserved an affirmative action program that defeated the pernicious anti-female prejudice of her day and age.

Ann Beattie has her Pat Nixon novel, too.. Wrong thread, I know.

"The reader, me, of course, is frequesntly irritated by the side remarks of the writer's persona who has no qualms about sticking her own big nose in every other paragraph, whether it's talking about nicknames, Patricia's mother's funeral, or crowds taunting the Nixons in Venezuala. Someone must have told Beattie, who was probably asking for topics to write on, something like this: "Hey, Annie Poopsie baby, since you're a leftist lunatic, why don't you tackle something about trickie Nixie. But you say, that's been tried so many times, so tackle the wife, the mysterious Pat, OK? Don't worry about a plot line of any kind. You can throw in your psychopdelic impressions and the lists on scratch paper you keep into the book. While you're at it, throw in not only the kitchen sink but the pots and pans, dish rags and left-over garbage bags. Who cares. You are Ann Beattie, and the publisher has to take whatever junk you come up with. Make sure to mention Chehkov and Raymond Carver while you are at it so the readers will be assured of your erudite personality. OK? No problem. You're welcome."
Pity to the reader like me who spends good money on unreadable, irritating tomes like these. OK? No problem."

Covering Ben Stein's weird political thriller of the near-future from 1978:

http://idontevenownatelevision.com/on-the-brink-w-jeb-lund-rocky-swift

n 1974, he writes, Hersh heard that Nixon’s wife Pat was in hospital after being punched by her husband. It was not an isolated occasion. He did not report on the story, he told Nieman Foundation fellows in 1998, because it represented “a merging of private life and public life.” Nixon didn’t make policy decisions because of his bad marriage, went the argument. Hersh was “taken aback” by the response from women fellows, who pointed out that he had heard of a crime and not reported it. “All I could say,” Hersh writes, “is that at the time I did not—in my ignorance—view the incident as a crime.”

I never saw this thread before, how does Stein have a job as a writer!? That is some shit-awful grade school blather.

chilling stuff -- both the story and hersh's admission of why he didn't do anything about it.

part of me wonders if hersh could've even gotten that story published in 1974? i genuinely don't know: i can't think of a comparable story involving a US president that got media coverage at the NYT level until the clinton years.

Surely punching ones wife to the point she's hospitalised was a crime even in the 70s :/ But it was Nixon so ...

More on the question of whether he beat Pat.

https://longreads.com/2018/08/23/an-inquiry-into-abuse/

We do know he shoved his press secretary:

http://footage.framepool.com/en/shot/722460371-ron-ziegler-richard-nixon-cutting-up-dissatisfaction