The Nixonland meme...fascinating....and very Pynchonian

[David Morris]

Last October Vanity Fair's cover story "A Clash of Camelots" (as their
web site puts it)  "chronicled the toll [William} Manchester’s 1967
best-seller, _The Death of a President_, exacted—physically,
emotionally, and financially—before it all but disappeared."  I right
away ordered the book from Abebooks for $2.  Order confirmed by email,
only to be canceled a few days later.  The book was now available for
no less than $30, used of course, because part of the whole story is
that the Kennedy estate squashed any reprints after its first edition.

Anyway, my wife wanted it.  I bought it for her.  And as she's reading
snippets from it the paranoiac-hysterical right-wing political
environment described therein sounded surprisingly similar to what
we've been hearing from the teabagging birther Socialist-Nazi-fearing
crazies of today.  I guess they've always been with us, but fear of
ascendant progressivism, especially associated with ascendant minority
(black) rights (fear of a black president?) make them howl to high
heaven.  Reagan & Nixon were merely manifestations of their own
ascendancy.

David Morris

On Thu, Mar 4, 2010 at 12:33 PM, rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:
> or has the Nixonian conservative, reactionary paranoia become the mainstream, no? tea baggers, libertarians, club for growthers, ayn rand greenspans (my pick for name of future rock band), neo-racists, and the rest...here on Reagan's island