Thursday, October 18, 2007

Nixon Nostalgia

Dick Cavett, the best celebrity interviewer of the 1970s, just can’t let go of Richard Nixon. On his wonderful New York Times blog, the last three entries have been about the Great Unindicted Co-Conspirator. I know just how he feels.

Cavett's current post recalls seeing Himself in the flesh at a restaurant with his daughter Julie during the Ford Administration.

“I grabbed up two menus,” Cavett writes. “Approaching the famous seated pair from behind, I piped, 'Our specials today include the Yorba Linda soufflé, the Whittier College clam chowder . . .' I invented a few more fictional Nixon-related specials; you get the idea. At least I self-censored any Checkers or Watergate references.”

Nixon was not amused. Nor was he much taken with a Cavett anecdote about the smell of burning paper at a White House dinner interpreted as the infamous Veep Spiro Agnew being in the library.

“Oh, I see,” Nixon finally said with a straight face. “Book burning.”

Years from now, will a retired Jon Stewart be writing on his blog about George Bush not being amused by Dick Cheney jokes?

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