Watergate (1994)
Apr. 26th, 2021 05:34 pmMick Gold et al, Watergate
I yield to![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rydra_wong regarding a four-hour Watergate documentary that I watched over the weekend: WHAT THE ACTUAL EVEN: a BBC/Discovery co-production.
What gets me about the whole of l'affaire Watergate is the sheer number of things that had to go wrong for there to be any accountability at all. If Liddy had been less of a nutcase, or if he'd been more competent. If the cops hadn't checked on the office complex that night, if the FBI hadn't been able to connect the burglars to Howard Hunt, if Hunt hadn't gotten greedy. If John Dean hadn't developed a sense of self-preservation (something notably lacking in Ehrlichman and Haldeman) that turned into a genuine concern for the rule of law. Above all, of course, if the tapes hadn't existed, or if Nixon had set fire to them before they were subpoenaed. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that the only reason anyone higher than Hunt and Liddy suffered any consequences at all, even in an era of decreased partisanship, is because Nixon was literally caught on tape authorizing felonies.
I'd love to see a similar documentary in 2040 about the Trump administration, or even in 2030 about GW Bush's. I doubt we will, though. I expect the only reason so many of the principals spoke so freely is that all their actions had been a matter of public record for twenty years. Don't Get Caught remains the operating principle of the Republican party.
Ah well.
(Available on Youtube, though with poor video quality. Also available on BBC's iPlayer for the next eleven months. Highly recommended.)
I yield to
rydra_wong regarding a four-hour Watergate documentary that I watched over the weekend: WHAT THE ACTUAL EVEN: a BBC/Discovery co-production.I love the fact that nearly everyone I've made watch this documentary has the same reaction at around [the half-hour] point, because WHAT THE ACTUAL EVEN (you'll know it when you reach it). And then it continues to be jaw-dropping in a variety of different ways (moving, bizarre, mind-boggling, entertaining ...) for the next three and a half hours.It's an in-depth and intensely, shockingly, compelling work of visual journalism/history. It opens with an almost unbelievable "yeah, we set out to do all these highly illegal things," and then the whole situation spirals far out of control before tightening back in. There are lengthy, candid interviews with just about everyone who was still alive at the time of filming (1994): the only exception I can think of is Nixon himself.
What gets me about the whole of l'affaire Watergate is the sheer number of things that had to go wrong for there to be any accountability at all. If Liddy had been less of a nutcase, or if he'd been more competent. If the cops hadn't checked on the office complex that night, if the FBI hadn't been able to connect the burglars to Howard Hunt, if Hunt hadn't gotten greedy. If John Dean hadn't developed a sense of self-preservation (something notably lacking in Ehrlichman and Haldeman) that turned into a genuine concern for the rule of law. Above all, of course, if the tapes hadn't existed, or if Nixon had set fire to them before they were subpoenaed. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that the only reason anyone higher than Hunt and Liddy suffered any consequences at all, even in an era of decreased partisanship, is because Nixon was literally caught on tape authorizing felonies.
I'd love to see a similar documentary in 2040 about the Trump administration, or even in 2030 about GW Bush's. I doubt we will, though. I expect the only reason so many of the principals spoke so freely is that all their actions had been a matter of public record for twenty years. Don't Get Caught remains the operating principle of the Republican party.
Ah well.
(Available on Youtube, though with poor video quality. Also available on BBC's iPlayer for the next eleven months. Highly recommended.)