I'm in the Mood for Dick

Yours truly is feeling nostalgic and squishy inside like on of those diner jelly donuts with the pink icing that look oh-so tempting at 5:30 am when your mind is a little bent. Maybe it's the punishing heat but I'm thinking of 1972 and the Watergate Hearings, my mother snarling about missing her "stories." Still, we watched. We watched obsessively for weeks. Maybe because Mom was wasted on Valium and Dickle. Or maybe she had a thing for Archibald Cox. Did you realize that an estimated 85% of U.S. households watched at least one of the hearings (so much for tearing a country apart). 1972 was the year my political conscience was born. I remember hanging out on the swings with my friend Kim and talking about the election. She was in sixth grade, I was in fifth. We were big supporters of McGovern.

So anyway, it's 2006 now and I'm watching Bush explain his failures to the European press and I find myself missing Dick. Dick Nixon. Yeah. I'm sorry we don't have 'ol Dick Nixon to kick around anymore. I want to see a little more finesse when someone lies to my face, not this guffawing aw-shucks loser frat boy.