04:08 pm
A Brush with Nixonland (I Feel Dirty)
I’m still plugging away at Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland, which I’m really enjoying. Today, I came face-to-page with events in my past.
On the evening of March 14, 1970, Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew attended the annual Gridiron Club dinner in Washington. For those who aren’t familiar with this old-boy ritual, Gridiron is is an annual white-tie event where reporters and the people they cover get together to pretend they like each other. It used to be a bigger deal than the White House Correspondents Association dinner, but because it remains off-the-record, it has fallen off the public’s radar screen.
Back in 1970, Gridiron was still an all-white, all-male bastion, so you can imagine the hilarity that ensued. Here’s an account of some of what happened that night, from Jules Whitcover’s Very Strange Bedfellows: The Short and Unhappy Marriage of Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew:
The president and his vice president did make a rare joint appearance at the 1970 Gridiron dinner of Washington newspaper correspondents and editors. Two nights before the affair, Nixon called Agnew to the White House for a secret meeting, which turned out to be a rehearsal for a gag Nixon had worked up on his own, with only Haldeman in on it. At the dinner, the president strolled onto the stagte and called the vice president to join him, asking him whether there really was a southern strategy in which he played a key role. On cue, Agnew replied emphatically: “No, suh!” Then they sat down at separate pianos. Each time Nixon began to play a favorite [song] of a former president… Agnew on the other piano loudly interrupted with “Dixie.” They wound up playing a duet of “God Bless America” and “Auld Lang Syne,” the traditional Gridiron closer, in a public display of frivolity uncommon for both of them.”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Those wacky racists. I bet it was a smash.
The next day, Nixon hosted a prayer breakfast in the East Room, featuring Billy Graham.
So I’m in the middle of 1970 in Nixonland at the moment, and these events just came up — they’re mentioned in passing during Perlstein’s discussion of the Chicago 8 trial. It turns out that attending the prayer breakfast was a reward for the trial’s presiding judge, Julius J. Hoffman, who by all accounts basically ignored the law in presiding over the trial. From the book:
Three days later Judge Hoffman received an enthusiastic clap on the shoulder from Richard Nixon. He was a special guest at the president’s weekly Christian service in the East Room, where the Reverend Billy Graham preached that America’s differences could melt in the heat of a religious revival.
So now to the reason I’m bringing this up. My dad attended that Gridiron dinner, and my parents both attended the White House service the next day. The night of the Gridiron dinner, my mom and I were in a rope line (with all the other wives) in the lobby of what was then the Statler Hilton. Since I was 7 at the time (and the only kid there), the other women pushed me to the front so I could see. Then Nixon walks in the door. The wives go nuts. So Nixon comes over, works the line… and shakes my hand.
I was in heaven. The President shook my hand! I swore that I would never wash it again (my mother soon disabused me of that notion) Then, the next day, when my `rents went to the White House for the prayer service, there was a receiving line. My mom, who adored Nixon (still does, for that matter), tells him that he had shaken my hand the night before. Nixon smiles and asks her, “What’s his name?” He grabs her program, pulls out a pen, writes a dedication to me, and signs it. My mother was mortified at the time, but I was thrilled. The President knows my name!
Now it turns out that these two epochal events in my young life were little more than a racist farce and a reward for persecution of political speech.
Hooray. Mom, I need to wash my hand about a thousand times now.
Two years later, I supported McGovern. Really. I think I was trying to impress my cool older sister.
By the way, I still have the autograph. I may be ashamed, but I’m not stupid.
And yes, I’m that old.
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