{"id":368,"date":"2008-12-18T09:49:00","date_gmt":"2008-12-18T13:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2008\/12\/18\/frost-nixon-bush-and-shoe\/"},"modified":"2008-12-18T09:49:00","modified_gmt":"2008-12-18T13:49:00","slug":"frost-nixon-bush-and-shoe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2008\/12\/18\/frost-nixon-bush-and-shoe\/","title":{"rendered":"Frost, Nixon, Bush and Shoe"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few days ago, I watched the new film Frost\/Nixon. It tells the story of talk show host David Frost’s epic interview with disgraced former president Richard Nixon. <\/p>\n

It’s a brilliant film and the central theme feels completely contemporary: How does a society find closure when a democratically-elected leader turns out to be a disaster?<\/p>\n

In the movie, Nixon comes as close as he ever came to a full-bore confession. He acknowledges the fundamental damage he wreaked on America and our civic institutions.<\/p>\n

But during the interviews, he also offered that famous assertion of the imperial presidency: “When the president does it, that means it is not illegal.”<\/p>\n

(You can see clips of the original, devastating interviews on Youtube here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

The global response to the George Bush-shoe-throwing incident has much the same cathartic feel. <\/p>\n

Obviously, the act itself was outrageous: You don’t toss objects at American presidents.<\/p>\n

But it was the gesture of a frustrated global culture that has no other way of condemning Mr. Bush or calling him to task for his conduct.<\/p>\n

The parallels are the more perfect because Mr. Bush — like Mr. Nixon in his day — had been working feverishly to shape and manipulate the public response to his leadership.<\/p>\n

All of that was eclipsed in a heartbeat. <\/p>\n

Both politicians were masters of political symbolism. Both men understood the power of television. Mr. Bush must know that he and that pair of shoes are forever linked.<\/p>\n

Some day, Hurricane Katrina, the current economic crisis, and the mismanaged wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will have faded into the history books.<\/p>\n

But those few seconds of humiliating videotape will remain as a stark expression of the public’s disdain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few days ago, I watched the new film Frost\/Nixon. It tells the story of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}