Right. . . and now we have gone off on a dangerous compound tangent. And it has mushroomed into something unmanageable. . . But before we zoom off in whatever direction might come next, it would be unfair not to mention that the Times was the first paper to break the Pentagon Papers story, a command decision that forced Nixon and his would-be enforcers to come out in the open with fangs bared, snarling threats to have everybody connected with the publication of the Pentagon Papers either lashed into jail or subpoenaed into so many courtrooms that all their minds would snap before they finally wound up in the poorhouse.

As it turned out, however, the Times management strapped on its collective balls and announced that they were prepared to go to the mat with Nixon on that one -- a surprisingly tough stance that was almost instantly backed up by influential papers like the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. . . And the appearance of that solid front, however shaky, caused serious turmoil in the White House. Spiro Agnew was pried loose from the kickback racket and sent out on the stump to stir up the Silent Majority against the “radic-libs” and “liberal elitists” of the “eastern media establishment” -- the “nattering nabobs of negativism.”

Jesus! Those were the days, eh?

STRANGE INTERLUDE: An Aborted Prediction, for the Record. . . Grim Dispatches from San Clemente: A Pitiful Basket Case, a Chronic Bed-Wetter. . . The Millionaire Felon on the Federal Dole. . . The Sudden News from Mister Ford

Won't you fly O eagle fly

You better run little cottontail run

I hope you both live long enough

To see the setting sun

-- Marshall Tucker Band

September 6th, 1974

The headline in today's Washington Post says Richard Nixon is “lonely and depressed” down there in his exile hideout in San Clemente. He sucks eggs for breakfast and wanders back and forth on the beach, spitting frequently into the surf and brooding about some vicious Polack whose name he can't remember. . . Some low-life friend of John Connally from Houston; the same white-haired little bugger who caused all the trouble with the Supreme Court, and now he has a runaway Grand Jury full of uppity niggers who -- in Nixon's own words -- “want to pick the carcass.”

Indeed. . . What the hell is a carcass good for anyway, except to pick at? Gnaw the skull, suck the bones, then soak the bastard with gasoline and toss a match on it.

Jesus! How much more of this cheapjack bullshit can we be expected to take from that stupid little gunsel? Who gives a fuck if he's lonely and depressed out there in San Clemente? If there were any such thing as true justice in this world, his rancid carcass would be somewhere down around Easter Island right now, in the belly of a hammerhead shark.