Deep Throat, “Woodstein” and life

I’ve been rather blase about the disclosure that Mark Felt was the “Deep Throat” of Watergate fame. I think that’s because that while Woodward and Bernstein and Watergate moved me from sportswriting to political reporting, the discussion of that time period is saddening. It demonstrates just how far we’ve come in the wrong direction.

I question whether today’s media would be willing to devote the attention span to and weather the storm that accompanies work like that done by the WaPo and others. Just look at the Iraq War. Rather than scrutinizing what we were being told, the media lapped it up. The media has become so afraid of the right wing attack dog mentality, it hasn’t the gonads to take on anything the White House says or the heat if it does. Even Bob Woodward is writing fluff pieces about the Bushies.

Yet it is not just the media. This is also a reflection of the splintering of and ignorance in American society. Compare the current state of affairs — the Iraq War, the administration’s lies and deception, and the Bushies efforts to monitor and/or silence any form of opposition — to the Watergate era — the Vietnam War, the lies of Nixon, et al., and the Nixon administration’s domestic surveillance. Despite their similarity, the nation tolerates what was intolerable. The public and the media are, instead, all too fascinated with foolishness like reality television, “runaway” brides and the latest “trial of the century.”

We have covered a lot of distance the last 30 years. Sadly, it strikes me that it has largely been a trip downhill.

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I have found no better blueprint for healing our troubled land than is contained in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. But I find a nation drifting so far from those ideals as to almost lose its way.

George McGovern announcing his candidacy for president, January 18, 1971