Wednesday, August 13, 2003
"THE FINEST GIRLS FROM BALTIMORE."
Escort service? Spam subject line? Desperation pictorial idea from the editors of Playboy?
Historical footnote, actually, and one that makes me giggle more than historical footnotes generally do. Jacqueline and I have been watching Watergate retrospectives recently, and on a couple of them John Dean talks about some of the wacky schemes G. Gordon Liddy proposed as part of the effort to make sure Richard Nixon got re-elected in 1972. (And what a challenge that turned out to be!)
Liddy himself recounts an even more preposterous scheme -- to kidnap anti-Nixon demonstrators and leave them drugged in Mexico until the Republican National Convention was over -- and so I don't have any problem believing Dean when he says Liddy also proposed hiring prostitutes to lure Democrats onto an electronically outfitted houseboat where they would be tape-recorded in compromising situations.
As jaws dropped among the Nixon confederates present, Dean recalls, Liddy turned to Attorney General John Mitchell and harrumphed:
"General, I want to assure you, these are the finest girls from Baltimore!"
SPEAKING OF WATERGATE, for more than six years now my desk has been about 15 feet from Bob Woodward's office. I suppose I should have met him at some point, but whenever the idea of introducing myself occurs to me, I think of the starstruck Chris Farley character.
("Remember that time when you brought down a crooked president? That was cool!")
Escort service? Spam subject line? Desperation pictorial idea from the editors of Playboy?
Historical footnote, actually, and one that makes me giggle more than historical footnotes generally do. Jacqueline and I have been watching Watergate retrospectives recently, and on a couple of them John Dean talks about some of the wacky schemes G. Gordon Liddy proposed as part of the effort to make sure Richard Nixon got re-elected in 1972. (And what a challenge that turned out to be!)
Liddy himself recounts an even more preposterous scheme -- to kidnap anti-Nixon demonstrators and leave them drugged in Mexico until the Republican National Convention was over -- and so I don't have any problem believing Dean when he says Liddy also proposed hiring prostitutes to lure Democrats onto an electronically outfitted houseboat where they would be tape-recorded in compromising situations.
As jaws dropped among the Nixon confederates present, Dean recalls, Liddy turned to Attorney General John Mitchell and harrumphed:
"General, I want to assure you, these are the finest girls from Baltimore!"
SPEAKING OF WATERGATE, for more than six years now my desk has been about 15 feet from Bob Woodward's office. I suppose I should have met him at some point, but whenever the idea of introducing myself occurs to me, I think of the starstruck Chris Farley character.
("Remember that time when you brought down a crooked president? That was cool!")
