Thank you, Deep Throat

Whatever his motives, whether they were petty or noble, W. Mark Felt helped bring down a hopelessly corrupt president and our nation was the better for it. Don't ever let anyone tell you that Watergate was merely a third-rate burglary, or that Nixon's only crime was in getting caught. He was a despot in the making who was not content merely to defeat his opponents, but to destroy them. We can only be glad that in the end he was undone by his own paranoia. When Nixon died, it was Hunter S. Thompson who provided the only appropriate obituary:

He was the real thing--a political monster straight out of Grendel and a very dangerous enemy. He could shake your hand and stab you in the back at the same time. He lied to his friends and betrayed the trust of his family. Not even Gerald Ford, the unhappy ex-president who pardoned Nixon and kept him out of prison, was immune to the evil fallout. Ford, who believes strongly in Heaven and Hell, has told more than one of his celebrity golf partners that "I know Iwill go to hell, because I pardoned Richard Nixon." ...

Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism--which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place. He looked so good on paper that you could almost vote for him sight unseen. He seemed so all-American, so much like Horatio Alger, that he was able to slip through the cracks of Objective Journalism. You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful. ...

He has poisoned our water forever. Nixon will be remembered as a classic case of a smart man shitting in his own nest. But he also shit in our nests, and that was the crime that history will burn on his memory like a brand. By disgracing and degrading the Presidency of the United States, by fleeing the White House like a diseased cur, Richard Nixon broke the heart of the American Dream.