GREG SCOBLETE wonders if the current outbreak of Deep Throat nostalgia isn't based on the media's current troubles. "This is the perfect chance to relive - in Al Bundy-like fashion - the Big One."
Of course, it's not so clear that the story reflects as well on the press as some think.
And Austin Bay observes that "conspiracy theorists of another era would have a field day with a J. Edgar Hoover protege bringing down a president."
Yep. I don't mind Nixon going -- I think he was a pretty lousy President for all sorts of reasons aside from Watergate -- but it's obvious that the simplistic Woodward & Bernstein hero-tale is a bit, um, incomplete.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Ben Stein offers a defense of Nixon, but I'm unpersuaded. And his historical claim that Felt, Woodward, Bernstein, et al., laid the foundation for the Cambodian genocide seems a bit hysterical. I think it's also ahistorical, as I don't see any reason to think that events in Cambodia would have gone differently had Nixon finished his term.
MORE: Stephen Bainbridge has more thoughts on Deep Throat and anonymous sourcing: "Might we not have evaluated Woodward and Bernstein's work with a more informed eye if we knew they were being fed stories by somebody with a bureaucratic axe to grind?"
