I feel giddy, Oh so giddy! (To be sung to the tune of Maria’s song in “West Side Story.â€) Maybe it was the never-ending heat. Or perhaps too many loads of laundry yesterday. Or Romney, trying to outdo Tom Harkin with his fancy picnics in Iowa. But I think what did it was Democrats.com(munity) and their YouTube contest about dumping Dick. Two young women, in their respective rooms glued to their respective cell phones, carrying on a conversation. The instigator instigated a call to Nancy to convince her to support impeachment. And they proceeded to do the backandforth talking points we all have heard a million times. For a moment I thought about taking my trusty stomach soother but forgot to. I crashed. Woke up this morning feeling so good. Can take the heat. Can get to the grocery with my trusty boy friend (five times younger than I) and could even do more laundry if need be. But first I just have to tell you how it was in the old days.
When we were dealing with the first Tricky Dick I was in my element but out of my age group. We were all learning to be better computer programmers in an era when the IBM 360 was to die for. And to die was the subject of lunch conversation. Viet Nam was real to recent college graduates with draft cards still in their pockets. The women were even more involved. Mostly they were recent post-Sputnik math majors who had answered the call of their country by being ready to get our space project up and running. And they were political. One woman, whose husband became a veteran against the war--John Kerry style--reminded me that Women for Peace worked for them before the men even thought of the idea, had all the moves. Knew how the underground to Canada worked, and called the ruckus on Michigan Avenue during the disastrous 68 Democratic convention The Second American Revolution. Get the point? We, young and those of us old enough to be their mothers, were not bashful. I even served a special function, despite my advanced age, because I could tell them how Tricky Dick had spent his whole political career scared of Communists and how he tried to scare everyone else. Between 1968 and 1974, I held my tongue many times, because the neighbors were still scared of Communists in Viet Nam. Then one Monday morning during the last week of March, 1973, I had my JOY moment. The Wall Street Journal declared impeachment on the table. Why? Because the Chicago Tribune, that venue with Colonel McCormack’s aura still hovering over it, had thrown down the gauntlet. And the rest is history.
After Watergate hearings, we had the Church committee. We had FISA. We had J. Edgar on the ropes. We even had a few folks go to jail. It helped that we had NYTimes willing to be blacklisted because they printed the Pentagon Papers. And of course we had the Washington Post and their two reporters who fooled around in parking garages until they got some good reportage. Robert Redford got a good movie credit from that.
What will we have after this go-around?
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