Mark Feldstein's "Poisoning The Press: Richard Nixon, Jack Anderson, and the rise of Washington's Scandal Culture", argues well against those smitten fanboys who still insist Hitch's bloated doggerel is "good writing." The subject of the book is, of all things, the subject of the book, not the writer's assorted bigotries and dubious assertions. Sorry Hitchens fans, Feldstein seems to have gone in for the kind of "overly literal fact checking" Hitchens the "journalist" decries. When a point is in dispute (most notably weather Nixon gave Howard Hunt the order to murder Anderson) it is presented as such.
You want to read this book. Hilarious, frightening, stranger-than-fiction stuff on almost every page, Feldstein raises some terrible questions about the Nixon Era and leaves some for the readers to ponder themselves. Feldstein's premise, that Nixon and Anderson were different sides of the same coin, may not fully blossom, but it's at the very least an amazing compare and contrast.
Indeed, Hitchwatchers may find some interesting points where Anderson and Hitchens meet on the graft. Anderson had dogged Nixon for years by the time he became President, exposing the shady aspects of his early campaign financing and reaching a critical mass during the amazing but now forgotten ITT scandal of Nixon's first term. Anderson became a household name, liberal hero, and was on the cover of Time when it was still a mark of distinction. His often questionable scruples were no problem for his loyal readership.
At the height of his celebrity, however, Anderson damaged his credibility by printing falsehoods about McGovern's would be running mate, refusing to retract them even after they had been shown to be false. After somehow being left behind on the Watergate scandal, he tried to keep his mojo going by nonsensical attacks on Carter. Reliably far right ABC rewarded him with a silly regular segment on "Good Morning America" and Anderson spent years as a rather pathetic toady for Ronald Reagan, who stroked his ego and made him the high access equivalent of what Bob Woodward is now.
At book's end, of course, Feldstein notes that Nixon would somehow have his revenge through Cheney and Rumsfeld, and Hitch's pro-Iraq comrade Henry Kissinger. When Hitch first assisted Bush in getting elected (term one) and then flat out endorsed him (term two) he was clearly casting his vote in favor of Richard Nixon's far right conception of the Imperial Presidency; a notion of unrestricted power the man or woman in the White House is unlikely to ever give back without a fight.
Like Anderson, Hitchens got very rich. We should laugh mordantly, however, when Hitch now dreams in print of Kissinger's death. Those in Nixon's motley brood can now go to their maker with a sense of mission accomplished; and Hitchens was there to lend full support when the chips were up.
“The enemies of intolerance cannot be tolerant." • "If it is an offense to justice to hold people who may have been victims of mistaken identity or of vendettas by other factions, then it is also an offense to justice to release psychopathic killers who believe that they have divine permission to throw acid in the faces of girls who want to attend school." • "Don't be such a lesbian!
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