Mothballs and Deep Throat

jelewis8 — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 19:39:52 +0000

So Deep Throat was not that Jerry Hardin guy from the X-Files after all, but a second in line at the FBI named Mark Felt. The press is trumpeting the glory call of old time triumphs–the takedown of an American President, whose perfidy as Commander in Chief came to define the beginning of the 1970′s and increased the public’s distrust of government. That the press uncovered such diabolical happenings, and that Deep Throat’s anonymity was kept secret for over thirty years is a badge the press places upon itself as yet another example of why the 4th Estate is so desperately needed to counter the encroachment and deceptions the government purposefully sows.
My increasing apathy and cynicism at the state of the world leads me to point out that Felt was simply annoyed at Nixon for being passed over for a promotion, and thus his contact with Woodward and Bernstein wasn’t out of some moral or patriotic duty, but rather out of spite and retribution. Some press hero.
Eh, not that it really matters to me. I have about as much affinity with the original Deep Throat as I do with the porno of the same name (hint, not a lot, in case you had to ask). I come from the generation whose mind is more on the latest iPod release than whose cover is being blown in some uranium yellowcake scandal. I suppose years down the road some of us will still remember the name Valerie Plame and know what that means; I’ll actually be one of them, oddly enough, though my knowledge of the case is, even now, somewhat fuzzy. Will my generation also remember the Iraq war as the war that, details aside, overthrew Saddam Hussein?
I suspect that history is being shaped, and has been since before the war started, to paint it in rather a more subtle light, one that doesn’t fall quite as kindly on the overthrowers. Oh sure, Saddam’s a monster and all, but what about due process? What about sovereignty? What about blood for oil? These are the questions that will resonate in text books, and teachers will give knowing glances about the room at the young, impressionable kids learning all this stuff for the first time as they talk about Bush and his controversial policies, his questionable win of two Presidential terms, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians.
This is how history is remembered, and like Woodward and Bernstein and the remainder of the media whose watchful eye on events has certainly done its part in structuring viewpoints, the media will congratulate itself years from now, when democracy has indeed become firmly rooted in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. They’ll write articles remembering the good they did in exposing the truth in places like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. And well they should. For who among us wants to remember the bad, the horrible, the extremes of human error and waste and scandal? It’s necessary to remember it all as well as we might, for the obvious reasons that repetitive history would otherwise teach us.
Certainly it behooves us to have that record, however spotty and jaded and coloured with specific lenses. Smart people can sift through the whole chest and find faded, flattened flowers inside books, letters from home, drawings from the kids. The press sees the dust and mothballs and mouse droppings as an indication of our collective condition. When you’re pawing through your history chest, what do you see?

» Fringe Blog – Writing on Film, Culture, and Things on the Fringe

Mothballs and Deep Throat