No, I’m Spartacus!

.

But does it matter anymore?

Former F.B.I. Official Says He Was Watergate's 'Deep Throat'
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: May 31, 2005
NEW YORK -- A former FBI official claims he was "Deep Throat," the long-anonymous source who leaked secrets about President Nixon's Watergate coverup to The Washington Post, Vanity Fair reported Tuesday.

W. Mark Felt, 91, who was second-in-command at the FBI in the early 1970s, kept the secret even from his family until 2002, when he confided to a friend that he had been Post reporter Bob Woodward's source, the magazine said.
"I'm the guy they used to call Deep Throat," he told lawyer John D. O'Connor, the author of the Vanity Fair article, the magazine said in a news release.
…
The Washington Post had no immediate comment on the report.
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The existence of Deep Throat, nicknamed for a popular porn movie of the early 1970s, was revealed in Woodward and Carl Bernstein's best-selling book "All the President's Men." In the hit movie based on the book, Deep Throat was played by Hal Holbrook.

But his identity of the source whose disclosures helped bring down the Nixon presidency remained a mystery.
…
In 1999, Felt denied he was the man.
"I would have done better," Felt told The Hartford Courant. "I would have been more effective. Deep Throat didn't exactly bring the White House crashing down, did he?"
...

Is this guy Deep Throat?

It doesn’t matter one iota.

What matters is noting that during a time still fresh in the memories of those still living there was once a free press that investigated lies and corruption (against very long odds, don’t forget) and there were people in government for whom principle outweighed slavish fealty to the Big Boss Man.

Oh, and that you could reference porn and not have your neck stepped on by the Wahabi Wing of the GOP.

Nixon’s crimes were many, and many of the disease vectors he released into the body politic – the courting of Segregationists as party of the so-called “Southern Strategy” and using the power of the government to personally vilify and destroy one’s enemies – are now pillars of the Republican Party: As is glaringly obvious these days, without the muscle and mouth of the Ultra Rightwing Lunatics, the typical GOP candidate couldn’t win Miss Congeniality at the Alabama State Fair, much less national office.

However the actual crime for which Nixon was forced to resign was directing the cover-up of a criminal act…which also happened to be part of the vast gang rape of the constitution that he and his cronies had been engaged in from day one.

And there was once a time when journalists investigated, and when Republican politicians could be called upon to care such things.
When hearings were held.

Even when the nation was at war. Remember, Vietnam wasn’t exactly over.
This from the "Edges of The Wall" --

Eleven hours before the ceasefire deadline, on January 27, 1973, Lieutenant Colonal William B. Nolde was listed as the last U.S. "combat death," but American military personnel continued to be killed in Viet Nam. More than two years after the peace agreement of 1973 went into effect, on April 30, 1975, the temporary president of South Viet Nam, General Duong Van "Big" Minh, turned the government over to the Communists. The remaining Americans had fled the day before, but American losses continued. On May 13, 1975, 25 Air Force lives were lost, and on May 15, 1975, another 18 Americans (14 Marines, 2 Navy, and 2 Air Force) were killed. At least one more soldier died in 1975: Jon O. Nacy, an Army PFC from Detroit who died on November 8, and he wasn't the last.

-- and we still had this thing called the Cold War that everyone was taking very seriously.

Even when the President had been re-elected – in Nixon’s case, by an historic landslide; in Bushes case, by a 100,000 votes in one state, goosed up by fake terrorist alerts, baldfaced lies and dire warnings about evil men killing your children if Kerry was elected.

The difference all actually point in the other direction; the crimes of Richard Nixon were buried deeply and it took years of patient and aggressive work to tease out the truth. OTOH, the crimes of George Bush litter the ground like so many fist-sized gold nuggets. It’s sitting right there! Low-hanging fruit like Manwhore Jeff Gannon (pun intended) practically scrapes the ground, and yet the MSM actively flees from any mention of it. All that is lacking in them is all that was lacking from the creatures in The Wizard of Oz; a press corps with courage, a Republican Party with a heart and a President with, well, ok, that’s just too damned easy...

Let’s just say that a more morally evolved political species might have taken a different lesson away from the Criminal Presidency of Richard Nixon: a different breed of Republicans might have learned to be more responsible civil servants and better stewards of the nation and its Constitution.

But alas, the Fall of Nixon belonged to the Age Deep Throat...and this is the the Age of Alisha Klass, and all the likes of rectum pirates like Bush and Cheney, Rumsfeld and DeLay, Frist and Santorum seem to have learned is to keep no notes, never let yourself be put under oath, burn the tapes…

…and just lie louder.