By John Kendall Hawkins
In June 1972, Martha Mitchell, wife of US Attorney General John Mitchell, was brutally beaten in her hotel room by a thug hired by her husband to watch over her and prevent her from communicating to the public. Steve King, the man who beat her black-and-blue and had a psychiatrist stick a needle filled with a tranquilizer in her cheeky ass, never faced criminal charges, and went on to become, 45 years later, the current ambassador to the Czech Republic -- a Trump appointee unanimously approved by Congress in 2017. Now, isn't that a kick in the head of Lady Liberty. There have been many follow-on kicks since.
Martha Mitchell was beaten and sedated because she was on the phone to a reporter -- Helen Thomas, then of UPI. The phone was literally ripped out of her hand, and out of the wall, the last thing Thomas heard before the disconnection was: "You just get away." Martha, known as "The Mouth of the South" or as "a real life Scarlett O'Hara" who frankly didn't give a damn what people thought of her opinions was a "sensation" on the DC social circuit and in the Press. Newspapers could always count on her to come up with some kind of colorful anecdote. But President Richard Nixon hated her, and insisted that her husband, John, find a way to muzzle her.
Just after their arrest, Martha had seen one of the Watergate burglars on TV -- Jim McCord, a former chauffeur for her children -- and was calling Helen Thomas to blow the whistle. Had she been able to communicate to Thomas what she knew of McCord, and his connections to the Nixon administration, the president's re-election campaign may have unraveled and a second term quashed. Instead, a skittish press, and an unsupportive husband, accepted the premise that she was an unstable drunk having a breakdown. People turned on her, and, as she poignantly describes in an Episode 1 Dick Cavett interview, she was never able to trust people again -- a devastating proposition for someone so extraverted. Further, during the interview, she expressed fear of being shot.
All of this powerful political and psychological tension is captured beautifully in the excellent new Epix series, Slow Burn. The series purports to relate important details overlooked or left out of the master narrative about Watergate and the Nixon resignation that has evolved over the decades. Martha Mitchell rarely features in any 'commemoration' of the Nixon take-down. And yet, Episode 1 (embedded above) of the series makes an excellent case for how the press betrayed this insider. More importantly, producer Leon Neyfakh, makes sure we understand that there are valuable parallels between the Nixon era and the Trump circus. We now remember Steve King, but Roger Stone, who just received a 40-month sentence for lying to Congress and witness-tampering, also makes a cameo appearance to describe Nixon's cover-up.
In an interesting symbiotic development, the Epix Slow Burn series is a visual enactment of the prize-winning podcast series by the same name presented by Slate magazine. I watched Episode 1 "Martha", then went back and listened to the podcast, which is about a half-hour shorter than the TV broadcast. There are extras added obviously, such as the interview with Stone, and the visual stimulation allows us to see key unfamiliar figures, like Martha, and helps conjure up a photo album of the time. Other figures, like Dick Cavett, Mike Douglas, and old friend Tom Snyder fill in the rough edges of the era. Going back and forth between TV and podcasts, as episodes stream, seems like a winning combination.
The series delivers more of these vignettes and subplots that are off the beaten narrative track -- up next is "Losing Ground," forgotten Congressman Wright Patman's attempt -- way before the Watergate Hearings made Sam Ervin a household name -- to force the conspirators to come clean on the machinations behind the break-in and cover-up. Patman, as Chair of the House Banking and Currency Committee, followed the money long before Mark Felt ("Deep Throat"), a disgruntled FBI deputy director with a grudge, famously insisted that WaPo's Woodward and Bernstein do the same. Though House Democrats at the time had the numbers to force Watergate conspirators to testify, they declined, and, in a farcical slap at the system, Patman held a hearing and interrogated four empty chairs. Compelling stuff.
Other episodes include "A Very Successful Cover-up," "Lie Detectors," True Believers," "Rabbit Holes," "Saturday Night," and "Going South." Again, all of the podcasts (and transcripts) are available for free online, either at Slate, or other easy-to-find places. The series has never been more relevant, as we see so many of the same dynamics at work in the failing Trump administration. Nixon resigned before he could be impeached and, very likely, convicted of high crimes by the Senate and tossed out on his ear - very likely to face criminal charges.
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