Carter's Rabbit

In 1979, while fishing in Plains, Georgia, president Jimmy Carter was forced to use his paddle to fend off a deranged rabbit that had attacked his rowboat. A week later, Carter's press secretary, Jody Powell, unwisely mentioned the incident to an Associated Press correspondent over tea, the reporter dutifully filing the story on the AP wire the next day:

The incident, entirely unimportant in itself, quickly set off a minor media frenzy. The press, desperate for copy during the late summer lull, quickly elevated the incident into a metaphor of the haplessness and impotence of the Carter Administration.

Though photographs of the incident were suppressed at the time, Reagan's operatives eventually managed to get their hands on them. A color copy of the photo can now be purchased at the Jimmy Carter Library for $25.50.

The photo itself paints a devasting tableaux. Alone in his tiny rowboat, Carter looks hunched over and solitary. He is diffidently splashing water at a tiny ball of wet fur that is over fifteen feet from the president and is swimming away from him. Not exactly Teddy Roosevelt tracking for bear.

In general, voters are not attracted to presidents who appear to be taken to the limit by a bunny rabbit. This is one reason why military service has historically been an important path to the White House: It comforts people to think their leader has the prowess to manfully dispatch attacks, whether it be the Soviet army or Silly Wabbit. (Sadly, this is probably why women have had a hard time in presidential elections.)

Why haven't nutcases become conspiratorial about this yet? Clearly this incident was hatched by the Trilateral Commission, working in tandem with a cabal of bankers and fringe scientists, to undermine the presidency of Jimmy Carter—thereby clearing the path for a president, Ronald Reagan, more open to corporate/military rule.

Maybe I'll become that nut.

It's also possible, however, that leaders simply become burdened with the symbols the people want them to wear. Within a year of assuming office, Jimmy Carter was already being attacked for being a rudderless namby-pamby. A battle-to-the-death with an aquatic bunny rabbit only confirmed doubts.

Eight months into the new administration, Obama's presidency is already being called Carter's second term. As Obama tries to revive the ideal of progress in America, a notion that went out of style around the time ties became narrow, he is wise to remember Carter's Rabbit—unless you want to spend four years chasing away your own furry animals, always act sure and pretend to be in control. Above all, voters respect strength.

Richard Nixon reviews Star Wars

As many of you know, I have been spending a great deal of time lately in San Clemente writing my memoirs—a task I feel represents the culmination of my long and fruitful career in public life. For quite some time, Pat has been begging me to slow down and not work so hard. After weeks of pleading, last night I finally agreed to go out and see this film Tricia and Julie have been raving about for weeks: Star Wars. The movie turned out to be a delightful break from my labors.

Dear old Pat always knows best.

Star Wars is an exciting space adventure pitting a rag tag band of anti-establishment rebels against an "empire" meant to represent, of course, evil incarnate. This rebel gang includes CP3O, a gold-plated, lispingly homosexual robot, and Chewbacca, a shaggy eight foot tall creature managing to be more hairy and inarticulate than any stoned hippy you've ever seen.

And I know that's saying a lot.

The rebels are also given guidance by a shrunken green man named Yoda with a funny accent who represents the Jewish elite who lend their support to the anti-establishment side.

I must admit at first I didn't like the overt leftist political overtones of the movie. It does not take a lot of sophistication to see the rebels as representing those who do not like our American way of life: The communists, the Hollywood types, the Viet Cong, all the shouters and the bums who'd rather protest than work together to build a stronger America.

It takes true statesmanship, of course, to see the vision of the movie's "villain," Darth Vader, cleverly depicted as an Uncle Tom black who sells out to the establishment. Though the movie depicts him as vicious and power mad, in fact Darth Vader is striving for nothing more than peace through stability.

Dr. Kissinger and I understood this. Though many have criticized our overthrow of the increasingly socialist Allende government in Chile in 1970s, we understood that consolidating our power was absolutely the best way to achieve a lasting peace in South America. Should our "Death Star"—which we should be clear represents the Galactic Empire's spherical version of the Pentagon—been blown up for making the hard but right choices?

I think you can all agree that would be the wrong thing to do.

Despite its misguided politics, however, I found I could not resist the charms of this movie! I found myself on the edge of my seat when Luke Skywalker grabbed that rope and carried the lovely Princess Leia across the threshold—the startrooper's laser beams flashing all around them! And the dog-fighting of the those spaceships before Luke Skywalker blew up the Deathstar? During this scene, my heart was pounding harder than when I faced off against Nikita Kruschev during the Kitchen Debate!

Since my resignation three years ago I have learned to have become more open minded about hippies and leftists. Yesterday even Tricia was listening to this piece of trash Rock'n'roll by some hippy named John Denver. The song was called "Rocky Mountain High," an ode no doubt to smoking dope. Like I said, hippy trash. But I have to admit it had my tapping my toes.

These past years have been a time of deep reflection for me. I have done a lot of thinking during those long, solitary walks along the beach in San Clemente. The world keeps changing but Richard Nixon keep changing with it. If nothing else, watching this movie taught me that the world needs Richard Nixon more than ever.

Fear and Loathing at the Bauerstown Baseball Association

Sports writer and legendary freak Hunter S. Thompson covers my little league baseball game, 1979

By the time we got to the little league field, my attorney had begun raving about the concession stand. “As your attorney,” he said, “I advise you to buy some hot dogs and Swedish fish.” The mescaline now clearly had a grip on him. At the sound of a foul ball, he swung around to the right, nearly elbowing a plump-faced housewife with a purple sailboat knitted pattern on her sweater.

“These people are vultures,” my attorney said, wheeling back to face me. “They’re filth. They probably eat babies.” A bead of spittle stuck to his bottom lip. The lady with the sailboat sweater took a step back. Her eyes had become wild with fear. With a head swimming with mescaline, her head looked like a slab of bread dough stuck atop a headless body.

Standing between a 300 pound mescaline-crazed Samoan and this terrified woman, who for all I knew was the wife of the police commissioner, I felt the need to explain the importance of our task. To put her terrified, doughy mind at ease.

“Ma’am,” I said. “I am a doctor of Journalism and this is my attorney. We were sent here on a secret mission from San Francisco. Something of importance is going to happen here, according to my editor, Charlie Chan. Do you understand?”

She took another step backwards, nervously biting her bottom lip. I was now visualizing her husband—no doubt a squared jawed ex-Marine as well as a cop—clotting my head with a nightstick. This was getting dangerous. She needed to be neutralized.

“There are infiltrators here. In the bleachers, umpiring the games. CIA. KGB. IBM. We’re here to protect you—”

She stumbled backward and ran away—no doubt to gather a posse of insurance adjusters to bash the skulls of the acid-chomping degenerates hanging around the little league concessionaire.

“Suppose we get our hot dog and repair to greener pastures?” I said to my attorney. He was transfixed by a game winning hit by one of the players for the Allegheny All-Stars.

“Did you see that?” he said. “I’d swear that little kid over there just closed his eyes and stuck his bat out, knocking the ball all the way to the center field fence. Now the other kids are literally hoisting him on their shoulders.”

“And I’d swear your face is being eaten by rabid wolverines.”

“Son of a bitch that kid got lucky.”

"That happens sometimes. Let's get some hot dogs. And Swedish Fish. They're two cents a piece here. We can charge 10,000 of them to Sports Illustrated."

"Last out in the game, down by one, full count and a man on first and third, and the kid just stuck his goddamn bat out there. Won the game."

"Amazing. Now let's go before the vultures peck out our eyes. Got any amyls left?"

"Luckiest damn kid in the whole world," my attorney said over the sounds of frenzied, victorious little leaguers.

Zen batter and sports hero.

My life in Disco

In case you're wondering if I enjoyed myself during the Age of Disco, here is some visual proof: I definitely had a right funky good time.

This, unfortunately, represented the highmark of my dance moves and skill with the ladies.

Something tells me that Ms. 1976 here in the yellow dress went on to have a fabulous life...

Surviving in the 1970s

In a review of the 70s concentration camp movie Seven Beauties, psychologist and concentration camp survivor Bruno Bettelheim wrote in 1976 that the decade was guided by a sense of "empty survivorship," a desire to simply exist from moment-to-moment despite the lack of any true threat.

In Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter Thompson's 1971 tale of drug excess, makes the comparision to the 60s counterculture explicit:

We are all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled that 60's. That was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip. He crashed around America selling "consciousness expansion" without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him seriously. All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped create... a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody... or at least some force – is tending the light at the end of the tunnel.

It makes sense that the culture of the 70s was tuned to mere survival. If Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas accomplished nothing else, it revealed the very moment in which the 60s counterculture became as empty and ugly as the plastic/corporate culture it was meant to replace.

By the mid-70s, youth culture was stuck between two ideals of corruption. The result? A decade obsessed with themes of wandering and surviving.

Since I encountered this notion of "empty survivorship" in Griel Marcus' Lipstick Traces, it has become the key to explaining the entire decade—a time marked by:

Peak popularity of daredevils who conquer entirely invented dangers

• Evel Kneival
• the nut who decided to walk a tightrope across the World Trade Center)

Songs about aimless wandering

• Running on Empty
• Truckin'

... or the million songs about truckers trying to make it home

• Six Days on the Road
• Willin'

70s Disaster films

• The Towering Inferno
• Airport (not to be confused with the great Airplane!)

... and horror films

• Texas Chainsaw Massacre
• Halloween

Songs about being lost in space

• Major Tom
• Rocket Man (both of which use space as a metaphor for drug addiction)

Or songs literally about survival

• I Will Survive

Making it through, finding your way home, just surviving—themes of a decade afraid to go forward but not wanting to go back.