JUST WHAT WAS HE SMOKING?

Now that the latest tapes from the Nixon White House have been
released, the press is all over them with characteristic glee, eager
as always to remind us that not long ago the leader of the free world
was buggier than a flophouse blanket. Don't you get tired of this?

Me neither. So when researcher Doug McVay from Common Sense for Drug
Policy sent me tapes he culled from Nixon's Oval Office rants about
drugs, I pounced on them. I figured it would be a welcome respite
from Nixon's recent rants about Jews.

From the Weed Screed, May 26, 1971:

"You know, it's a funny thing, every one of the bastards that are out
for legalizing marijuana is Jewish. What the Christ is the matter
with the Jews, Bob? What is the matter with them? I suppose it is
because most of them are psychiatrists."

In my professional capacity, I diagnose a delusional state of mind.
It's simple logic: In a previously released rant, Nixon and Billy
Graham gnash and froth over how Jews control the media. How can most
Jews be psychiatrists and still control the media? Nixon does not
explain.

But he does explain many other things in these drug tapes, including
the insidious nexus between drugs, homosexuality, communism and, of
course, Jews.

The excerpts begin with the Nixon doctrine on why marijuana is much
worse than alcohol: It is because people drink "to have fun" but they
smoke marijuana "to get high." This distinction was evidently
enormously significant to Nixon, because he repeats it twice.

In an excruciating sequence from Sept. 9, 1971, Nixon is meeting with
former Pennsylvania governor Raymond P. Shafer. Shafer heads a
presidential commission on drug policy that Nixon has heard might be
flirting with the notion of recommending the decriminalization of
marijuana.

"You're enough of a pro," Nixon tells Shafer, "to know that for you
to come out with something that would run counter to what the
Congress feels and what the country feels, and what we're planning to
do, would make your commission just look bad as hell."

Shafer begins to stammer. Nixon appears to be telling his commission,
in advance, what to conclude.

If there is any doubt about this, Nixon erases it instantly. He
instructs Shafer not to seek input from the Department of Health,
Education and Welfare, which he seems to think is soft on drugs,
apparently because it is filled with, you know, psychiatrists:

"As an old prosecutor, I don't mind somebody putting it in J. Edgar
Hoover's hands, but I come down very hard on the side of putting it
in, uh, hardheaded doctors, rather than a bunch of muddle-headed
psychiatrists."

Shafer can barely get a word in edgewise.

"They're all muddle-headed," Nixon says. "You know what I mean?"

The governor's discomfort is palpable. You can almost hear him
hooking a finger in his collar.

Nixon continues, making things perfectly clear: "But anyway, the
thing to do now is to alert the country to the problem and say now,
this far, no farther, and I think that's what you want to do, take a
strong line."

Suddenly, people start getting up. The meeting is over. Before Shafer
knows what hits him, the president is pushing him out the door, with
a gift of golf balls and cuff links.

Eventually, Shafer's commission would recommend decriminalization.
The Nixon White House was appalled, understandably: Nixon saw drugs
as a threat to the vitals of the republic -- right up there, hand in
hand, with the scourge of homosexuality.

Nixon expounds on this in a lengthy monologue on May 13, 1971. On
this day, he makes it clear that he does not like gay people.
Northern California, he says, has gotten so "faggy" that "I won't
shake hands with anybody from San Francisco."

Nixon loves this subject. He is nearly unstoppable on it. His top
aides H.R. "Bob" Haldeman and John Ehrlichman are in the room, but
they barely speak beyond monosyllabic sycophancies. It takes the
president a while to get to the point, which begins with his review
of a popular TV sitcom he has just watched, apparently for the first
time:

"Archie is sitting here with his hippie son-in-law, married to the
screwball daughter. . . . The son-in-law apparently goes both ways."

Nixon seems to have concluded, against all evidence, that Meathead is
bisexual. Possibly it is the length of his hair. Another character in
the show, Nixon reports, is "obviously queer. He wears an ascot, and
so forth."

The president is outraged that this filth should appear on TV:

"The point that I make is that, goddamn it, I do not think that you
glorify on public television homosexuality. You don't glorify it,
John, anymore than you glorify, uh, whores."

The president asserts that America is in jeopardy from this Archie
Bunker gay thing:

"I don't want to see this country to go that way. You know what
happened to the Greeks. Homosexuality destroyed them. Sure, Aristotle
was a homo, we all know that, so was Socrates."

Ehrlichman interrupts to reassure his boss. Socrates, he says, "never
had the influence that television had."

Precisely, precisely. Nixon is on a roll, lecturing like a history professor:

"Do you know what happened to the Romans? The last six Roman emperors
were fags. . . . You know what happened to the popes? It's all right
that popes were laying the nuns."

Someone laughs nervously. Nixon bulls on, not a hint of humor in his voice.

"That's been going on for years, centuries, but when the popes, when
the Catholic Church went to hell in, I don't know, three or four
centuries ago, it was homosexual. . . . Now, that's what happened to
Britain, it happened earlier to France. And let's look at the strong
societies. The Russians. Goddamn it, they root them out, they don't
let 'em hang around at all. You know what I mean? I don't know what
they do with them."

"Dope? Do you think the Russians allow dope? Hell no. Not if they can
catch it, they send them up. You see, homosexuality, dope, uh,
immorality in general: These are the enemies of strong societies.
That's why the Communists and the left-wingers are pushing it.
They're trying to destroy us."

Well, that was 31 years ago, and I am happy to report that the
Jew-homo-doper-Commie-shrink-lefty-pope cabal has not, to date,
destroyed us. Nixon seems to have been wrong on this one.

Of course, it's not the first time he was wrong. Yes, he was a crook.
No, it wasn't a third-rate burglary. And yes -- we do still have Dick
Nixon to kick around. Apparently, thanks to his tapes, forever and
ever and ever.