Customer Reviews

I Am Not a Crook

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As an uninformed infant, I knew very little about the Watergate affair besides general details until I read this book. Thus, if knowing who Bebe Rebozzo strikes you as important and you don't have the patience to wade through a Nixon biography, this book is for you. The essays are obviously collected from news-paper columns, since they often feature the same litany of facts about Watergate over and over, meaning that the humore quickly wears off. The book does feature some truly witty columns however, such as an imagined conversation between Brezhnev and Kissinger.

This is a compilation of columns written by humorous political columnist Art Buchwald during the presidency of Richard Nixon.

As each one was written "in the moment," without the benefit of historical perspective, it might be difficult to appreciate the nuances which many of the jokes rely upon. In short, I don't think an appreciable amount of material is going to make the casual reader laugh out loud.

But for the Nixon buff, this is an interesting way to experience the Watergate scandal as it unfolds, with each detail giving the likeable Buchwald fodder for his arsenal of wit. As a satirist, of course, most of the columns are negative, so I suppose they might seem funnier to the anti-Nixon buff than the Nixon buff.

It is now 30+ years since Nixon was forced (hounded?) out of office,
and 13 years since he passed on to the big Oval Office in the sky, yet people, like me, for example, are still obsessed with Richard M Nixon. Why is this? Because he was the (unintentionally) funniest President of all time. As Buchwald states in the forward to this book, as Watergate unfolded, everything the President did or said lent itself to satire.
The only other President who gets close to Nixon in being entertaining is "Slick Willy" Clinton. However, the differences between the two men are instructive. Clinton came of age during the 1960's and he developed the ethos of that era: "If it feels good, do it!", and "what's 'right' is what you can get away with". Clinton's most admired predecessor as President was one who turned the White House into a brothel. Thus, Clinton decided to follow in his footsteps. The voters knew what they were getting when they voted him into power.
Nixon was a whole other story. The product of a pious, Quaker family of stern morals, a conservative politician, a faithful husband and good father (even his worst enemies admit this). Yet this man who, when running for Vice President along with the revered Eisenhower, criticized Harry Truman for using "salty language", left us the legacy of "expletive deleted". The man, who in his final address before flying off into the sunset in San Clemency...err..San Clemente warned people it is wrong to hate others, left us the "enemies list". The man who assured Gerald Ford who was considering becoming his Vice President that he had NOTHING to do with Watergate, started wearing an American Flag lapel pin to show how patriotic and honest he was, as more and more revelations came out about his criminal involvement in the whole mess. What else did he do?....he chose a man totally unqualified to be President as his Vice President (Spiro Agnew) since he didn't want another strong figure in his administration who might challenge him. He unethically recorded all Oval Office conversations without informing those who we was speaking with, and kept them around KNOWING they were evidence of his wrong doing.

I admit someone with no knowledge of Watergate will have difficulty understanding the columns Buchwald included in this book, but for those of
us old enough to remember the "good old days", this book will keep you chuckling for hours as Buchwald reminds us of Rosemary Woods amazing physical agiility, the deaf Senator that Nixon wanted to appoint to listen to the tapes, the 18.5 minute gap and the "Sinister Force" that created it, the "smoking gun", "impoundment" of Federal Funds, Nixon's tax returns, Checkers, Charles Colson's grandmother whom Colson said he would run over in order to get Nixon re-elected, John Dean, John Ehrlichman, Bob Haldemann, Donald Segretti,
Jeb Magruder and all the rest of the gang.