Meh, why distinguish. It's the same thing. Is there anything else to say?Nixon worried that greater access to abortions would foster "permissiveness," and said that "it breaks the family." But he also saw a need for abortion in some cases -- like interracial pregnancies, he said.
"There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white," he told an aide, before adding, "Or a rape."
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With a rape, the victim wants the abortion. With a bi-racial couple, which of the couple wants the abortion? The parents? Sounds like he was talking about some sort of forced abortion to me.
So that's why opened relations with China, shared love of forced abortion...
well i suppose that we can be grateful that he didn't directly equate interracial relationships with rape, on a more serious note how did cheney and rumsfeld and all those other nixon-acolytes get another chance to ruin our country? so much for learning from history...
Nothing has been learned, only the targets of right wing hate and fear have changed a little bit. In Nixon's day, he thought nothing of equating an interracial relationship with rape. That helps to explain at least some of the vitriol they daily attack the president with.
These days the belief that no one consents to interracial sex is marginalized because the bigots have found a new target. In their opposition to gay marriage they don’t even pause before they mention child molestation and bestiality. Same s#&%, different decade.
Absolutely correct. Right-wingers haven't fundamentally changed. It's just that their scapegoats change with the times. Anti-Jewish bigotry, along with OVERT anti-black bigotry, is just so 20th century and pre-9/11. Today the primary targets are Latinos, Muslims and gays.
I hear you, hard not to yell at the computer/radio/tv when one of those christianist preachers compares the loving mutual choices of adults to abusing children or animals and then says that this isn't a sign of being prejudiced, as for the Prez and the right-wingers I always cringe a bit when he praises Reagan, someone mentioned the school of the Americas the other day, if you want to see how the war on drugs and the war on terror link to secret/dirty wars against communism, whether in Cambodia or Colombia, just check out Iran-Contra, who needs conspiracy theories when we have our friends on the Right, sorry if we are way off topic now I'll give it a rest.
This is way beyond "benign neglect"--Nixon believed in active extermination. Damn.
Still kicking Richard Nixon, aka Mr. Personality, around. Oh well, a lot of scoundrels got their start with tricky Dick, a thoroughly unlikeable individual. But to me for the absolute worse in the Nixon genre, I always thought his illegal invasion into Cambodia that destabilized the national government there and led, in our withdral, to the rise of the Khmer Rouge, had to take the cake. His comments on "the Jews," his designs for an Imperial presidency, the two bit burglary of the Watergate Hotel in which he had the Chief National Security Advisor, the head of the C.I.A, and the Attorney General, among tens if not hundreds of others involved, all to help him win an election he already could not lose; his bizarro populism in which he pitted the working classes on the basis of their worst demons against themselves, the comment that led to this post--all those things next to the Cambodian invasion and its upshot have always paled for me.
The Cambodian invasion--What's up with our country and not being able recognize any wrongs with our foreign policy from Hiroshima and Nagasaki until the Iraq War? Kissinger is still highly regarded, and yet he played a role in the Cambodian invasion and extending the Vietnam War.
Because we don't care about "those" people.
Did you ever see this SNL sketch by Lily Tomlin, from the mid-70s?
We don't care. We don't have to. We're America.
I suppose. Unfortunately though, I would expect more out of historians and intellectuals, who I feel still buy into the same American exceptionalist nonsense. Maybe in a post GWB/neocon world, the 20th century will get a more balanced look.
I really really second this. why can't we admit when our country or our government has been wrong, especially when everyone who looks at it and wasn't actually involved in some way comes to the same conclusion? it's extremely maddening. we actually continue to laud those who made those decisions as nothing other than wise and patriotic, and we continue even today to equate dissent from that view as being the opposite, as being short-sighted and ungrateful, which would only be true if those decisions hadn't been unredeemable and grossly immoral disasters on their own merits. instead we expand the mythological sixties Leftist to become the Goldberg who has plotted against every move the Great American Empire has made to better itself and give the gift of itself to the world. by force. it's maddening.
How rotten. When I think of my lovely nieces and nephews (two are black/white, one is Asian/white, two are native american/white and all of them are beautiful), I could just give old Nixon a good, solid kick in the shin. What a hateful man he was.
"Is there anything else to say?"
Just a hearty "shame on you" to the media and political establishment for cramming Nixon's public-image rehab down our throats prior to his death. It's virtually impossible to understate what a moral moron the man was.
As appalling as the comment was, it really doesn't make sense either--why would a black and white couple want to have an abortion? Is he assuming that they would want to have sex with each other, but would be revolted at the idea of a mixed race baby? Is he talking about a forced abortion, because society wouldn't be able to tolerate such mixing??? What a fascinating glimpse into the mind of a disturbed and hateful man.
What's more scary to me is the fact that we wouldn't even know any of this if he hadn't scrupulously taped these conversations. Imagine what sort of things other presidents have said that we'll never know about.
I think he's saying that the white girl's parents (because obviously he's talking about a white girl and a black guy, not the other way around) would force an abortion. Isn't that how most people read that?
I suppose it's the only way to interpret that--I guess I was thinking more about two adults having the baby, but he's probably thinking more about a pregnant teenager, and the child's white grandparents pressuring their daughter into getting the abortion. It's probably what he would have tried to do if Tricia was impregnated by a black man.
That sounds about right for the era. It's not like girls had any agency.
I think he's saying that the white girl's parents
The white girls as well, because she couldn't have wanted to have sex with a black man.
That's true--since he's mentioning it along with "rape" he's probably assuming that interracial sex only occurs as a rape.
Naw, he's saying that the girl may have wanted the experience with a black man, but not the consequences. Which, to him, is understandable.
Or in McCainese, "Where's that marvelous ape?"
Pathetic. I wonder whether Strom Thurmond ever had a chance to set Tricky Dick straight.
Sometimes it just seems impossible to plumb the depths of American racism/hatred/hypocrisy/dishonesty. You think you've reached the bottom, and then you realize that there's an unexplored cavern below you.
It's the one instance in which I really hope that "American exceptionalism" really exits. I'd hate to think that everybody's like this.
Nixon and Strom had a very strong relationship that helped Nixon win the White House. Strom kept the southern coalition together and in the pocket for Nixon, and in return, Nixon tried to slow down the effects of the Civil Rights Act in the South, and played the old states rights canard.
And, no, everyone (not even most everyone) in America is not racist like Nixon. Not even close.
I'm pretty sure he probably also said "Or between a Jew and and an Aryan," but that part probably got accidentally deleted. Look, this guy was a notorious racist and anti-Semite; no real surprise, just further head-shaking hilarity over how inanely in articulate he was. Never mind thathe was a liar, (Vicuna coat scandal), a cheat and a thief, (Watergate). He was a drunken fool of a loser, a lifetime politician that a bunch of youngsters named Kennedy beat on the first try. He was a mongthe wost of Orange County, California GOP uber- conservatives.
This jackass propped up Ike as walking on water, and we all know how pissed off Ike was when Brown vs B.O.E. passed under his watch because he thought they would all follow his mandate to maintain Jim Crow. Then, of course, we know that when Emmett Till's trial was hijacked by the local Mississippi Klan, and Mamie Till wrote to Ike pleading for federal intervention in her son's murder, he simply ignored her. Ignored her. Like she was nothing, a nobody not worth 2 minutes of his time...unlike his golf game that was incessantly on TV news footage. That was my only memory of him as a child--that he looked like Mr. Magoo playing golf.
PS
Maybe Nixon didn't die of phlebitis; maybe he immediately dropped dead after someone relayed the famous saying to him:
"Once you have Black,
You never go back
You know, I saw this article in the Times late last night and I thought about sending you the link, TNC, but then I remembered you commenting once on how people keep sending you links about one racist horror after another and expecting you to declaim on them, and sometimes there just isn't anything to say. So I didn't send it to you. But I'm glad you commented on it anyway.
When I read it, I gasped out loud. Because it really isn't just the inherent racism ("a black and a white"--hey, in my neighborhood, isn't that a cookie?), it's the assumption that abortion should be applied in the case of such an interracial pregnancy, with the agency clearly outside the couple themselves. Interesting, because he's taking abortion way past Roe v Wade--a woman's right to choose what happens to her own body--and making it into a social engineering tool.
His recognition of rape as a reasonable condition for abortion does, however, put him considerably ahead of the Christian fundamentalists who would pick up the torch 30 years later.
I know a white crack whore who aborted all her mixed babies. And people wonder why I'm pro-life.
Really? How do you know her, since you brought it up?
Wow, her powers of precognition must have been tremendous! To know, out of all her Johns, which ethnic group's sperm took root.
And for you to know as well...O my!
It was pretty sad she usually didn't know who the father was but based on her clientele at the time she had a pretty good idea of the "ethnic group."
OK so don't mean to make light of it. Like I said its pretty horrible shit, which is exactly why I have a problem with abortion. Believe me, coming from the medical field I can guarantee you there are LOTS of people who use abortion as birth control. I'm not kidding. Also there are a lot of drug addicts out there and it is a serious disease.
OK I just caught the sarcasm there . . . but there are people like that out there. This particular woman was actually very scared of having a black baby. It doesn't make rational sense but she didn't think rationally like we do here on this blog. There are people out there that think like that, but its hard for people like us to understand what is going through their heads.
When you are a home health aide you are going into peoples actual homes for many hours every week, and you end up learning A LOT about them.
Whats sad to me is the Bush Admin was full of retreads from the Nixon Admin (should have been the first major red flag) and folks not only elected him but RE-ELECTED him. Amazing.
Before I was a nurse I was a home health aide and one of my clients was a crack whore (is there a more PC way to say it LOL?) She was basically a Medicaid scammer and really didn't need home health care. Anyway, she was pretty open with me about her abortions, and yes she did abort some of the white ones too . . . so I guess she's not totally racist ;)
Also, I live in Detroit . . . go figure ;)
The above comment was in response to Juba, btw.
Chemically dependent sex worker - there we go.
Hmm, this type of "non-racist" comment puts me in mind of a drunk I met in a bar once. After dropping a few N-bombs, she reassured me: "Oh no, I'm not racist. My sister's married to a Turk. I love her half-breed children."
Of course, as other commenters have noted, Nixon appears to be advocating the destruction of the half-breed children. Nope. Definitely not racist, at all.