Watergate Lies Multiplied: The Fiction of Frost/Nixon

Watergate Lies Multiplied: The Fiction of Frost/Nixon,” by David Martin is an excellent (and very timely) piece which demonstrates how the wider implications of the Watergate Scandal of forty years ago has affected our national historical memory in both journalistic and popular entertainment treatments.

Watergate might have been a small time burglary, but the entire episode was a big time spook operation.  And that brings us to the title of this article.  If the official Watergate story itself is phony, what is one to make of the 2008 fictionalized movie that is based upon a 2006 fictionalized play about a set of carefully edited interviews that essentially retell the outlines of a phony story?  It’s like a fake of a fake of a fake of a fake; like raising a lie to the fourth power.

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3:21 pm on June 20, 2012