for DU'ers over 30...Watergate anniversary

[fortyfeetunder]

I was reminiscing what I was doing 30 years ago when Watergate broke out. Man, I was a pissed off high school junior in a Wash DC high school, not quite getting over Nixon's second election (I still wasn't thrilled about the first when I was just in elementary school).

Our band had to play at some store opening at the Watergate Plaza one day and after our gig, some of us decided to go find "The Door" the RNC broke into. It was not hard to find.

The mood then in high school, DC is a straight up Democratic city, and most people felt Nixon was a crook, no doubts.

Was not in DC the day Nixon resigned. I was out of the country and just happened to read bits and pieces in the local newspaper. And stayed up late to see Nixon's speech on the local TV. I was glad to be out of the country because I got a dose of reality -- what the rest of the world thought about our foibles, from talking to the locals, who were extremely interested in what we Americans thought about the events. If anything that trip permanently cured me of any ethnocentrism I ever had.

So if you are over 30 and can remember what you were doing those last few years, please share!

[Archae]

1. I was 12 in 1972.

So I saw first hand as a teenager the crap Tricky Dicky and his goons pulled.

How could I have known a bunch of repukes would get in that put even them to shame?

[ngGale]

2. At that time I was alone in my room at the hospital...

giving birth to my first son. Breech footling! The staff was out in the hall talking about Watergate. Fools almost killed me, I didn't even get to have a cesarean section. Think I'll ever forget Watergate, NO, NO, NO. Still feel the pain.}(

[burrowowl]

5. Damn and how is Breech today?

Is he a Democrat?

[NWHarkness]

3. I graduated from HS in '73

I painted my grandmother's house in Detroit that summer. She would sit on the porch and we would listen to the hearings on the radio while I worked. I still remember clearly when Dean testified.

Later, I remember coming home from a concert at college- Arlo Guthrie- and hearing on the radio about the "Saturday Night Massacre". Everyone in the dorm was freaking out, we thought it was the equivalent of a coup d'etat.

The next summer I was working in a grocery store. A friend picked me up from work and we went to my parent's house. I had an old couch and a portable TV out in the garage. We sat there, drinking beer, smoking a joint and watched Nixon's resignation speech. It felt like a great weight had been lifted off of us.

[burrowowl]

4. I was in Grad School

We would go to the student union TV room to watch the hearings between classes.

[devilgrrl]

6. The Watergate hearings cut into my after-school cartoon viewing.

I was in grade school at the time and was oblivious to what was taking place, my 9 year old mind just didn't get it. Therefore, I was really miffed about not being able to watch Aquaman or Prince Planet. :mad:

[AlGore-08.com]

9. Similar situation - - I was ten and couldn't watch Laurel & Hardy shorts

I remember trying to watch what was on TV, since my parents (both progressive Dems) were glued to the set, every cell of their bodies tense from listening. But all people behind the desks seemed to be doing was asking the same question over and over in slightly different ways, while some guy behind a table repeated the questions back to them. I could not figure out what the big deal was - - and that annoyed me deeply.

My parents kept the volume up so that when they were in other rooms (cooking, doing the dishes, cleaning) they could still hear the testimony. I remember thinking how incredibly unfair it was that I couldn't change the channel to something interesting when they weren't even in the room.

Left by myself and bored, I lost my favorite toy: a plastic Churchy La Femme that came with the fabric softner. My parents spent almost no time looking for it before pronouncing it lost forever. I felt that was horrificly selfish of them.

Then I caught laryngitis, and had to take pills that made me feel worse and felt really my parents were more interested in the TV than my health. I wallowed in self-pity.

From my ten year old perspective, that whole year sucked massively.

[fudge stripe cookays]

15. I'm with you, honey.

But what I wouldn't have given for progressive parents who would have sat down with me and explained what was going on so I would have understood.

Both my parents were Republican just because they didn't want their taxes raised. But I've changed my mom into a Democrat. She HATES Bush.

[devilgrrl]

18. My parents just went through a nasty divorce...

my mother was too busy working, she simply didn't have time to sit us down and explain everything. Not that I would have "gotten it" if she had... :crazy:

[progressivebydesign]

7. I was 13 in '72.

I was a wierd junior high girl. Gloria Stienam was my idol. I went to "conciousness raising" rap sessions with my Mom at the local YWCA in Pasadena. I was riveted to those hearings.. spent every free moment watching them. I even had silver wire rim Gloria style glasses. I'm helping my 12 year old stepdaughter get interested in politics.. but she's really a different person than I was at that age... she doesn't seem to really get it in the same way. Some people are just born political.. I swear.

Howard Baker.. he was someone I found fascinating in those Watergate Hearings. Geez.. can you even IMAGINE anything like that now? Perhaps Bush and 9/11? Or Bush and Iraq? Never happen.

[Wapsie B]

8. I remember

watching events unfold on TV every day in school. History class was my favorite back then when we went to the school auditorium to watch history being made before our eyes.

[NoPasaran]

10. I had been

one of the half dozen or so McGovern supporters at my high school. Although we lived in El Paso my parents subscribed to the Washington Post. It came in the mail 5 to 10 days after publication and I would devour it.

The summer of 1973 I spent listening to the Ervin Committee hearings on the radio. Maybe that's why I'm so poorly socialized.

The only time I was ever actually sent to the principal's office in high school was for coming to calculus class wrapped in audio tape. I'm still on the lam for three days' detention.

Above my desk I still have the framed front page of the El Paso Herald-Post Extra from August 8, 1974 with its headline NIXON TO RESIGN

[RFKHumphreyObama]

11. "I have never been a quitter"

To leave office before my term has expired is abhorrent to every instinct in my body...yadda, yadda, yadda.

I was not alive in 1974 but I have listened to Nixon's resignation speech time and time again and I can only imagine what a profound, momentous and wonderful day it must have been for all of you. Having been born during the last days of the Carter presidency, I have only ever witnessed Republicans getting away with their crimes and misdemeanours.

America was fortunate that Agnew had resigned a year earlier -Nixon used to say that the prospect of Agnew becoming President was his main protection from being assassinated. Can you imagine President Agnew?

[maddezmom]

12. my memories are driving from NY to MO and IA for family vaca

and stopping everyday so my dad could catch up on the lastest news from the hearings. Not so bad, my sisters and I swam in the pool and dad was in hotel.

[skippysmom]

13. I was born just before Watergate

in 1972. My mother tells me she was home all day with me watching the hearings and seeing what crooks they really were.

That summer I went to my first political rally, for McGovern. I was about 6 months old.

[RebelOne]

14. I was oblivious as to what was going on at that time because

I wasn't into politics. I just remember seeing Nixon on TV when he resigned.

[populistmom]

16. I'm over 30, but I can't remember

I was an infant when Watergate happened and a toddler during the hearings. I still vividly remember the Iran-Contra hearing though.

[supernova]

17. I was 10 in 1972 and 11 in 1973

I do remember the hearings. I remember John Dean saying "there's a cancer on the Presidency..." I remember thinking, wow! this stuff is greater than opera! I remember Sam Ervin presiding over those hearings like some human law book. You didn't get nothing passed old Sam, no sir.

I was totally transfixed throughout the hearings. The sheer drama of it all was palpable. I remember my mother and I were sewing our clothes in 1973. We laid the material out on the floor and cut it out, with the hearings on in the background. We watched and talked about the hearings: who seemed a credible witness and who didn't and why. What parlimentary rules govern this hearing? (I got my first copy of Roberts Rules of Order then too.) It was a huge civics lesson.

I was already precociously aware of the news and current events anwyay, having been reading the newspaper since I was about 7.

Watergate is the reason I become politically aware. It's the reason I no longer assumed that our "leaders" are somehow magically better people than we who are led. They're not. They're just human beings who can screw up too.