Word: agnew
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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THIS BIT of self-conscious irony is found almost two thirds of the way through Spiro Agnew's first venture into written fiction (we're not counting spoken or historical fiction). Sirana is Sirana Amiri, the "lush" "beautiful" "lovely" Iranian secret agent sent to fool the "hero." The "hero" is Zack Miller, the intellectual from NYU and personal adviser to Vice President Newton Canfield...
...irony of this passage is Spiro Agnew's implied claim that he's writing a novel that is more than just popular fiction. Through his most intelligent, honest, noble characters he is trying to say that the situation he has created rises above the mundane, ordinary plot concoctions of pop novels. If the language doesn't clue you in, that fact that Zack and Amiri fall deeply and irrevocably in love in no time flat, and that this passage is an example of their wittiest repartee should tell you that Agnew's implied claim isn't quite true...
...passage not only describes Agnew's novel, but Ehrlichman's The Company as well: intrigue, lavish and exotic settings, vapid romances, powerful men doing important things, and a sense of vacancy surrounding it all. The passage doesn't describe some of the other aspects of these two pop gov thrillers: an overriding concern with power, fame, the good life, and the ambition that drives people to seek such things. Ehrlichman actually describes what these two novels are about in a short preface. He writes that while the characters are fictitious, "the forces--the stresses, pressures, fears and passions--that motivate...
...Agnew sets his novel in 1983. The Democrats are in office, second-term President Walter Hurly is vying with Vice President Porter Canfield over important foreign policy matters. Canfield is seeking his party's nomination and to gain the spotlight he stumps around the country on the off-year-election circuit saying the U.S. should give Israel nuclear weapons. This posture threatens to ruin the latest round of SALT talks; nevertheless, Canfield won't follow lame-duck Hurly's orders to lay off the Israel stuff. The press--which under the appellation of 'Operation Torchlight' is secretly conspiring to boost...
Other magazines have known how to deal with people of Agnew's ilk. Rolling Stone, for instance, accompanying Hunter Thompson's 1974 Watergate opus, "The Scum Also Rises," ran a Ralph Steadman cartoon depicting former Attorney-General John "this country is moving so far to the right you won't recognize it" Mitchell as a used condom in mid air, about to splash down. It could just as well have been Spiro; after all, he has as much credence as a year-old Samoa, you know, the kind that comes in five tropical colors. Agnew's been spouting...