Word: agnew
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...Spiro Agnew's abdication produced some interesting shifts of tone among editorial writers, columnists and TV commentators last week. Some of the journalists who had clashed most bitterly with Agnew in the past showed considerable restraint in burying their old adversary. Others who had been relatively sympathetic, perhaps feeling that they had been betrayed, were more harsh...
Speaking hours after Agnew resigned, NBC'S David Brinkley-long a favorite Agnew target-described Agnew returning to Baltimore as "a tragic and almost pathetic figure." A night later, CBS'S Eric Sevareid paraphrased an English proverb to suggest that Agnew's sins dimmed in comparison with those of the Watergate malefactors: "Agnew was stealing the goose from off the common, while they were trying to steal the common from the goose...
...York Times, Washington Post and Boston Globe agreed that the Justice Department's willingness to make a lenient deal, though it spared Agnew the penalty he might have received, was in the national interest. The Times observed that a private citizen would have fared far worse. "It is also true," the paper said, "that for a public official who rose so high, disgrace and banishment from public life are severe punishment indeed...
...liberal paper that exulted over Agnew's fall was the Berkshire Eagle. It called the resignation a "thunderclap of good news" that "removed from the proximity of the Oval Office a grotesque and long dead albatross whose reek was besmirching the American image everywhere." From the right wing, Manchester (N.H.) Union Leader Editor-Publisher William Loeb let stand a preresignation editorial that had blasted news leaks damaging to Agnew. In a brief updating statement, Loeb voiced his paper's "regret" that the "vicious distorters in the press now have a chance to get off the hook...
Most middle-road and conservative papers spoke for those who had believed in Agnew's innocence or who had felt that he was being treated unfairly. Said the Atlanta Journal: "It was as if Santa Claus had been revealed as a dirty old man." Detroit News Columnist Pete Waldmeir declared that "Spiro Agnew owes us all an apology. He took our trust and ground it into the dirt. He treated us like fools, thumbed his nose at duty, honor, country...