Word: ervin
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...IMMEDIATE task before Senator Ervin's Select Committee is that of determining exactly how widespread was knowledge about the multitude of buggings and shady transactions known as the Watergate affair. But before the Committee's term expires in February, the seven members will attempt to sift through the thousands of pages of transcripts and formulate new legislation designed to prevent an elections scandal of this type and incredible magnitude from occurring again...
...Senator Ervin and the other six Committee members may be able to draft legislation to prevent what we saw in 1972 from happening again, but it would be more than presumptuous to expect them to formulate an all-purpose campaign scandals bill that could completely prevent any kind of election hanky-panky from again tainting the American political scene; as we are beginning to see from the Committee's hearings, even the most stringent precautionary regulation of campaign expenditures and contributions can be easily bypassed by a few shrewd men with a laundry bag, cash, and an office wall safe...
...record collection that comes on with "Remember the sounds of the Summer '73." We're already nostalgic about the present, a time scale compressed to the point of absurdity. It is humorous, but it carries desperation for those just a little younger than I am. Maybe Sam Ervin is right when he says we face the worst time of our history. Perhaps there will be nothing about this age to be nostalgic about, so the spirit of an age that has characterized past decades will have to be created artificially. Watkins Glen was a programmed attempt to recreate a Woodstock...
...President's integrity while she dished up bowls of steaming chicken soup ("My God," said one Timesman opposed to Safire's hiring, "we've got a dozen better chicken-soup men"). There was Safire claiming ultimate victory for Nixon after John Dean testified before the Ervin committee: "The eye of the storm has passed, and Mr. Nixon did not blink...
...attack him, I'm a traitor. If I ignore the whole thing, I'm a cop-out." Deservedly known as a wit and wordsmith during his years as an Administration speechwriter, Safire has kept his sense of humor throughout the ordeal, although his neologisms ("presibuster" for the Ervin hearings, "probephiliacs" for those investigating Watergate) are shorter on style than many of his admirers had expected. One of his more inventive efforts was a savagely funny parody of Kipling's Gunga Din that impugned the credibility of John Dean: "You will claim that you obeyed/ But the truth...