Word: haldemans
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
JUDGE JOHN J. SIRICA'S lenient sentences last Saturday for John Mitchell, H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, and Robert Mardian show that two and a half years after the Watergate break-in, justice is still a long way off. Giving three of the most powerful men in the Nixon administration no fines, and only 30 months in jail--less if they exemplify "good behavior"--constitutes, in comparison to their crimes, little more than a slap on the wrist...
Mitchell, former attorney general and a vociferous hardliner on law and order, deserves more than two and a half years simply for the immense hypocrisy of his sense of justice. Mardian is a lawyer, too, and he should be given stronger punishment for the same betrayal of justice. Haldeman and Ehrlichman, former chief advisors in the White House, both deserve to be tried, along with Nixon, for possible collusion in, or at least prior knowledge of, crimes related to the war in Vietnam, the coup in Chile, administration impoundment of funds appropriated by Congress, and CIA domestic spying...
Before Sirica handed down the sentences. Haldeman's defense counsel, John J. Wilson, gave the traditional statement on an appropriate sentence. He claimed that he hoped Sirica "considers whatever Bob Haldeman did, he did not for himself but for the President of the United States; that the virtue of loyalty is not to be forgotten when evaluating all the attending circumstances." This same argument was used to defend fascist killers at Nuremburg...
WBCN is good at making even the most serious of political events look like self-parodies, but some of their idle speculations about Watergate rest on too many paranoid assumptions. These assumptions make phrases like the description of Haldeman and Erlichman as "the german shepherds, the palace guards, the leaders of the White House Band," memorable, but they also lack any kind of insightful analysis. That's not to say that exercises in paranoia are bad, "especially then, when all of the facts still weren't out. The record only leaves you wishing BCN would do another show about Watergate...
...Watergate is just the tip of the iceberg of America's language, according to Newman. In addition to all of its other implications, Watergate also "revealed the sad state of language,"from the president on down, through Ehrlichman and Haldeman,through Ron Ziegler, through the press with its acceptance of euphemistic explanations from government officials, through the political candidates with their sterile, ingratiating speeches, through the social scientists with their unwieldy terminology,through the ad men with their ready, mindless sales pitches, right down to the proffessional athletes with their trugid comments, to the small restaurants using foreign names...