Wonkette: The Week In Garbage Men: Richard Nixon Maybe Not Just A Crook, But Also A Wife Beater

[blogslut]

This week, we take a break from the Manosphere to take a look back at a historical piece of garbage, Richard Milhouse Nixon.

A review of veteran reporter Sy Hersh’s new memoir in The New Republic has turned up some pretty disturbing information about Nixon. As if everything we already know about Nixon isn’t disturbing enough, it seems as though the disgraced former President may have also had a habit of beating his wife.

Almost every person in Hersh’s memoir is a man—a sign of the time and the industry. But there’s an interesting moment that Hersh did not have to include. In 1974, he writes, Hersh heard that Nixon’s wife Pat was in hospital after being punched by her husband. It was not an isolated occasion. He did not report on the story, he told Nieman Foundation fellows in 1998, because it represented “a merging of private life and public life.” Nixon didn’t make policy decisions because of his bad marriage, went the argument. Hersh was “taken aback” by the response from women fellows, who pointed out that he had heard of a crime and not reported it. “All I could say,” Hersh writes, “is that at the time I did not—in my ignorance—view the incident as a crime.”

Hersh, in his memoir, says he now regrets not having reported the incident.

Read more at: https://wonkette.com/634727/the-week-in-garbage-men-richard-nixon-maybe-not-just-a-crook-but-also-a-wife-beater

[Guilded Lilly]

1. It is hideous enough that Nixon was such a crook but...

This:
“All I could say,” Hersh writes, “is that at the time I did not—in my ignorance—view the incident as a crime.”
Is a far more insidious statement and is an indictment of not just one ignorant man, but a whole society and generations of men.

Hopefully the tide has turned enough to correct the
ugly acceptance of abuse against females. We certainly are making strides as a society. The whole mind set is really quite sickening, still.

[hlthe2b]

2. I wish I could say I was surprised by this re: Nixon. Pat Nixon always stuck me as a sad

figure and to think she was battered is not a stretch.

Sy Hersh should have known better, but as you say, it is an indictment of society as a whole and particularly men's attitudes of the time.

[Guilded Lilly]

3. Yeah. She always did look haunted and weary. So very sad all around.

[Freddie]

4. And silent

I don't remember ever hearing her speak or having anything to say. Typical of a battered spouse. I do think he was good to his daughters and they grew up OK. Wonder if they're still Republicans.

[PatSeg]

15. I don't know why

it had never dawned on me. Yes, Pat Nixon did look very sad and I had assumed it was because her husband was overbearing and emotionally abusive. All the symptoms of spousal abuse were there. Nixon was angry and paranoid, plus he was drinking a lot.

I remember that time and people did not talk publicly about domestic abuse. No journalist would have written about it. It was something that was whispered in private, if even that.

[TheBlackAdder]

5. Nixon didn't hit his wife. She accidentally and repeatedly placed her face in front of his fist!

.

Just predicting what the RW pundits will be saying.

.

[Delmette2.0]

6. "Nixon didn't make policy decisions because of his bad marriage"

You don't beat your spouse because of a"bad marriage". Get a divorce!! Life happens. But it was all about Tricky Dick and nothing about his victim.

Now we have a president who has multiple divorces, and is kinda suspected to have beaten his current wife.

This slippery slope goes back a long, long ways.

[mountain grammy]

12. indeed it does..

[lunatica]

7. At that time it was covertly acceptable to

Beat your wife. Marriage was thought of as too sacred and untouchable a subject for people to talk about such things as abusiveness on any level. Not only did people not talk about the abused wife, but they also didn’t talk about child abuse either.

If a woman went to her priest she was admonished. If she went to her family they told her she was being a bad wife. If she went to her friends or the police they would ask her why she brought it on herself. She was advised to be more understanding and to stop provoking her husband.

I know because I was an abused wife. I survived because I took my baby and ran away and he couldn’t find me for over 20 years.

For decades if I talk about it one of two bad things were likely to be said by people who simply disn’t get it. They would ask me if all my relationships were like that which infers that it’s my fault because I pick abusive men, or they would say I’m stupid for allowing it to happen, claiming it would never happen to them because they are smarter, braver, and a better class of human being than I was.

That has changed which is a good thing but being a wife beater used to be sadly acceptable and was treated as something no one talked about. It was just that way so to condemn people for not bringing it up at the time is to miss an important historical fact.

And if he had wanted to include it in his article his editor would have made him take it out, for all the reasons mentioned above.

[smirkymonkey]

8. I'm so sorry for what happened to you and for the fact that such behavior was considered

acceptable at one time. What a horrible position to be in. Not only are you being knocked around by the person who is supposed to love you, but everyone around you is blaming YOU for it! It is a very sick way of thinking. I am glad you were able to get away with your child. That must have taken a lot of strength. Men who beat women are nothing but weak cowards and should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. It is never acceptable.

[lunatica]

10. Thank you

It hasn’t been that long since domestic violence was taken seriously, even by the police. Too many women were murdered by their husband or boyfriend because the police would only show up to stop the altercations and then leave.

Abusive behavior always escalates and results in death too many times. I clearly remember when in California the police departments said that they would arrest someone in every single domestic fight they went to. I think it was in the 1980s.

I was lucky to be able to escape. I know if I hadn’t he would have killed me. Not only did he promise me he would kill me but he also brought a loaded gun home and waved it around telling me he was going to kill me. He was drunk and when he passed out I unloaded the gun and hid the bullets in one place and threw the gun away. I left when the first opportunity came up. The thing that gave me the strength to do it was my baby because I had to save him from certain future abuse.

I’ve never second guessed myself about it. I did the right thing.

[mountain grammy]

14. Yes, you're right, that's how it was..

People just didn't see it and refused to understand it. I volunteered at a women's shelter and often sheltered women and kids in my own home when we ran out of space.
The local "justice" system was unresponsive, and at times worked against us. Especially when the abuser was a cop.

[Me.]

17. Dear God

Can't tell how glad I am that you are safe now.

[lunatica]

19. Thank you

It was a terrifying time in my life. What gave me the strength to leave was my baby. I knew the abuse would be directed at him at some point. That and the fact that his life would get screwed up growing up watching his father beat his mother.

[Me.]

20. Words Really Can Be So Inept At Times

I'm glad you're ok now sounds so lame rather than I'm so totally relieved to hear you survived having the hell kicked out of you and are here now to tell the story.

[moondust]

9. Does Melanie have a black eye?

[Staph]

11. Who knows?

She has not been seen in other three weeks.

[Achilleaze]

13. republican "family values" come from Siberian cesspools

republicans have shameful, degenerate values, ethics and morals. Pay no attention to what they say and you will be untainted by their lies. Watch what they do, and protect yourself and America from republican's hate & fear saturated soul sickness.

[Me.]

16. Did Not View The Incident As A Crime

put a woman in the hospital but hey, that's okay. Would you report it if a guy put another guy in the hospital?

[Ilsa]

18. K&R. nt

[tblue37]

21. This is so telling--and common, even today:

“All I could say,” Hersh writes, “is that at the time I did not—in my ignorance—view the incident as a crime.”