Our Gang [antikvár]

Preface to the Watergate Edition My publisher has asked me if there is any statement I should like to make about my 1971 Nixon book. Our Gang, as a result of what I read in the press and see on television about the Watergate scandal. Yes, there is. I wish publicly to apologize to President Nixon. Only now do I realize that I had no right whatsoever to depict him back then, if only in fiction, as a moral hypocrite, a lawless opportunist, a shameless liar, and a thorough-going totalitarian at heart. What evidence did I have to support such a fantasy? My fellow Americans, what evidence did any of us have? Did we have a wire-tap on the White House phones that gave us reason to portray Mr. Nixon with such viciousness? I am afraid the answer is we did not. Did we have records and reports burglarized from White House file cabinets? I am afraid once again the answer is no. Did we have depositions taken from White House employees that cast doubt upon the President's probity? Once again, no. Did we have so much as a single unsubstantiated charge made by a White House aide out to save his own neck by turning on his boss? No, we did not. We— alas, I—had nothing even faintly resembling the incriminating kind of evidence that is now to be found Preface to the Pre-lmpeachment Edition Just a year ago, at the time of the Watergate Hearings, my publisher asked if I would contribute an introduction to a special "Watergate Edition" of Our Gang, my 1971 satire of the Nixon Administration. Now, as a result of the release and publication of The White House Transcripts, Bantam Books is no longer "asking" me for introductions—they are demanding an explanation. To be sure, they have no quarrel with me about the depiction of "Tricky," the U.S. President of Our Gang. Apparently they have compared the candid exchanges between President Nixon and his advisers in the transcripts to those between Tricky and his friends in Our Gang and have concluded that I did not in any way attempt a whitewash of presidential wrongdoing, nor did I try to represent the President and his advisers as any less crooked, or any smarter, than they come off in the transcripts. What disturbs them about Our Gang is that in it I failed to give any indication whatsoever of the profanities that apparently punctuate President Nixon's conversation. Indeed, not only did I delete the expletives favored by the President, I even deleted the bracketed phrase "expletive deleted." In short, I stand accused by Bantam Books of taking ix