6/26/2005 11:10:00 PM|||MarcieCrim||| Tonight I am filled with thoughts of Vietnam and Watergate. Freedom of the Press and strong women. Governments hiding truths from the public and the majority of the public refusing to see the truth when presented with it.
I am currently reading Katharine Graham's autobiography and it is fascinating. Mrs. Graham was the publisher of The Washington Post from 1963-1993. Her father bought the paper at an auction when she was a teenager and her husband ran it many years later before his suicide. The paper is still in the family, her son Don is now Chairman of the Board.
Beyond the details of the newspaper, reading Katharine's life has engulfed me this past week. She tells personal stories that resonate as a woman and mother, and she tells incredible stories about the people that have shaped our country.
One rather funny story is the time President Johnson called Katharine into his bedroom to berate her for an editorial in the early edition. She stood there while LBJ undressed to his pants, all the while screaming curse words, and asked Katharine to turn around while he put on his pajamas. He ordered her to turn back around, yelled a few more scathing remarks and barked "Get out!". Regardless of episodes like this, she had good relationships with many of the world's leaders. Well, all but Nixon whom she played a big part in eventually bringing down. It was her "tit" that the Nixon administration said would get "Caught in the wringer" if the Post continued to investigate Watergate.
Katharine published her memoirs in 1997, before our latest war with Iraq. However, reading her thoughts on Vietnam felt very timely. What has most affected me tonight in my reading was a comment she made about Nixon. "I was frightened of the power of a man and his minions, of a president who thought he had the power to wrap himself in the cloak of national security". The country eventually echoed that fear about Nixon and here we are again under a president using "national security" as a scare tactic. Will we ever learn?
I just Googled Katharine and discovered she died in 2001 from a head injury at the age of 84. She was attending a media conference and slipped and fell. What a simple death for such an extraordinary woman.|||111984476984838370|||Personal History