TPM Reader LG chimes in on Mark Felt, et al.
Josh: Is there anything more despicable than allowing the likes of Chuck Colson and G. Gordon Liddy, and even Pat Buchanan (although he was never implicated in Watergate) to go on TV and call Mark Felt a bum and a disgrace. That Matthews and others have, with either little or no objection to Colson and Liddyâs slander, is outrageous. Mark Felt may or may not be a genuine hero, but what he did was honorable and took courage â and he is certainly not a bum like his accusers.
This hadn’t occured to me. Or rather I hadn’t realized it because I barely watch any political TV anymore. But if <$Ad$> this is the case, it really is outrageous.
Nixon was a crook, as were most of his cronies. And Felt was a law man who ended up getting that all busted. As I note below, Felt’s motives may not be black and white. But it’s hard for me to see where any of these jokers gets off passing judgment on him.
I thought Chuck Colson’s whole redemption shtick made at least some pro forma nod toward conceding that his Watergate era criminality maybe wasn’t such a great thing after all. I guess not.
As for Gordon Liddy, he has, I guess, been accepted back into polite society, of a sort, for a mix of his character (and I’d say I mean that in the descriptive rather than than evaluative sense), his sense of humor and the undeniable fact that he never tried to make excuses for what he did. Took his lumps, etc.
Having said that, he’s a crook, a bit nutty, and rightly did time for his crimes not only of the ordinary sort but actually against the constitution itself.
I guess these points don’t cut much with DC’s chatterati.
