Whittier College, Home of Dirty Tricks, and Richard M. Nixon Reconsidered
When it came to making a decision about where to go to college, Dick Nixon, an innocent Whittier Quaker boy, had to settle for local Whittier College - because he couldn’t afford to accept a Harvard scholarship that didn’t include travel and living expenses. The sense of disappointment the young Nixon carried with him onto the Whittier College campus was just the beginning…
At Whittier College, the young Quaker naturally sought acceptance in the Societies, which dominated social life on campus. When an upper class Society rejected Nixon, he channeled his deepening disappointment into the founding of a new Society, the Orthogonians. As the City of Whittier has become a Hispanic-majority city and Whittier College has transformed itself into a Hispanic-Serving Institution, the Orthogonian Society founded by a poor underdog among upper class youth has become a diversity student-dominated one.
Nixon’s insecurities and disappointments drove him to solutions that exhaled resentment even as they embraced known wrongs. When voters rejected Nixon’s 1962 California gubernatorial bid, after he had lost to JFK in the 1960 presidential contest, the loser’s “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore” reaction brought to mind nothing so much as caricatures of the beatings Nixon took on the Whittier College football field to prove himself to those who would never accept him. And, of course, America certainly would have Nixon to kick around, again.
Reminiscent of the scene in 'Frost/Nixon' in which Dick Nixon is portrayed as making a drunken late night telephone call to David Frost, Nixon was inebriated when he made the call in which he made that famous "you won't have Nixon to kick around anymore" statement, according to David Pietrusza, author of 1960, LBJ v JFK v Nixon: The Epic Campaign That Forged Three Presidencies. .
Nixon returned to Whittier after graduating 3rd in his class at Duke and still not finding an opening in New York to practice law. During this period Nixon became deeply involved in Whittier College operations and perfected his modus operandi, Dirty Tricks, as he won election as a U. S. representative and then senator by unfairly smearing his opponents. “Of course I knew Jerry Voorhis wasn’t a Communist,” Nixon admitted. “But…I had to win… The important thing is to win.” This self-destructive drive to throw away one’s chance for glory by cheating seems to have seeped into as it now oozes out of Whittier’s pores.
Nixon's disgraceful campaign against Helen Gahagan Douglas for the U. S. Senate, a woman Whittier College should today hold up as a role model for young women, again centered on completely dishonestly casting his opponent as a Communist. In reality, the House voting records of Nixon and Douglas were more similar than different. Nevertheless, Nixon called Douglas the Pink Lady, and tastelessly said she was "pink right down to her underwear". It was Helen Gahagan Douglas who tagged Nixon with Tricky Dick, which he deservedly carried to his grave.
Dwight D. Eisenhower remains one of America's most popular presidents (the campaign buttons read 'I Like Ike'), and he never favored Dick Nixon. When asked by a reporter what Nixon had contributed to the Eisenhower administration, Ike said he couldn't think of anything! When Eisenhower was asked who he voted for in the 1960 presidential election, the outgoing President held up the face of his watch, showing miniature portraits of his grandchildren on its face, and said that he had voted for them. Ike just would not endorse Dick Nixon.
Nixon would go on to embarrass IKE (Nixon evaded personal consequences for illegal campaign contributions with the now infamous 'Checkers Speech' and blaming who else but Communists, when in fact a California Republican had gone to the press) and lose to Kennedy and then Pat Brown, only to scramble over the bodies to the very top, winning the presidency, a second time with a plan so secret even Nixon didn’t know it, and then all those Dirty Tricks caught up with the prototypical post-Quaker-affiliation Whittier College graduate. Nixon’s fear of the wages of sin was the consequence of his many sins. For Nixon, to win was to be accepted, to be right, and he never learned better.
Whittier College, a macrocosm of Nixon’s flaws, has never known quite what to do with its most infamous graduate, one year refusing to house Nixon archives, another wildly imagining that Henry Kissinger might provide some legitimacy to the unshakable Nixon albatross of a legacy. Evidently, Whittier College diversity doesn’t extend to Chile, but any Chilean student’s open letter to the campus paper would doubtlessly mysteriously be lost on the way to publication even if such a letter was sent.
Whittier College shaped and was shaped by Richard Milhous Nixon, who came to campus an innocent Quaker boy and left as the ultimately Not So Slick Dick. Whittier College’s chance for glory is to reconsider Whittier College, home of Dirty Tricks, and Richard M. Nixon, to by inspirational self-analysis and self-improvement help a nation recover from the shame its Dirty Tricks brought to us all, and instead of taking that high road, Whittier College has, so much like Nixon himself, instead lunged self-destructively onward by Dirty Tricks as usual.
Nixon talked about his formative experiences. “What starts the process, really, are laughs and slights and snubs when you are a kid.” Continuing, “ If you are reasonably intelligent and if your anger is deep enough and strong enough, you learn that you can change those attitudes by excellence, personal gut performance while those who have everything are sitting on their fat butts.”
Of course, Nixon never changed that upper class view of him. It’s unfortunate that he would do anything to try to do so, and that Whittier College still can’t face itself. Until Whittier College does take an honest look at, change and heal itself, it will continue to be at bottom more an inglorious institution of lower learning than the fine liberal arts college it wishes us to believe it is despite history.
NIXON QUIZ
1) Did Richard Nixon fail to include being caught breaking & entering a
Duke Law School professor's office, and an arrest while an undergraduate at
Whittier College, in a FBI employment application?
2) If you answered Yes to Question 1): Why was Nixon arrested while a Whittier
College student?
NIXON QUIZ Results: Partial Credit
As for Watergate, it appears the break-in that brought down a president was only to see what might be in Larry O'Brien's files related to Howard Hughes' 'contributions' to Nixon and 'loans' to his family members. It seems Hughes not only gave money to Dick Nixon but also to Donald Nixon, a 'loan' to underwrite Nixon's Burgers. The criminal cover up of the criminal break-in made some crooked sense, but the Watergate break-in itself made no sense. Seeking to deal with an imaginary October Surprise during his last campaign, the pathologically insecure Dick Nixon provided the rope that would be used to hang his political career, and, more, show him for who and what he really was after all, a crook.
Meghan Lee, a National Archives and Records Administration Archivist at the
Richard Nixon Presidential Library & Museum, informs us that, "In 1959,
Richard Nixon told biographer Bela Kornitzer of the break-in. It had not been
reported to that time." If that was indeed the first admission by Nixon
of his breaking & entering a Duke Law School office, then he couldn't have
included the incident in his FBI employment application. Nixon's FBI application
itself would provide the definitive clarification. As it is, we have Richard
Nixon's word, but also the low probability that soon to be dubbed 'Tricky Dick'
would volunteer the act when it was believed no disciplinary or criminal record
of the break-in existed.
John F. Kennedy waited hours for Richard M. Nixon to concede defeat in the 1960 presidential election. At length, Nixon had his press secretary Robert Finch concede. JFK said then that Nixon was going out the same way he came in, with no class, much like his alma mater Whittier College.
Nixon biographer Roger Morris has Dick Nixon and two accomplices breaking and
entering a Duke Law School Dean's office to check grades before their public
posting. The facts and purpose of the break-in would seem least unreliably arrived
at through interviewing the accomplices with Nixon no longer in a position to
influence them.
Meghan Lee also reports that, "There is no mention of Richard Nixon being
arrested while attending Whittier College in either processed archive collections
or in secondary sources such as Stephen Ambrose's Nixon", and suggests
searches of local historical society and police archives. More compelling than
records, or the lazy ('serial plagiarist') Ambrose, in denial of such an arrest,
though, are the observations of Nixon's Whittier contemporary Allie Darling
Lowe, whose father helped Nixon establish himself in Whittier, and whose brother
Nixon had to apologize for being intimidated during Nixon's dirty tricks campaign
against Helen Gahagan Douglas for the U. S. Senate.
According to the 92 year old Whittier native Darling Lowe, in a 2007 Ken Braiterman
interview, Dick Nixon dated the Whittier P. D. Chief's daughter from high school
on through Nixon's Whittier undergraduate years (she reportedly broke up with
Nixon, when he was going off to Duke Law School and suggested his steady girlfriend
for years buy herself an engagement ring). An arrest or surviving record of
an arrest of Dick Nixon while he was an undergrad at Whittier College, therefore,
is extremely unlikely, nor apparently would Nixon's relationship with the Chief's
daughter have been likely to survive an arrest record.
NARA's Archivist Lee also relates that, "According to Ambrose, Jonathon
Aitken, and Nixon's own memoirs, J. Edgar Hoover later disclosed to Vice-President
Nixon that the appropriation had been cut off for the position he had applied
for." Hoover's statement will remain the official explanation, unless it's
shown that the FBI troubled to learn about the Duke incident, and/or any Nixon
arrest. The problem, of course, is sources.
Academician Stephen Ambrose has been proven a serial plagiarist. Jonathon Aitken
was a Tory MP and Minister in the U. K., until he was sentenced to prison for
perjury and perversion of justice, and branded a "serial liar". Nixon,
not surprisingly, seems to have liked Aitken, granting him rare interviews as
well as answering his submitted questions. J. Edgar Hoover was an old queen
whose entire life was a lie, who as the Director of the FBI declared there was
no organized crime in America, among other howlers. And Tricky Dick isn't the
kind of nickname one picks up for being honest. Strange bedfellows is one thing,
but dishonest bedfellows is just too much.
So far, it's confessed and accepted that Nixon was guilty of breaking &
entering at Duke, and circumstantial evidence supports Nixon having omitted
any mention of that incident in his FBI application, and it's obvious enough
that the FBI didn't want Nixon or didn't want Nixon enough to find him a position
or another position in the Bureau. There is also good cause to suggest any local
arrest of Nixon while he was an undergraduate at Whittier College is as unlikely
as it is likely any such arrest record would have been expunged if it had been
made.
Nixon, later conducting City of Whittier Attorney's business, would have ample
opportunity to disappear any such arrest record. The infamous erasure of 18
minutes of a subpoenaed White House tape recording shows Richard Nixon was far
from above destroying or having evidence destroyed, just as he was far from
above fabricating or having documents fabricated.
Jerry Brown, while California Secretary of State in the early 1970s, before
Watergate revelations compelled Nixon to become our first President to have
to resign, "exposed President Nixon's use of falsely notarized documents
to improperly earn a large tax deduction."
What's clear is that the young Dick Nixon was indeed the prototypical post-Quaker
Whittier College Dirty Tricks graduate, and matured into a prototypical embarrassment
and disgrace, a criminal, an albatross. And what has changed at Whittier College?
Thankfully, things have finally changed at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
and Museum, now under the direction of NARA's Timothy Naftali and staffed by
diligent archivists like Meghan Lee. We look forward to a steady flow of Richard
Nixon revelations, some of which will reveal as well still more about rogue
private liberal arts Whittier College, which, like its infamous graduate Richard
M. Nixon, will, finally, have to face the consequences of its wrongs.
Nixon Fountain Damaged: Vandalism or Symbolic Action?
The Richard M. Nixon fountain, on the Whittier College campus so-called North Lawn, was vandalized recently. The answer to whether this act of vandalism was a random expression of disenchantment with the Whittier College experience or a politically-motivated action, or both, may be seen in how the Nixon memorial was vandalized...
According to Dean of Students Jeanne Ortiz, the Nixon fountain was purposefully clogged and then detergent was poured in, which resulted in the fountain pump producing soap suds instead of circulating water - until the pump burned out. The pump cost $400 to replace. It only took College maintenance workers a week to effect the repair, which could be a Whittier College repair record, excepting the covering over of anti-administration graffiti sprayed on campus walls last year.
This may have been an act of vandalism, but most evidently saw the act as politically and morally symbolic, as the equivalent of washing out Tricky Dick's mouth with soap, or cleansing the disgraced Whittier College alumnus infamous for Dirty Tricks and being the only President in U. S. history to have to resign. Despite the fact that the Nixon fountain is passed day and night by Whittier College students, administrators, faculty, staff, and visitors, it wasn't until a freshman sent an email to Dean Ortiz wondering what was up with the fountain that anything was done.
Dean Ortiz asks, "What can we do to create pride in our campus"? and points out that "...it's up to...students to show pride in the campus." While no one to whittiergate's knowledge has been apprehended for this act of vandalism or making this political statement, the use of soap suds suggests trying to clean up something in which pride cannot be taken, a stain, the glorification of Richard M. Nixon. How can anyone be proud of Richard M. Nixon? Why would anyone put a memorial fountain to Dick Nixon on a college campus? How could anyone expect a memorial to Dick Nixon on a college campus to not be repeatedly vandalized?
"Get born, keep warm
Short pants, romance, learn to dance
Get dressed, get blessed
Try to be a success
Please her, please him, buy gifts
Don't steal, don't lift
20 years of schoolin'
and they put you on the day shift
Look out, kid,
they keep it all hid
Better jump down a manhole
Light yourself a candle
Don't wear sandals
and try to avoid the scandals
Don't wanna be a bum
you better chew gum
The pump don't work
'cause the Vandals took the handle"
- Bob Dylan
http://www.lyricstime.com/bob-dylan-subterranean-homesick-blues-lyrics.html
Whittier College, replace the Richard M. Nixon fountain and Fellowship with a Michael Heck fountain and Fellowship. President Richard M. Nixon ordered the Christmas Bombing of northern Vietnam that continued until there was no target of value left to bomb. Much decorated USAF pilot Michael Heck decided on that Christmas Eve that he could no longer participate in his President's, Command-in-Chief's, and fellow Whittier College alumnus Richard Nixon's horrifying disregard for innocent human life. And Whittier College builds and maintains against inevitable vandalism a memorial to Tricky Dick Nixon, rather than erect a memorial to a good man who served his nation and People, and all humanity, with more courage and honor than Dick Nixon could imagine. Welcome, to Whittier College, home of Dirty Tricks, where the Trustees and administrators never seem to learn better.
http://www.blogsnh.com/drupal/blog_entry/ken_braiterman/just_when_i_thought_i_knew_richard_nixon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Gahagan
What Happened to History? http://hnn.us/articles/969.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Aitken
Nixon tax fraud exposed: http://ag.ca.gov/ag/brown.php