Friday, May 16, 2014

Observation — 1972, Nixon in China, Nixon Impeached?



It was the year of the good, the bad and the ugly.  No, not Clint EastwoodRichard Nixon. Nixon visited China a nation the U.S. pretended didn’t exist. Nixon ordered the bombing of North Vietnam in 1972.  And then there was Watergate.  Eleven Israeli athletes were murdered at the Munich Olympics. Alabama Governor George Wallace was shot. British soldiers fired on Catholics in Londonderry, killing 13. Supreme Court called the death penalty ‘cruel and unusual.” Prozac was born.  Queen Elizabeth sent her first email.  Atari introduced Pong, Wilt Chamberlain scored his 30,000th point Arthur Godfrey ended his 27 years in radio, John and Yoko were issued deportation orders. The Oakland As won the World Series. “Sanford & Son” debuted. So did MS magazine. Democrats nominated George McGovern. Henreich Böll received the Nobel Prize for literature. Wallace Stegner was awarded the Pulitzer for Angle of Repose.  The Day of The Jackal earned Frederick Forsyth the Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America. While Richard Bach’s Jonathan Living Seagull was the runaway best seller, it was the year Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins was published. We were also reading The Winds of War by Herman Wouk, The Word by Irving Wallace and August 1914 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Academy Award for Best Film went to The French Connection. We watched The Godfather, Cabaret, Deliverance and Last Tango in Paris.  In music, we loved “The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face” by Roberta Flack, “American Pie” by Don McLean, “Without You” by Nillson, “Candyman,” by Sammy Davis Jr. and “Lean On Me” by Bill Withers. Gwyneth Paltrow, Shaquille O’Neal and Brad Paisley were born. Many departed — Harry S. Truman, J Edgar Hoover, Gil Hodges, Walter Winchell, Brian Donlevy, George Sanders, Dan Blocker, Margaret Rutherford, Leo G. Carroll, William Boyd (Hopalong Cassidy), Oscar Levant, Jackie Robinson and Maurice Chevalier.  If you were around, what were you doing during this year of the water rat?



1 comment:

mybillcrider said...

Gotta admit that I didn't love "The First Time Ever." I did love "American Pie," though.