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Spinning the facts in play

Thursday, May 3, 2007

The prism of passing decades can certainly change how history looks. So of course can clever rewriting of that history – plus some piling-on of hype. The notion that disgraced ex-President Richard Nixon ever gave an “apology” to the nation - for the constitutional atrocities that are broadly labeled “Watergate” - is promoted by the play FROST/NIXON, now on Broadway after a strong run in London’s West End that originated at the still-adventurous Donmar Warehouse theatre.

But did he really apologize, as Peter Morgan’s fast-paced and mostly-convincing script would suggest – and as the interviewer (now-Sir) David Frost has always boasted in touting his exclusive seven days of video-taping with Nixon, conducted three years after his ignominious departure from the White House?

 

The production’s publicity material - widely reprinted across the media - says it “tackles the question: How did David Frost, a famous British talk-show host with a playboy reputation, elicit the apology that the rest of the world was waiting to hear”.

Apology may have been what Frost asked for - and firmly pressed for, employing the (for him) rare and ostentatious gesture of putting down his permanent prop, the clipboard (“to indicate this wasn't a carefully prepared ploy”, he has disingenuously said more than once) – but it’s a real stretch to claim that an apology is what resulted. Frost was also pushing – quite specifically – for an admission of “wrong-doing” and “abuse of power”.

“A very deep regret” is what we hear, for “all the mistakes”, and Nixon also goes as far as to say he “let down” friends and the public. And that's about all.

It’s worth going back to the real, original taped interviews. Here, verbatim, is what Nixon actually said after being pushed: 

 

• “I let the American people down, and I have to carry that burden with me for the rest of my life. My political life is over. I will never yet, and never again have an opportunity to serve in any official position. Maybe I can give a little advice from time to time. And, so, I can only say that in answer to your question, that while technically, I did not commit a crime, an impeachable offense - these are legalisms - as far as the handling of this matter is concerned, it was so botched-up. I made so many bad judgments."

 

To me - and perhaps to you - that may smack of remorse, in a self-pitying way, but it’s hardly an apology or even an admission of wrong-doing. Nixon was sorry, sure. Sorry for botching-up.

 

 

FULLY COMPARING THE DRAMATIZATION WITH THE ORIGINAL, by the way, is not all that easy. Frost’s modern-day producer Charlie Courtauld insists: “Frost retains the rights to every word that was said on the real transcript”. I am able, of course, to quote that 1977 extract for free because of copyright law’s provision for “fair use”.

I should add, too, that Frost’s British producer at the time of the taping, the often icily analytical John Birt (later Director General of the BBC) was the instigator of one encounter NOT dramatized in the play. It came during an evening that was spent in Los Angeles partying for Frost’s birthday - surprising perhaps, given the serious work ahead, but entirely characteristic since it was Frost.

Birt approached him and warned: “David, I don’t think you’re up to this”.

Back in the London TV company from which Birt had been “borrowed” and where I worked at the time, the story was elaborated to include Birt dashing Frost’s champagne glass from his hand. An unlikely action, I can say, but the verbal chastisement is true - and entirely characteristic since it was Birt.

 

 

RUPERT MURDOCH’S BID FOR HIS LONGED-FOR HOLY GRAIL of journalism, the Wall Steet Journal, by offering $5 billion to acquire its owners, Dow Jones & Company, is causing much wry speculation throughout the media industry. An adviser to Dow Jones’ effective controllers, the high-born but low-profile Boston Brahmin descendants of Hugh Bancroft, called Murdoch’s offer “absolutely insanely high”. We recall that two years ago Murdoch paid a then-extraordinary sum, $580 million, for the youth-networking web entity MySpace.com.

After extensively pondering their plans (including a 68-page marketing analysis that recently landed on my desk with the scary title “Never-Ending Friending”) Murdoch’s people in charge of MySpace have decided to start a fresh form of news-delivery called MySpace News. Its distinctive feature is to enable viewers to vote for their “favorite” news item and so influence its continued inclusion and prominence on the site – a merger, so to speak, of approaches from both the Digg.com interactive “news-aggregator” site (now suddenly infamous as DVD copyright-busters) and the Murdoch empire’s own most successful TV entertainment, American Idol.

Observers are wondering if, in some Murdoch-dominated future, readers will be able to get unwelcome stories voted off the island of the Journal’s front page.

And the voting precedent of Digg.com reminds me that London's veteran satirical organ Private Eye, employing its old-fashioned, snobby English zenophobia to highlight Murdoch’s Australian origins, has long called him “The Dirty Digger”.