When history collides: Have historians ever reached agreement on WHY Nixon shot J.R.?

As best I can remember, Nixon shot J. R. Ewing because of stuff he had in Larry O'Brien's safe about Nixon's (wink, wink) "friendship" with weird rich guy Bebe Rebozo.

by Ken

My goodness, here we are counting down to the ruby anniversary (at least that's what I came up with for the 40th in a quick online search) of the Watergate break-in ordered by President Richard M. Nixon -- coming up this Sunday, the 17th, in case you were planning a party -- in the very week (Wednesday night, to be exact) that TNT is dragging out yet another reincarnation of that hoary ancient prime-time soap Dallas, commingling the surviving geriatric Ewings & Friends (& Foes -- I see that old Ewing-family nemesis Cliff Barnes is on hand) with their imagined progeny and assorted other youngerfolk. Be still, my heart.

Actually, I'm not sure I'm up to another romp through Southfork and environs (sometimes the past is best left buried where it lies), but it occurred to me that the new generation of Dallas producers-writers has a real problem on its hands, in that what passed for colossal corporate skullduggery when the show was new would today qualify as little more than slight corporate overexuberance. What would you have to do today to qualify for the mantel of villainy once worn so cockily by Larry Hagman's J. R. Ewing, remembered by the New York Daily News's David Hinckley as "the ultimate capitalist who steered the Ewing family to wealth and influence with little regard for the moral consequences."

Now is it mere coincidence, this confluence of Dallas and Nixon? I don't think so. It was, after all, Nixon who shot J.R. (Wasn't it? Maybe I should have double-checked this. I remember it had something to do with J.R. knowing what was in Larry O'Brien's safe about Nixon's intimate relations with Bebe Rebozo, or something like that.) As a matter of fact, as I've written here, I've often felt the same way about the Dastardliness Quotient of Nixon & Co. as compared with that of his lineal political descendants. I always try to stick up for Nixon, though, by pointing out that he was pushing the frontiers of malfeasance and democracy-destroying as far as the mind of man was capable of imagining in his time. As you follow the plunge into the muck through the eras of Ronald Reagan and the Tiniest George Bush, those miscreants were all standing on the shoulders of the master. And still, it's worth remembering how mainstream, by present-day standards, most of Nixon's more radical political positions were.

Still, I was cheered to see the Watergate boys, Woodward and Bernstein, once again sharing a byline, as part of the Washington Post's Watergate Ruby Anniversary festivities, specifically in an op-ed piece called "Woodward and Bernstein: 40 years after Watergate, Nixon was far worse than we thought." Here's some of what they have to say:

At its most virulent, Watergate was a brazen and daring assault, led by Nixon himself, against the heart of American democracy: the Constitution, our system of free elections, the rule of law.

Today, much more than when we first covered this story as young Washington Post reporters, an abundant record provides unambiguous answers and evidence about Watergate and its meaning. This record has expanded continuously over the decades with the transcription of hundreds of hours of Nixon’s secret tapes, adding detail and context to the hearings in the Senate and House of Representatives; the trials and guilty pleas of some 40 Nixon aides and associates who went to jail; and the memoirs of Nixon and his deputies. Such documentation makes it possible to trace the president’s personal dominance over a massive campaign of political espionage, sabotage and other illegal activities against his real or perceived opponents.

In the course of his five-and-a-half-year presidency, beginning in 1969, Nixon launched and managed five successive and overlapping wars — against the anti-Vietnam War movement, the news media, the Democrats, the justice system and, finally, against history itself. All reflected a mind-set and a pattern of behavior that were uniquely and pervasively Nixon’s: a willingness to disregard the law for political advantage, and a quest for dirt and secrets about his opponents as an organizing principle of his presidency.

Long before the Watergate break-in, gumshoeing, burglary, wiretapping and political sabotage had become a way of life in the Nixon White House. . . .

To be sure, the boys go on quite a bit, and I confess I haven't read every last word. It's just nice to see someone honoring the authentic scale of Nixon's skullduggery rather than treating him as some prehistoric evildoer-wannabe.

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