Watergate dominated the news in April, as it had for more than a year. Each day seemed to bring new evidence of malfeasance by President Richard Nixon and his staff, and in a nation unaccustomed to having a criminal in the White House, the revelations were taken quite seriously. As the House Judiciary Committee took up the question of impeachment, Nixon knew his time to wriggle out of the mess was running short. In the football metaphors that he loved so much, the President was trailing by two touchdowns late in the fourth quarter. So, like any coach in such a predicament, he called for an onside kick.
As often happens in last-minute comebacks, Nixon benefited from a questionable call by the referees. On April 28 Maurice Stans and John Mitchell, former leaders of Nixon’s re-election campaign committee, were acquitted of criminal conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and perjury. Although both men would later be convicted on other charges, the verdict gave a temporary lift to Nixon’s rally attempt. He capitalized on the momentum, hoping that a weary public would welcome a chance to put Watergate behind it.
On April 30, in a final, desperate maneuver to save his job, President Nixon released 1,254 pages of partial transcripts, edited by himself, of Oval Office tape recordings that the House committee had subpoenaed. He invited a pair of prominent congressmen to verify their accuracy. The committee had requested the tapes to reconcile conflicting accounts of the President’s role in covering up the Watergate burglary of June 1972. Nixon refused to turn over the actual tapes—ostensibly to protect nationalsecurity information and the privacy of the participants, but in truth because they showed he had been involved in the cover-up from the start.
Like an onside kick, the maneuver risked helping the other team. In a nationally televised address the President conceded that “these transcripts will provide grist for many sensational stories in the press. … they will be embarrassing to me … [and] the subjects of speculation and even ridicule. … ” In an unsuccessful attempt to cut down on the ridicule, the President had deleted vulgar and indecent material (which would have made Kenneth Starr’s report 90 percent shorter) and passages unrelated to the President’s official actions (which would have made Starr’s report 100 percent shorter). In place of swear words he substituted “expletive deleted.” This ponderous phrase caught the public’s fancy and instantly became an all-purpose joke.
The transcripts inspired widespread shock and revulsion, sparked new calls for Nixon to resign, and revealed enough by themselves for the House committee to recommend impeachment. Yet they also concealed enough to give Nixon a fighting chance of mustering thirty-four votes to avoid conviction by the Senate. In a pattern that would become familiar in later scandals, the President’s defenders admitted that he had acted crudely and dishonestly but denied any proof of impeachable offenses. (At one point in the transcripts, Nixon told his staff that “perjury is a hard rap to prove” and suggested that they have convenient memory lapses when testifying.)
Nixon hoped that the transcripts would make him look candid and cooperative while maintaining the fig leaf of privacy and national security. But the House committee—divided, unusually for Watergate, along party lines—refused to take the bait. Along with the Watergate special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, it doggedly continued to press its subpoenas. The Supreme Court soon told the President that he had to turn over the tapes, reducing his maneuvering room to zero. A hundred days after his gamble with the edited transcripts, Richard Nixon would become an ex-President.
With Nixon in such deep trouble, attention naturally turned to Vice President Gerald R. Ford and his family. A reporter asked his wife, Betty, how she dealt with the stresses of her new role and got a disarmingly honest reply. “Valium three times a day,” the soon-to-be First Lady replied, “or sometimes Equagesic. That way I’m more comfortable.”
That Streaking Fad
On April 2, at the Academy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles, a naked man ran across the stage as David Niven was reading an introduction. Niven was shaken but recovered his customary urbanity fast enough to quip, “Just think, the only laugh that man will ever get in his life is by stripping off his clothes and showing his shortcomings.” The incident marked the high point—or low, if you prefer—of a practice that vied with Pet Rocks for the coveted title of Dumbest Fad of the 1970s: streaking.
Streaking, or running naked through a public place, began on college campuses in the late fall and winter of 1973. Unsurprisingly, it was most popular at warm-weather schools. At the University of Georgia the phenomenon grew and grew until more than fifteen hundred people participated in a mass streak. Students finally had to parachute naked onto the Georgia campus to attract any attention. (Seventy miles west, in Atlanta, after a few people had streaked a city bus, the driver was asked if they were male or female. He replied, “I couldn’t tell—they were wearing masks.”) Even in the North a few hardy souls challenged the elements, including groups in Calgary, Alberta (four degrees below zero), and Anchorage, Alaska (eight below). A different sort of bravery was shown by several dozen cadets who dared to streak West Point (and reportedly escaped without punishment).
By March streaking had become a nationwide craze. Time and Newsweek jumped all over the story, grateful (like National Geographic) for any chance to print photographs of bare-breasted women. Academics and experts contributed their opinions as well. The Christian Century called streaking “an expression of praxis. … It is Kierkegaard’s leap of faith; Tillich’s courage to be.” A more likely explanation is that too much Kierkegaard and Tillich were what had made bored college students run around naked in the first place.
In Davie, Florida, residents of a local nudist colony turned the tables by running through town with clothes on. At Columbia University a group of forty naked men invaded all-female Barnard College in an attempt to recruit volunteers but, as usual, attracted no interest from the students there. The next day’s events showed the reason for Barnard’s standoffishness: When one bold woman disrobed and mounted the campus’s statue of Alma Mater, hordes of overeager Columbia men started pinching her until she had to be removed under protection.
Dozens of pop songs were rushed out to capitalize on the fad. Most successful was “The Streak,” by Ray Stevens, which stayed on top of Billboard’s sales chart for an improbable three weeks. Stevens was best known as a novelty artist, although his previous number one hit had been a serious-minded plea for love and tolerance titled “Everything Is Beautiful.” After countless newspaper photos of overweight streakers proved the falsehood of that title, Stevens went back to comedy, and while he never had another chart topper, he did achieve some success with a 1977 remake of “In the Mood” performed by clucking chickens.
Even a beleaguered President Nixon got in on the act. When asked about the gray hairs on his temple, the President replied, “They call that streaking”—generally conceded to be his best one-liner since “I am not a crook.” Comedians and cartoonists across the nation picked up on the theme of presidential streaking, with the phrase cover-up figuring prominently in most cases. Literary scholars recalled Bob Dylan’s prescient line from “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)”: “Even the President of the United States must some times have to stand naked.”
And then it was all over. A month and a half after the Academy Awards incident, Dr. Joyce Brothers explained streaking’s sudden demise by saying, “The challenge of finding new and unusual ways to streak was no longer there.” Or maybe it was just finals. Whatever the explanation, streaking vanished from America’s college campuses, to be reborn in the 1980s and 1990s in the guise of “Coed Naked” sports and “Nude Olympics.” The revival demonstrated once again the truth of Karl Marx’s famous dictum as applied to American popular culture: History repeats itself—the first time as travesty, the second as farce.
That Crossword Fad
1924 Seventy-five Years Ago
On April 10 the world’s first book of crossword puzzles appeared in stores around the country. Within days, sometimes hours, it disappeared, as ravenous fans snapped up any copies they could find and the publishers scrambled to print more. The Cross Word Puzzle Book did not introduce such puzzles to America; they had been a popular Sunday feature in the New York World since that paper printed the first modern crossword in December 1913. But by making a batch of fifty puzzles conveniently available in book form, with no need to wait a week for the next one, the Plaza Publishing Company had unexpectedly created a fad of monstrous proportions. Answers were not included in the book (they could be obtained by mail), so obsessive puzzlers besieged librarians, professors, and experts of all kinds to ask for the names of Roman emperors, Albanian rivers, and tropical beasts. Among industry insiders, however, the most frequent question was: What on earth is the Plaza Publishing Company?
Plaza turned out to be a cover name for Simon & Schuster, which had just opened its doors in January and did not want to be known as a novelty house. The proprietors learned to live with it after they sold forty thousand puzzle books, complete with pencil and eraser, in three months and almost half a million within a year. By December the fad had become a full-blown craze. The Pennsylvania Railroad printed puzzles on the back of its menus and provided a dictionary and thesaurus for stumped passengers. The U.S. Department of Agriculture issued an official announcement that the ancient Roman goddess of fertility was Ops. Archeologists found something resembling a crossword puzzle on a Cretan stone disk dating from 2000 B.C., while an antiquarian said that the ancient Hindus and Chinese had enjoyed amusements of similar nature. Curmudgeons grumbled at the puzzles’ exaltation of trivia, though some did at least give them credit for getting rid of mahjong.
Pittsburgh, for some reason, proved a hotbed of puzzle mania. The pastor of that city’s Knoxville Baptist Church made his congregation solve a biblical crossword to reveal the text for his sermon. It turned out to be an innocuous verse from Proverbs; the minister had missed his chance to preach on Jezebel, the world’s first crossword puzzler (“She wrote in the letters”—1 Kings 21:9). Soon afterward the more upright rector of the Smithfield Street Methodist Episcopal Church called solving crosswords “the mark of a childish mentality.” That same day, however, a mob of frustrated puzzle fans descended on Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum to ask its paleontologists what bird, presumably ancient, had a sevenletter name and belonged to “the sub-order of eleutherodactyli oscines.” (The answer: sparrow.) And two puzzle-solving prisoners in a Pittsburgh jail came to blows over whether “a place of punishment” should be cell or the same word with the first letter changed.
As time passed, crossword puzzles lost their taint of frivolity and were adopted by respectable publications. The last major holdout was The New York Times, which began printing a Sunday puzzle in 1942 and a daily puzzle in 1950—nontrivial concessions for a paper that to this day disdains to print comic strips. Even American Heritage ran a crossword puzzle for a few years in the 1970s before running up against subscribers’ reluctance to write in what was then still a hardcover publication (or, should they fail to finish, have their ineptitude preserved for generations to come, because no one ever threw out old issues). The books remain steady sellers for Simon & Schuster to this day, making crosswords a very rare survivor of the oblivion that has long since engulfed marathon dancing, flagpole sitting, Prohibition, and other 1920s enthusiasms.
1799 Two Hundred Years Ago
The Fries Rebellion
On April 4 a detachment of five hundred soldiers marched from Philadelphia into Bucks and Northampton Counties, Pennsylvania, to put down a revolt against the United States government. The force was overwhelming, and the campaign, which brought together state militia, federal regulars, and even a company of artillery, had been prepared meticulously for weeks. There was only one problem: By the time the soldiers arrived on the scene, there was no longer any rebellion.
The source of the unrest had been an unpopular new tax on land, houses, and slaves. Congress had enacted the tax to pay for its military buildup against a presumed threat from France. To calculate the value of houses, assessors had been hired to record the dimensions, building material, and size and number of windows. In eastern Pennsylvania the local German farmers took great exception to this echo of the feudal European customs they had fled. Angry Hausfrauen poured boiling water on assessors as they stood beneath their windows taking measurements, giving the affair its alternative name, the Hot Water War. Agents appointed to collect the tax (almost all non-Germans and many of them unpopular locally to begin with) were reviled and intimidated into resigning. By early March federal marshals had found it necessary to arrest about twenty prominent citizens for nonpayment.
The leader in fighting the tax was a Bucks County man named John Fries. Years before, Fries had served in the Revolution, and as a militia captain he had helped suppress the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794. Now, once again, he was a rebel himself. As much as anything else, Fries seems simply to have enjoyed making speeches and leading soldiers. With the glibness and volubility that made him a successful auctioneer, he gathered an irregular force of 100 to 150 lightly armed men. On March 8 they descended on the Sun Tavern in Bethlehem, where the prisoners were being held. Confronted by superior force, the marshals released them, and everyone went home.
Over the ensuing weeks, with the excitement over, resistance to the tax faded and most citizens grudgingly paid. In the meantime, however, word reached the federal capital of Philadelphia about the Pennsylvanians’ defiance of the law. Alexander Hamilton, the Army’s inspector general, jumped at the chance to assert the federal government’s authority and burnish his own credentials. He bustled about giving orders, appointing officers, and dispatching troops. Four weeks after the Sun Tavern affray, the soldiers finally arrived and found no sign of any uprising. They contented themselves with cutting down liberty poles, raiding hostile newspaper offices, and harassing rebel sympathizers. They then tracked down and arrested Fries (who hid in a swamp until his barking dog, Whiskey, revealed his location) and five dozen alleged fellow insurrectionists and delivered them to federal authorities for trial.
Fries was convicted of treason and sentenced to death. In 1800, however, President John Adams—against the unanimous advice of his cabinet—granted him a pardon. Adams quite understandably felt that executing someone for a mere riot would breed more animosity than respect for the federal government. Meanwhile, as the prospect of a fight with France receded, the war tax became even more unpopular. Citizens saw themselves forced to pay a tax to support an army whose sole job was to force them to pay the tax.
The main effect of the Fries Rebellion was to weaken President Adams. The Republican opposition continued to fault him for the burdensome tax as well as the hated standing army and its ham-fisted tactics. At the same time, hard-core Federalists—supposedly his allies—excoriated the President for his weak response to the insurrection, especially the pardons. In retrospect the affair proved to be one of many cases in which the Federalists, who had looked so strong in the wake of the XYZ affair a year before, over-played their hand and gave the Republicans ammunition that would soon topple them from power.
1649 Three Hundred and Fifty Years Ago
Toleration in Maryland
On April 21 Maryland’s colonial assembly passed “An Act Concerning Religion,” more commonly known as the Religious Toleration Act. Despite this title, the opening sections of the act concerned anything but toleration; they prescribed death for anyone who “shall from henceforth Blaspheame GOD, that is curse him, or shall deny our Saviour JESUS CHRIST to bee the son of God, or shall deny the Holy Trinity. …” Cheap by comparison were “reproachfull words or speeches concerning the blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of our Saviour, or the holy Apostles or Evangelists … ,” which occasioned only a fivepound fine for a first offense. Profaning the Sabbath by swearing, drinking, playing, or working would cost the violator two and a half shillings.
The Toleration Act earned its title, and its historic importance, from a clause that decreed: “And wheras the inforcing of the Conscience in matter of Religion hath frequently fallen out to bee of dangerous Consequence in those Commonwealths where it hath beene practised … no person or persons whatsoever within this Province … professing to beleeve in Jesus Christ shall from henceforth be any waies troubled, molested or discountenanced, for or in respect of his or her Religion.” For the first time in any American colony (except for the tiny, haphazardly organized handful of towns that would eventually become Rhode Island), inhabitants had a legal right to practice Christianity as they chose.
The Maryland law did not mark the start of a new era, however, so much as an attempt to forestall the end of an old one. Since its first colonists had arrived, in 1634, Maryland had been unique among the colonies for the peace and mutual respect between its Catholic and Protestant residents. It had been established as a haven for Catholics, who suffered from many legal disabilities in England. The proprietor, Lord Baltimore, was Catholic, as were nearly half the original settlers.
Baltimore had instructed the Catholics in that group to “suffer no scandall nor offence to be given to any of the Protestants,” to “be silent upon all occasions of discourse concerning matters of Religion,” and to “treate the Protestants with as much mildness and favor as Justice will permitt.” He also ordered that “all Acts of Romane Catholique Religion be done as privately as may be.” When a few Jesuit priests claimed exemption from civil law, he made them submit to his authority. Baltimore’s tolerant policies remained in effect through the 1630s and 1640s even as, across the sea, England sank into a bloody civil war that was greatly aggravated by doctrinal differences.
As the 1640s progressed, however, Protestant immigrants began to greatly outnumber Maryland’s Catholic ruling class. Among these were many Puritans from the neighboring colony of Virginia, whose Anglican majority was much less tolerant of dissenters. Lord Baltimore welcomed the newcomers, going so far as to appoint a mostly Protestant government. And by passing the Act Concerning Religion, his Catholic-dominated assembly put into law the long-established principle of equality. With these actions Baltimore hoped to keep the polarizing divisions of the old country from cropping up in the new.
Alas, the very breadth of Maryland’s policy of religious liberty led to its downfall. Puritans continued to stream in, and in 1653, with the Puritan Oliver Cromwell firmly in control in England, they seized Maryland’s colonial government. Catholics were barred from the assembly, which repealed the Toleration Act in 1654 and declared that “none who profess the exercise of the Popish Religion, commonly known by the name of the Roman Catholic Religion, can be protected in this Province.” For four years the Puritans exerted a harsh rule in Maryland until Cromwell told them “not to busy themselves about religion, but to settle the civil government.” The Toleration Act was then restored and remained in effect until 1692, after England’s Protestant Revolution, when Anglicanism became Maryland’s official religion. From then until the Revolution, Catholics—by then perhaps a tenth of the population—were reviled, persecuted, disfranchised, and denied civil rights in the colony Lord Baltimore had hoped would be a peaceful home for all Christians.
