Deep Throat comes out...

[janey83]

This is a little but about 2 months ago, my journalism professor brought up "Deep Throat" in class and asked if anyone knew what it was. A few people tried not to laugh, and of course, no one knew what it was, besides what it sounds like. Anyway....that's my story for today.

 

[somdcrab]

Close to his death bed, he finally tells his story...

Now we just need Woodward to confirm, but I doubt anyone would come out as Deep Throat with the reporters who would know still around to confirm/deny... unless its senility and confusion.


(and 100 male forum members all get frustrated at realizing its about that other Deep Throat.... )

crap and i'd a bet pixies left testercle it was her/him

 

[Nickel]

This is a little but about 2 months ago, my journalism professor brought up "Deep Throat" in class and asked if anyone knew what it was. A few people tried not to laugh, and of course, no one knew what it was, besides what it sounds like. Anyway....that's my story for today.

It blows my mind that college age students don't know the term "Deep Throat" as it pertains to history. No pun intended.

 

[SamSpade]

It blows my mind that college age students don't know the term "Deep Throat" as it pertains to history. No pun intended.

No kidding! I was on a discussion forum the other day, and not a single person - other than the one who created the thread - had the faintest idea who or what was being talked about. What struck me as even *weirder* was that these were 30-something, educated, and - well - PERVS. They didn't even know the Lovelace angle, either.

There's this incredibly bizarre trend among youth that goes "if it happened before I was born, it doesn't matter".

I don't know. When I was in school, we never covered history beyond WW2, even though there was a good thirty years beyond that to cover. Maybe they're still using the same texts?

 

[fishinfool]

If your around my age, Watergate was happening while I was in school so no history class would be teaching it. It was just something that pre-empted good TV shows and who, at that age (around 11 at the time) cared?

Several years later the Linda Lovelace movie got my attention though..

 

[Larry Gude]

It is an individual thing...

There's this incredibly bizarre trend among youth that goes "if it happened before I was born, it doesn't matter".

...and it's not new.

My sister is far more educated than I am and she don't know #### about ####. If it does not directly affect her, her husband, children, family, dog or home, it may as well never have happened. She feels guilty sometimes when Vrai and I get going about the pros and cons of the Louisiana purchase but, she just isn't interested enough to keep up or even have a basic idea.

Her take is 'why do you have to buy the whole state? Can't you just visit?'

To some of our kids the Holocaust is running out of a certain conditioner. To others, it's about Schindler and Nazi's and the Final Solution.

I don't blame schools. People are only gonna be interested in what they're interested in now or back in the day.

For me, this whole Wategate renaisance is bringing backs names I knew back then as a 10 year old; Dean, Sirica, Haig, Patrick Gray, William Rucklshaus...

That and $.50....

 

[T.Rally]

Tom Knott from the Times said something like "its a difficult task to turn agenda driven obscurity into a selfless act of courageousness."

I think W.Mark Felt knew this but was convinced otherwise by his family. I bet Linda Tripp is hoping history will be half as kind to her in another 25 years or so.

 

[Larry Gude]

Ha!

Tom Knott from the Times said something like "its a difficult task to turn agenda driven obscurity into a selfless act of courageousness."

I think W.Mark Felt knew this but was convinced otherwise by his family. I bet Linda Tripp is hoping history will be half as kind to her in another 25 years or so.

We KNOW how that's gonna play.

 

[T.Rally]

..when Vrai and I get going about the pros and cons of the Louisiana purchase but, she just isn't interested enough to keep up or even have a basic idea.

QUOTE]

There's a real barn burner! Have you heard talk of building a rail system that would bridge the 2,000 miles from the Missouri River to the West Coast, the nation would then be joined by 3,500 miles of transcontinental railroad from New York to California?

Pipe dreams, I tell ya!

 

[vraiblonde]

If your around my age, Watergate was happening while I was in school so no history class would be teaching it. It was just something that pre-empted good TV shows and who, at that age (around 11 at the time) cared?

Watergate meant nothing to me at the time because, like you, I was just a kid and had 0 interest in Richard Nixon and his plumbing problems. And it's not like I lived with parents who cared, either.

But since then, I've certainly learned about it and become familiar with all the players and the whole sequence of events. So if some 22 year old person doesn't know what "Deep Throat" is, regarding Watergate, that makes perfect sense. Watergate is as remote to them as Teapot Dome is to me and they're still not old enough to be interested, if they ever will be.

 

[workin hard]

I forget where the origin of the name Deep Throat came from

 

[SamSpade]

I forget where the origin of the name Deep Throat came from

The Lovelace movie was extremely low-budget, but because of its *weirdness*, it caught on in fashionable Hollywood circles.

The premise was typical porn schlock - a woman seeking sexual satisfaction whose clit resided about where her *tonsils* were - and the logical "solution" to her problem.

To adopt such a moniker evoked that movie, but also the concept of a deeply buried and hidden secret - just as "deep pockets" suggests lots of money.

 

[workin hard]

The Lovelace movie was extremely low-budget, but because of its *weirdness*, it caught on in fashionable Hollywood circles.

The premise was typical porn schlock - a woman seeking sexual satisfaction whose clit resided about where her *tonsils* were - and the logical "solution" to her problem.

To adopt such a moniker evoked that movie, but also the concept of a deeply buried and hidden secret - just as "deep pockets" suggests lots of money.

Thanks!

 

[SamSpade]

But since then, I've certainly learned about it and become familiar with all the players and the whole sequence of events. So if some 22 year old person doesn't know what "Deep Throat" is, regarding Watergate, that makes perfect sense. Watergate is as remote to them as Teapot Dome is to me and they're still not old enough to be interested, if they ever will be.

I guess - I'm sometimes a bit put off by the fact that so very many of my PEERS have never heard of it!

The Watergate hearings were on continually at my house, growing up. I was only in my early teens, and I still had a deeply felt - "so what" about a lot of it, because I'd always suspected that people in power were abusing it - plus, I guessed, Nixon won in a landslide - how much of this is just anger over *losing*? I even sympathized with Gerald Ford later, over pardoning Nixon, because at the time - although I suspected he might have been offered the job ON THE CONDITION OF A PARDON - I thought letting the matter drop was good for the country. Strange, because that's the very reasonining I've been so mad at Robert Byrd lo these many years since Lewinsky-gate.

But some of it is - how much do you know about - McCarthy? Korea? Vietnam? The Cold War? The Depression? If I mentioned FDR and Yalta, or the Lindbergh baby, or Neville Chamberlain - you'd know what I was talking about, right? We've got a generation of folks who can't remember Iran-Contra. They can't even remember Gore running for President - in 1988.

Those who fail to learn the lessons of history.....Santayana was right, but with one proviso. People don't just not learn from history - they don't even LEARN history at all. As a pastor I knew once said "One thing we learn from history; people NEVER learn anything from history". How right he was.

I'm often amused by nostalgia, by re-makes in movies, by groups re-doing old songs. By folks marvelling over "The Italian Job", "The Thomas Crown Affair", "Alfie", "Stepford Wives", "Amityville Horror" and so on, *oblivious* to the fact that they were remakes. That groups can re-do old Dobie Gray or Bill Wither's songs, and no one remembers there WAS an original. I'm amused by what I read on the "Hit Me Baby One More Time" web site today, describing Tiffany's one big hit - "I Think We're Alone Now" - a re-make of Tommy James's song which got bumped from number one by Billy Idol's cover of "Mony, Mony" - *ANOTHER* Tommy James song. That same year, Joan Jett would make a hit of "Crimson and Clover" - ANOTHER Tommy James song.

And no one remembers him, 'cept me.

What was that movie, Dana Carvey, about the guy who loses his entire memory, every day? "Blank Slate"? I think the whole world has this problem.

 

[Agee]

For me, this whole Wategate renaisance is bringing backs names I knew back then as a 10 year old; Dean, Sirica, Haig, Patrick Gray, William Rucklshaus...

That and $.50....

I remember being facinated with the Watergate trials as a teenager. The proceedings saturated the airwaves, of course there were only three TV stations back then.

As I watched I thought, how could some of the major players in US government be invloved in such scandalous activities? Boy was I naive. I also remember having the feeling that the President was going down.

 

[SamSpade]

I bet Linda Tripp is hoping history will be half as kind to her in another 25 years or so.

I wouldn't bet on it - she's gonna be vilified *worse*. If it hadn't been for Coulter re-dredging the topic again in "Treason", I'd pretty much believe that McCarthy was the worst thing that ever happened to the 50's and Communism. I'd have gone through life thinking the whole thing was just over-hyped *fear* over nothing - a witch-hunt hysteria.

Recently de-classified documents pretty much tell the story - he was *right*. All down the line.

Movies and documentaries suggest he was demented - and one documentary depicts him as dying in a mental facility. That he admitted privately that his "list of 105" was "an old laundry list".

Total fabrication. Unbelievable. Until a few years ago, I believed it.

 

[vraiblonde]

Those who fail to learn the lessons of history.....Santayana was right, but with one proviso. People don't just not learn from history - they don't even LEARN history at all. As a pastor I knew once said "One thing we learn from history; people NEVER learn anything from history". How right he was.

The idea is that you learn from the past to benefit the future. But with all that's going on in the world right now, the media is completely focused on the Michael Jackson trial, which won't amount to a hill of beans in the broad scheme of history. This EU business has WAY farther reaching consequences and will be something we're still dealing with 50 years from now, LONG after Michael Jackson is a mere footnote.

But we're a bunch of idiots who want to be entertained rather than informed. :shrug:

 

[Tonio]

The idea is that you learn from the past to benefit the future. But with all that's going on in the world right now, the media is completely focused on the Michael Jackson trial, which won't amount to a hill of beans in the broad scheme of history. This EU business has WAY farther reaching consequences and will be something we're still dealing with 50 years from now, LONG after Michael Jackson is a mere footnote.

I agree.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/30/AR2005053000780.html

I am here to tell you that when I searched LexisNexis in the category of major newspapers, John Bolton, the president's choice for U.N. ambassador, got 110 hits for the past week. In the same category, Paris Hilton got 158. As a LexisNexisologist I can only conclude that America has lost its mind.

 

[jazz lady]

But we're a bunch of idiots who want to be entertained rather than informed. :shrug:

Ding-ding-ding! Unfortunately, it's this is the all too common mentality of our society. Ask most people when they've read a newspaper other than the comic section or watched anything on TV other than a reality-TV show. You won't find many who have and that's a shame.

Watergate was one of the major turning points in the history of the United States whose effects are still felt today. I remember listening to the news reports and discussing it in school while it was unfolding. It is very disheartening to know that it is not taught in the schools as it is a huge part of American history nor remembered as other than a passing blurb on the American landscape.

 

[SamSpade]

The idea is that you learn from the past to benefit the future.

I get the premise - it's just that on the grander scheme of things, nobody ever learns - we repeat the same mistakes.

The pastor I mentioned was specifically addressing religious heresies, because I was discussing different modern cults - with which he was astonishingly unfamiliar. He did however, get me to pause and say "and they teach this? and this? Aaah, the Manichean heresy! Oh, that's Montanism - oh, that's the Pelagian heresy...." etc. He knew all of them - hundreds. He said when you have 2000 years of Christian history, most of it has been done before - no one EVER comes up with anything new. To understand the present, he was extremely knowledgeable of the past - but grimly accepted the simple fact that people ALWAYS forget the lessons of history.

Individuals learn lessons from history; but society at large doesn't, because it requires that most of the people will educate themselves, and they won't.

As you observed, "give them bread, and circuses" and the mob will be happy.