It's absurd that something embodying nostalgia for a lost culture should bear the name "Watergate." But the nostalgia is felt by young people today, who don't mind mixing the 50s, 60s, and 70s together, not like us Boomers who think the early 60s, mid-60s, and late 60s were distinctly different eras and have long indulged in the deep, mystic belief that the first few years of the 70s were the real 60s.
And maybe there is nostalgia for the Watergate scandal. Maybe it seems poignant and delicate compared to the scandals of today... and even for Nixon. My son Chris — who is reading a biography of each American President — texted me about Nixon recently — somewhat jocosely — "Nixon is underrated. He was liberal!/Got more done for progressive causes than democrats do today."
Anyway, the nostalgia for lost mid-century America is about far more than food. There's a sense that people lived more rewarding, warm, and loving lives back then. Here's something I saw on TikTok the other day. Let me know how it made you feel or, better yet, if you are not young, show it to someone young and ask them how it makes them feel:
@museumoflostmemories Help us find them! Clues are in the comments #christmas #vintage #nostalgia #fyp #fleamarket #thrift #super8 #8mm #homemovie ♬ Agape - Nicholas Britell
Note: 1966 was the first year you could play Twister, and it's been more than 30 years since REM sang with nostalgia about Twister: "Let's play Twister, let's play Risk/I'll see you in heaven if you make the list."
ADDED: Chris sends these 3 passages from the book he read about Nixon:
About the second one, Chris texted:Here he is telling people he is not liberal after a period of signing liberal bills. So definitely did not see himself as liberal but he had reached a point he needed to clarify this
About that last one, Chris texted:
Here he is defending abortionIn a non-liberal wayIn a private conversation
Here's the book, "Richard Nixon: The Life" (commission earned).
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B. Dylan Hollis, @BDylanHollis, https://sites.prh.com/baking-yesteryear, has a great bunch of shorts on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok wherein he delights in trying old recipes from the late 19th to late 20th Centuries. His baking ability aside, (try the pfeffernusse!) his simple delight in the success or failure of recipes from our past history makes for a fun watch. Oh, he also is selling a cookbook.
don't forget the cool whip!
"It was Nixon, remember, who reduced the superpower tensions of the Cold War, implemented a policy of world order based on what Kissinger calls “equilibrium,” and built an impressive record of domestic leadership and progress that drew as much from Democratic as Republican policies." -- Joe Lieberman in The Wall Street Journal last week.
I think it follows from exposure (today) to the heavily curated media sources of the pre-cable TV era. MGM movies in Technicolor. Elizabeth Taylor. Cary Grant. Always perfection. TV shows with a "girl next door" actually showed beautiful top-shelf models (e.g., Mary Ann on Gilligan's Island), and the "simple" country-bumpkin daughter of poor mountaineer Jed Clampett.
The messages and goals of every movie, TV show, type of clothing, and menu item from the simple 3-TV-network era is rather clear and easy to understand versus the present scattered no-authority social media era. Retro foods that taste good but don't force you to think about environmental impact or wasteful packaging or health damage or vitamins and minerals? So easy!
Will Woke transition into the tradwife movement or a new sort of midcentury religion? It wouldn't surprise me and it seems like it's starting. Fans of tradwives will surely have more children than the average person today, and can thereby pass on their genes. The sterilized transgender crowd has no way forward.
https://www.today.com/parents/family/traditional-wives-tradwives-controversy-tiktok-rcna67253
I was always delighted as a child to see Watergate salad at a party. Now too many of the people who made it have died, so one rarely sees it. I wholeheartedly welcome young people showing up to parties with Watergate salad.
Gack thats a vienna convention violation
I liked the documentary on Martha Mitchell. And I'll never forgive Nixon for approving of the underlying principle behind HMOs. But, really - after all those deaths in Veitnam? There's no way Nixon is underrated. He's lucky he died of natural causes.
Are there 1970s nostalgia nods to the pernicious radical chic of the era? Can we have an Antifa themed Jello mold party, and share ideas on how to use Tupperware to make IEDs?
We used to joke that Watergate Salad was where the missing bits of tapes were hidden.
Ah, the hyper consumerism of the 1950s. You mean that period after ww2 when goods and food was again available. Rationing over v
Ficta said...
"It was Nixon, remember, who reduced the superpower tensions of the Cold War, implemented a policy of world order based on what Kissinger calls “equilibrium,” and built an impressive record of domestic leadership and progress that drew as much from Democratic as Republican policies." -- Joe Lieberman in The Wall Street Journal last week.
I remember. And I get it: all that and a salad. Still doesn't make-up for almost a decade of turmoil and hate, dead bodies literally everywhere, trust in political leaders destroyed, and the richest and most powerful nation in the world's spirit broken, possibly forever. The one we live in. The one that told him "No" but he wouldn't listen.
Racists now say blacks will never see reparations. But we've definitely seen what white folks wasted the money on.
Viewing that video was bittersweet. You can feel the warmth from the love displayed, but the chill that it no longer exists. That's the story of life itself, as well as our particular society and time.
Overall, I like to see that video and the reactions on TikTok.
Anyway, the nostalgia for lost mid-century America is about far more than food. There's a sense that people lived more rewarding, warm, and loving lives back then.
It's not nostalgia for mid-century America, it's a longing for adulthood. Something the younger generations have not been equipped to attain.
Twister at Christmas? Hmm. Twister wasn't for families. It was for parties--a kind of teasing foreplay to check out whether there was going to be aftplay, too.
Althouse:
... not like us Boomers who ... mystic belief that the first few years of the 70s were the real 60s.
Never in my life have I heard that.
Pistachio jello, pineapple and marshmallows? you're making me hungry, Ann
I draw the line at CoolWhip, though. Real(tm) whip cream please. Straight from the can as God intended.
John Henry
I'm positive my mother made that from time to time. gonna ask her.
I think back to a new year's eve party thrown by a friend several years back. It was 70's themed. That would have been a perfect dish to bring.
roller skates and disco hair and tuna casserole...
What was the worst thing from watergate liddy planning to kill jack anderson nowadadays there are few reporters worth the hastle
The old cookbooks are the best. I have one from the late 1800s that goes through the proper treatment of wild game meat to make it tasty, including dressing the game.
But.. Watergate salad? Yuck. I remember some of those dishes my aunties used to bring, weird confections with chemical-fruit flavors - 'Gack' is right.
Your son is correct though: Nixon was a consummate politician who was hard to pin down. He's highly under-rated as a President, considering his achievements. And like some other Presidents, he was unfairly victimized by the Opposition Gang, before, during, and after his tenure - something he never really recovered from.
Aside from quality, the video looks a lot like Christmas down where I'm at now.
And, speaking of Christmas, I'll post this again - my favorite Christmas song.
I'll forgo linking to Grump Cat.
The only difference between that video and our family Christmas get togethers is that there were no jeans being worn back then. When I was a teen in the 60's, jeans could only be worn for working. Juvenile delinquents and all of that!
Nixon was a self-proclaimed moderate, and as the country moved left, he moved left. He also was primarily concerned with Foreign Policy, that's what truly interested him.
People forget that the Democrats controlled Congress during his administration, and a significant number of the Republicans were Moderate/Liberal. Since Nixon didn't really want to fight over Domestic Policy, he usually would "go with the flow". He would talk in private, or in public, in conservative tones, but this didn't translate to anything real.
Nixon really was a liberal on race. He helped push through the first Civil Rights act, and was to the left of JKF on helping blacks. In the early 70s his administration implemented "Affrimative action". The left hates this, so they jabber constantly about "Nixon's Southern Strategy". Which is irrelevant.
He also established the pattern, followed by Reagan, and the Bushes, of saying he would appoint "strict construcitonists" to the SCOTUS, and then giving us moderate/liberals. Nixon put Blackmun and Powell on the Court. Which is not what his voters wanted.
Nixon's favorite lunch was pineapple on cottage cheese. Some Liberal historian I read, sneered that it was "Canned pineapple".
I've tried it, and its not bad. Although I used real pineapple.
I saw the Tick tock video, and guess what?
It made me .002 percent more Anti-semitic.
I guess Nikki Haley was right.
I remember the salad but forget the name. I don't know what we called it.
Food has become so complicated. What's good for you, what's fattening, what's vegan, keto, etc. We long -- or, at least, I do -- for those horrible dishes that ignored all the rules. They were easy and tacky and everyone shut up and ate them while laughing about how awful they were.
There are a number of people and organizations that consider the early seventies as part of the sixties, and the early sixties as a part of the fifties.
https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/october-1973-the-end-of-the-sixties/
I started college in the early seventies (1971 to be exact), and to me it seemed to capture the mood and zeitgeist of the late sixties. So yes, I would argue that the sixties didn't really end until 1973.
As long as they bring back TV trays and fondue I'm OK with it.
But also bring back wood-clad station wagons, halter tops (no bras please), and conversation pits...
Nixon was one of two people who responded respectfully as person to person to Lazlo Toth's Lazlo Letters (vol 1), slightly off the wall letters to famous people to get them to show themselves as pompous assess in their own way.
The other one was Nguyen Van Thieu.
Aluminum Christmas trees with a color wheel light rotating? What's not to love!
I thankfully managed to live through the entire 70’s and beyond without ever hearing of ‘Watergate’ salad. How did this concoction come by that name?
Check out James Lilkes Gallery of Regrettable Foods:
https://www.lileks.com/institute/gallery/index.html
Even in 1966 many people were in dysfunctional families. Some of us dreaded Christmas but enjoyed life nonetheless.
Good for Chris. My favorite Nixon story is that he was the first presient to hold Sunday services including all the White House staff. Before God, they were equal.
When he left the White House, the staff tearfully wished him goodby. Let's just say the reaction to LBJ wasn't similar.
Ew.
"That’s all 'packaged-food cuisine' born of the hyper-consumerism of the 1950s...."
That made me chortle. Wait until they find out what happened in the following years.
I wasn't alive in the '50's, but the '60's and '70's seem nothing less than austere compared to the luxury we wallow in today.
Capitalism enables affordable and available economy for everyone, not just for the subsidized minority. Progressive prices are forced through single, central, monopolistic, regulatory practices, which are sustained through debt/credit, and labor and environmental arbitrage... the rich get richer.
Watergate was the trial for JournoListic trials and Democratic persecution to force the president.. people to take a knee in witch hunts, warlock judgments.
Trans/homosexual marriage was the product of political congruence ("=") and Democrats establishing bigotry (e.g. Respect For Marriage Act) under the law. Civil unions for all consenting adults. #NoJudgment #NoLabels
Elective abortion is a human rite performed for social (e.g. eugenics), clinical (e.g. cannibalism), political, criminal, and fair weather progress. The Pro-Choice [ethical] religion denies women, and men's, dignity and agency. Keep women affordable, available, reusable (e.g. rent-a-womb), and taxable, and the "burden" of evidence sequestered in darkness. Six weeks to baby meets granny legal viability in all 50 states. #NoJudgment #NoLabels
Michigan excluded, where both planned parenthood and planned parent/hood are entertained through the democratic exercise of liberal license.
Liberalism is a philosophy of divergence.
Progressivism is a philosophy of monotonic change.
Conservativism is a philosophy of moderation.
Today, we have a Water closet smorgasbord.
Oh, and Palmerism was everything that McCarthyism was billed to be, but never was.
Man I haven't seen Watergate Salad in decades. Despite it's contents I don't remember it being cloyingly sweet either. Maybe I'll make some for the family this Christmas. There will be some younger folks who've never seen it.
Racists now say blacks will never see reparations.
Crack I think the reparations ship sailed probably before you were born.
e-spam
“ not like us Boomers who think the early 60s, mid-60s, and late 60s were distinctly different eras and have long indulged in the deep, mystic belief that the first few years of the 70s were the real 60s.”
This is absolutely correct. There was roughly the Kennedy era, A then there was the Mod mid 60s 1964 through 66, Then there was that bizarre explosion of color and bellbottoms and white lipstick and Peter Max paintings that was 1967 which was not only its own era but its own universe permanently glowing and dancing somewhere but accessible on the Internet if you look hard enough. But that 1967 was already ending during 1967, because the summer of love was the beginning of the late 60s early 70s here with that many people who think of the 60s think was the 60s. And yes that era reached its apex after the actual calendar 1960s were over.
And of course, history was moving so fast and at different paces in different places, that it all got jumbled up. But between 1960 and 1970 they were at least four significant errors with the look in a level of creativity distinct to itself that was greater than most complete decades during other times.
'Racists now say blacks will never see reparations. But we've definitely seen what white folks wasted the money on.'
White folks pay more income taxes than blacks...why shouldn't they decide what to waste it on?
Btw, I'm all for reparations.
A Harvey Wallbanger pairs well with a Watergate Salad. Chicken Kiev entre with chocolate fondue for dessert.
I think the reparations ship sailed probably before you were born.
Reparations should be paid to the Posterity of Union soldiers, abolitionists, Republicans, slaves, and every American who was injured by slavery and diversity in progress.
I feel nostalgia for books with actual pages, or newspapers I could clip articles out of and save. It's not the same encountering everything through little screens -- feels more transient and ephemeral. In the video I noticed how clean, uncluttered, minimalist the house was.
Chris texted:
"Here [Nixon] is telling people he is not liberal after a period of signing liberal bills. So definitely did not see himself as liberal but he had reached a point he needed to clarify this."
So Nixon is the spirit animal of Life Long Republicans (TM).
It just isn't Christmas without bongo drums.
Instead of one more mooch styled as "reparations" we should arm black people and send them to West Africa to take the land back from the people who stole it from their ancestors.
Looks very much like family Christmases of my childhood, memories that will warm my heart until I take my last breath.
Family Twister parties, I remember well. It may have been a sexy party game for young adults, but for my cousins and siblings and me it was just comical children’s’ horseplay to keep our minds off the interminable wait for the arrival of Santa Claus..
The adults drank heavily, I know now. Probably explains some of their buffoonery in this clip. I recall my grandfather and one of the neighbors getting drunk enough that they pretended to do some ballroom dancing in the living room and both of the old codgers fell into the Christmas tree and knocked it over.
No one wore jeans except the kids. I never once in my life saw my dad wear a pair of blue jeans. For parties and work, it was always a coat and narrow tie and slacks. For golf and leisure, a collared shirt and slacks. For dirty manual labor, a blue short sleeve shirt and khaki workmen’s trousers.
We went into town on the night in early December when they lit the court house in colored lights for the season. Nowadays they would do it the week after Halloween to please the merchants, and there would be no Nativity scene. We drank hot cocoa and if there was snow, would go sledding or tubing afterwards.
We made our own candy and fudge and cookies for Christmas. We kids clamored to help Mom but I’m sure we were of little assistance except for licking the spatulas and whisks clean afterwards.
It all seems so wholesome and so far away now. Like a beautiful dream. We passed along many of the traditions to our now-grown children, but much has been lost, and now it seems like a bother to hang a wreath on our door, let alone put up Christmas lights.
I own a mid-century copy of what was probably the first Keto cookbook. The introduction was scientific, explaining how piling up on fatty meats and other fat-bathed, no carb food would make the pounds drop away.
The title gives you the basic gist of it: Martinis and Whipped Cream.
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