America Needs You, Mr. Felt

There are no more secrets. W. Mark Felt was "Deep Throat." It wasn't Martha Mitchell. It wasn't Alexander Haig. It wasn't John Dean's tailor. It wasn't J. Egdar Hoover (which would have made the nickname even more purient). It was the former second-in command of the FBI. We found this out via no less an investigative juggernaut than "Vanity Fair." Oh Bob and Carl, how the mighty have fallen.
Turns out that Mr. Felt had been on a short list of "Deep Throat Candidates" for some time, and either he just got tired of keeping a secret at 91 years old, or Vanity Fair's stock has just risen over that of say, Geraldo Rivera's. Maybe a combination of the two.
That doesn't matter anymore. Bob Woodward didn't bother to waste time on denials, and W. Mark Felt seems just as glad to be done with his legacy. After all, Hal Holbrook had already played him in "All the President's Men" - not a bad bit of casting, it seems. Henry Kissinger was predictably pissy about the whole thing - grumbling about the inappropriateness of raising this traitor to the level of hero when he should have been protecting his president. My guess is that he was still ticked off about Erlichman naming him as "Deep Throat" before John passed on a few years ago.
It matters to me because the Nixon years were my political awakening. In sixth grade I was churning out political poetry with an eye on only one prize - the removal of that old crook. It was helpful to be eleven years old at the time - the black and whiteness of the situation was so much more clear. Nixon was a bad man and had us sending boys to a war on the other side of the world while he sipped tea with Chairman Mao. He stole an election and his Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP) established the modern standard for dirty tricks that still stands today.
And what about today? Most of the major players have passed on or have their own shows on Fox News Network - how can it matter? Ask Dan Rather. With all the horrible nasty awful mess that occurred around our last presidential election, Dan lost his job because of "Memo-gate." Go figure. Did he need to check his sources better? Probably - but here's the deal: Nobody knew who "Deep Throat" was for thirty plus years, and he still managed to bring down a corrupt regime. Nice job, Mr. Felt. Now if we could get Vanity Fair to start mucking around with that guy who currently resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.