Turner Classic Movies did me a favor, of sorts, by broadcasting All The President's Men last Friday evening. I say "of sorts" because as great a film as I believe it is, nearly fifty years after it premiered, it appears today as a bit of a fantasy.
Fantasy?
Yes. Fantasy.
The story of how newspaper reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward helped to bring down the Nixon administration after the crimes of Watergate is meticulously recreated from one of the all-time great investigative journalism triumphs of all time.
Fantasy?
Well, it just so happens that it was also this past Friday when the editors of The Washington Post, home of the legacy of Woodward and Bernstein, announced that they would not be endorsing a presidential candidate for the first time in thirty-six years. If the "bright spot" here is that the Wahsington Post did not choose to endorse the convicted felon, than things have gotten much darker than any of us had imagined. Is the mountain of evidence that has been laid out by media outlets and the Orange One's former employees that the Republican candidate is somehow insufficient for those in the fourth estate to make what is essentially an existential call?
Here's something that wasn't true about the Washington Post in 1972. At that time, the newspaper was not owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos. The programmers at TCM may have had this in mind when immediately after All The President's Men, they showed Citizen Kane. "I think it would be fun so run a newspaper." Indeed.
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