Richard Nixon

Latest Articles

Review: J. Edgar

DiCaprio as right-wing hero J. Edgar Hoover
Filmmaker Clint Eastwood, famously Republican, portrays right-wing hero J. Edgar Hoover, the late FBI head, as a self-aggrandizing, conniving bully and mama's boy who broke the law whenever he wanted to bring anyone down.
By GERALD PEARY | November 08, 2011

By | January 01, 0001

Dirty money

In memory of Brewster
As I walked down the corridors of the Ralph Owen Brewster Hospice for Decaying Political Ideals, there were no indications of despair, pain, or misery.
By AL DIAMON | August 03, 2011

Does Obama have the cojones to win?

This WTF moment
To make sense of this bizarre and dispiriting moment in American politics, here are the things one needs to appreciate.
By EDITORIAL | July 27, 2011

John Birch Society alive and confused in Maine

Out of the woodwork
The Maine arm of the John Birch Society, founded in 1958 to combat communist influence in government, visited the State House in Augusta last week, calling for legislators to, well, do nothing, as it turns out.
By JEFF INGLIS | January 26, 2011

Review: Philip Guston: Collected Writings, Lectures, And Conversations

Fast talk: A great artist bends your ear
If you are interested in the great painter Philip Guston (1913–1980), you will want this book. If you are interested in American painting from 1945 on, and into the future, you will want this book. If you enjoy a great talker in top form, you will want this book.
By WILLIAM CORBETT | January 07, 2011

Review: Call of Duty: Black Ops

Historical fiction: Black Ops packs the Cold War with action
Like other Call of Duty games, Black Ops is rated M for Mature, but that rating doesn't cut it anymore.
By MADDY MYERS | November 17, 2010

Interview: Al Jaffee

Mad about the man
Al Jaffee has been a Mad man for 55 years, practically since the beginning.
By DAN MAZUR | November 18, 2010

Review: Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer

Was the Gov a victim of a political hit?
Once the "sheriff of Wall Street," Eliot Spitzer was a "fucking steamroller," flattening foes like former NYSE head Dick Grasso and destitute former AIG CEO Hank Greenberg (his "worthless" stock valued at a paltry $100 million, boo-hoo) during his rise from NY AG to popular governor.
By BRETT MICHEL | November 11, 2010

Harper's Magazine, 1850-1980

The legacy of Willie Morris and Lewis H. Lapham
It seems but a moment ago that the sound of Dylan and Baez, the Beatles and the Stones reverberated through a world bent on catastrophe. Has it been almost 20 years?
By MARCO TRBOVICH | June 26, 2010

Meet Evan Thomas

The parallel careers of Newsweek's premier wordsmith
Narrative is the throughline in the professional life of Evan Thomas.
By PETER KADZIS | May 13, 2010

BU offers the class of 1970 a second chance at complacency

After School Special
Boston University’s class of 2010 celebrates its commencement this weekend, and BU has invited the class of 1970 to tag along.
By CLIF GARBODEN | May 12, 2010

Hallelujah!

Health-care reform is a new high-water mark
The Democrats won and the Republicans lost. That, in a nutshell, is the bottom line.
By EDITORIAL | March 24, 2010

Nudity throughout history

By ALEXIS HAUK | March 17, 2010

Review: The Most Dangerous Man in America

Hail to Daniel Ellsberg
At age 79, Daniel Ellsberg is getting the last guffaw.
By GERALD PEARY | February 16, 2010

Interview: Daniel Ellsberg

"The Most Dangerous Man in America" talks on the documentary about him and his time at the Pentagon
"By ordinary standards of presidents, Obama is a decent man. But those standards aren't good enough."
By CHRIS FARAONE | February 16, 2010

Big starts

2009 was full of newness + energy
I kick off my highlights of 2009 with praise for a theater company that has just finished its inaugural season: The Legacy Theater Company, founded by former City Theater artistic director Steve Burnette.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | December 22, 2009

Future wounds

Brains, spines, and guts wanted
Welcome to the 2009 post-election trauma center.
By AL DIAMON | November 11, 2009

Spot on

Good Theater’s top-notch Frost/Nixon
After Watergate and an opened China, Nixon’s next most recognized legacy is probably the warning to make sure you know your medium: His infamously sweaty, maladroit television appearance in the Kennedy-Nixon debate was widely perceived to have cost him that year’s presidency.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | November 04, 2009

Co-dependent? The US and China

Action Speaks!
Action Speaks!, the panel discussion series at Providence art space AS220, continues its fall run with a conversation about the increasingly dependent relationship between the United States and China.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | October 14, 2009

Review: Earth Days

Did you know Nixon once signed progressive eco-legislation?
Those who worry that the eco-movement seems incapable of getting beyond its white upper-middle-class base will be disturbed anew by Robert Stone’s Earth Days , where every talking head is a well-bred Caucasian.
By GERALD PEARY | October 07, 2009

Burn, baby, burn

The Olympics, zipper-gate, stimulus money, and why Coakley must investigate City Hall
The Phoenix opposed President Barack Obama's efforts to help Chicago win the 2016 Summer Olympics on the grounds that doing business with the International Olympic Committee is always bad news for the host community.
By EDITORIAL | October 07, 2009

Injustice department

Letters to the Boston editor, October 2, 2009
Thank you Harvey Silverglate for shining a light on our criminal-injustice system with your new book Three Felonies a Day. And thank you Peter Kadzis for a great interview.
By BOSTON PHOENIX LETTERS | September 30, 2009

Ted Kennedy's real record

A note on the 32-year-incumbent's accomplishments
When a 32-year incumbent seeks re-election, there is a long and well-documented record that can be examined. So it's disconcerting to note that admit all the miles of newsprint and videotape that have been expended covering the US Senate campaign, little has been said of what Ted Kennedy has or hasn't accomplished.
By AL GIORDANO | August 26, 2009

Short-sighted?

The Projo 's ultra-local approach could save the paper — or spell its demise
There may, in the end, be no way to save the American metropolitan newspaper. Plummeting advertising revenue and competition from the Internet often seem forces too daunting for even the savviest of publishers.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | August 26, 2009

Midsummer madness

Mark Morris, Yo-Yo Ma, and the Festival of Contemporary Music at Tanglewood, Mozart in Boston, Meyerbeer at Bard
After a relatively quiet summer, I saw Boston Midsummer Opera's Cosí fan tutte at BU's Tsai Center. Then I raced out to Tanglewood for a Mark Morris program accompanied by Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax, a BSO matinee with Ma, and all six concerts in the annual Festival of Contemporary Music.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | September 29, 2009

How's Obama doing?

Better than you think, but his health-care plans are a problem
Politics, an old cliché holds, is the art of the possible. Achieving the possible is a matter of power. And in a media-saturated democracy, power flows to those with good poll numbers.
By EDITORIAL | September 14, 2009

Freelance in Maine

Four decades of advocacy journalism
" Stop the press!" The press stopped.
By LANCE TAPLEY | August 03, 2009

Power puffs

Letters to the Boston editor, July 24, 2009
Regarding “ Weed Picking Up Speed ”: if health outcomes determined drug laws instead of cultural norms, marijuana would be legal. Unlike alcohol, marijuana has never been shown to cause an overdose death, nor does it share the addictive properties of tobacco.
By BOSTON PHOENIX LETTERS | July 22, 2009

Robert McNamara, RIP

Memories of Vietnam should speed Obama's exit plans for Iraq and Afghanistan
As secretary of defense under President Lyndon B. Johnson, Robert McNamara prosecuted the Vietnam War on a day-to-day basis, just as Donald Rumsfeld orchestrated the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for George W. Bush.
By EDITORIAL | July 08, 2009