Yes, Nixon was a bigot. What else is new?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

More tapes, more hatred. Isn't that the posthumous legacy of Richard Nixon, as we learn more and more about him from all those White House tapes he made? The Times has the latest:

Richard M. Nixon made disparaging remarks about Jews, blacks, Italian-Americans and Irish-Americans in a series of extended conversations with top aides and his personal secretary, recorded in the Oval Office 16 months before he resigned as president.

The remarks were contained in 265 hours of recordings, captured by the secret taping system Nixon had installed in the White House and released this week by the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. 

I'm not sure whether to sigh or yawn.

So Nixon said that Jews are "insecure" and have "a very aggressive and abrasive and obnoxious personality," that Italians "don't have their heads screwed on tight," that the Irish "get mean" when they drink, and that blacks don't have a hope unless they're "inbred" over the next 500 years.

And? Is it news that Nixon said such things?

Well, I suppose it is, as it adds to the public record of a president who was, among other things, a bitter, resentful, and deeply hateful man.

As Digby notes, "[t]he fact that so many people are appalled today is a very big sign of progress." This issue, though, isn't so much that Nixon said what he said but that so many others are still saying the same things:

I think Nixon might have lost if his language and expressions were public knowledge. People didn't particularly want their leaders to be crude racist scumbags even back then. But the idea that these people have disappeared is just wrong. They are still around and they are still in politics and some of them are in high office. Like Nixon before them, they are just keeping their mouths shut in public.

Unlike him, though, they may not be taping every word they say.

But are they really keeping their mouths shut in public? Some of them, yes, but consider the anti-gay and anti-Muslim bigotry that prevails throughout the Republican Party -- and that is communicated openly and proudly.

There has been progress, yes, but it could just be that the targets have changed.