More Deep Thoughts

As noted earlier this week, I could care less about the identity of Deep Throat. But that's definitely not true for Ben Stein or Pat Buchanan (hat tip to D.C. correspondent NC). Pat's column makes me remember why I liked watching him on Crossfire back in the day...

And so the great mystery, "Who was Deep Throat?" reaches its anticlimax. He turns out to be a toady who oversaw black bag jobs for J. Edgar, violated his oath and, out of malice and spite, leaked the fruits of an honest FBI investigation to the nest of Nixon-haters over on 15th Street, then lied about it for 30 years.

Why did Felt lie? Because Felt knew he had disgraced himself and dishonored everything an FBI agent should stand for. He didn't want his old comrades to know what a snake he had been. Linda Tripp, savaged by the same press lionizing Felt, at least had the moral courage to go public and take the heat when she blew the whistle on Bill Clinton.

But to Bob and Carl and Ben and Sally, Felt is a "hero," a real Medal of Freedom man. And to them, perhaps, he is. For in the 1970s, a hero was any turncoat who would sink teeth into a president who was ending with honor a war into which the Liberal Establishment had plunged this country, and then cut and run when the body bags started coming home and their Ivy League kids started calling them names.

Now that's wielding some kick-ass rhetoric. As noted, I could care less, but I sympathize with Kathleen Parker, who seems disappointed that the legendary source for Woodward and Bernstein was nothing more than a guy plenty of people suspected. Then again, maybe we should learn to be disappointed -- it's not like a Dan Rather report.