Tuesday, September 28, 2004
Mystery solved. For a long time I've had a poster in my apartment featuring a pregnant black woman wearing a button that says, "Nixon's the one." There has been a great deal of discussion over the years on exactly what this poster means. Was it a clumsy attempt by the Nixon campaign to modify his slogan to appeal to urban constituencies? Not bloody likely, given his employment of the "Southern Strategy" to defeat the oh so northern Hubert Humphrey. But could it be the work of a Nixon opponent seeking to make him look foolish? While this is possible, it would be a remarkable discovery since it is currently believed that the genre of satire was invented in 1975 by the folks at Saturday Night Live.
The guests to my home, at least those who had heard of Richard Nixon, were as perplexed as I was by this poster. Some of the discussions even got into even deeper subtext, arguing over whether Nixon's the one implied that Nixon was the father. Well the mystery is now solved. I stumbled across this, in a magazine that I've never heard of and certainly don't ready every day.
The guests to my home, at least those who had heard of Richard Nixon, were as perplexed as I was by this poster. Some of the discussions even got into even deeper subtext, arguing over whether Nixon's the one implied that Nixon was the father. Well the mystery is now solved. I stumbled across this, in a magazine that I've never heard of and certainly don't ready every day.
There was a certain mischievous charm to Democratic dirty tricks of yore. Legendary campaign prankster Dick Tuck arranged for very pregnant women to attend rallies for Richard Nixon and wave signs that read, "Nixon's the One." Earlier, Tuck dressed up as a railway conductor and signaled a train engineer to leave the station, even as Nixon addressed voters from the platform of that train's caboose.
