Actor Harry Shearer, famous for his work in This Is Spinal Tap, Saturday Night Live, and The Simpsons, is tackling a new character with his YouTube mini-series, former president Richard M. Nixon. In the new series, entitled Nixon’s the One, Shearer portrays Nixon by following transcripts of actual audio recordings of Nixon. The results are both illuminating and funny.
Shearer and Nixon scholar and author Stanley Kutler listened to Nixon recordings to find segments that reveal Nixon’s everyday life. Shearer explained to CBS that he always felt that portrayals of Nixon missed something about the man. Shearer sees him as “this strange, self-torturing, self-destroying guy who was, in my point of view, darkly comic.” These new episodes attempt to capture that tragic and comic part of Nixon.
This segment of Nixon’s the One gives a hidden-camera view of Nixon talking to Henry Kissinger about John F. Kennedy.
The following episode captures Nixon’s conversations as he prepares to give his speech to the nation announcing his resignation. As Nixon engages the reporters in small talk as he prepares to resign, the result is funny but also heartbreaking. Certainly, it captures the loneliness of Nixon at that moment. Check it out.
It should not be too surprising that the man who does the voice of Mr. Burns would help us see another side of President Nixon. Check out other segments of Nixon’s the One on YouTube. If you want to compare the resignation video to the real thing, see below.
Who is your favorite actor to portray Nixon? Leave your two cents in the comments.
On August 8 at 9:01 p.m. in 1974, Pres. Richard M. Nixon went on television to announce he was resigning. Although many had seen it coming, it was still a shocking moment in American history.
As impeachment proceedings were beginning from the Watergate investigation and Nixon’s involvement in the cover-up, Nixon realized that the end was near. He stated that a long drawn-out fight would harm the country, so, “Therefore, I shall resign the Presidency effective at noon tomorrow. Vice President Ford will be sworn in as President at that hour in this office.”
Another Historic Offer of Resignation
More than a century earlier in 1863 also on August 8, Gen. Robert E. Lee offered his resignation as Commander of the Army of Northern Virginia to Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Although he ultimately did not resign, his offer signaled Southern concerns about the state of the war.
More than a month before Lee’s offer, Lee’s army had suffered 23,000 casualties at Gettysburg. And the Union Army was once again in Virginia. Lee was physically exhausted and questioned his ability to lead the army to victory.
But Jefferson Davis refused Lee’s resignation offer. He realized that it was impossible to find someone more fit than Lee to lead the army.
Susanne Sundfør’s Song “I Resign”
Lee and Nixon both made big mistakes, but in the song “I Resign” from the album Take One (2008), Norwegian singer-songwriter Susanne Sundfør reminds us that sometimes there is relief in resignation. In the song, she sings: “I have found peace / Where it’s impossible to rest.”
Nixon was embarrassed and hated to give up the power of the presidency. But he also must have felt a little relief to have that responsibility removed from his shoulders.
By contrast, Lee must have taken Davis’s refusal as validating his worth to continue the fighting. Yet, he also he may have felt some disappointment that the burden of men’s lives and the the war’s outcome remained on his shoulders.
Although Sundfør is not a household name in the U.S., she has won awards in Norway and won a talent grant for aspiring musicians from the Norwegian music icons a-ha. The reviews on her website are in Norwegian, so I do not really know what other people are saying about her music. But from the music, I think we may be hearing more from Susanne Sundfør. Here is her song, “I Resign.”
