Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Watergate But Were Afraid to Ask

by Lori Perkins, Brian J. O’Connor

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The story of Watergate is usually told through the prism of the straight, white male journalists and politicians who were at the center of the scandal—but Watergate happened to all of us – wives, mothers, children, black, white, queer, immigrants. Those voices and perceptions are rarely heard today.

EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT WATERGATE was envisioned as a book that looks at the wider ripples of the Watergate explosion and how it changed the way Americans saw themselves, their country and the world around them.

This is both a serious, and irreverent book, put together by a team of two newspaper journalists and ten college interns from throughout the country. Think of it as a primer on Watergate for the generation that grew up watching The Daily Show.

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Danielle Pirok

12/5/2017

I give this book 4 out of 5 Political Stars! I decided to pick up this title because I wanted to know more about what happened with the Watergate scandal. I am glad I made this choice, not only because this book was very informative but because I was able to hear stories and see perspectives from people who lived through it and were impacted by this scandal. I loved hearing everyone's stories, how it affected our lives and how this changed America. I thought this was a great read because a lot of the things that were discussed seemed to be repeating themselves in our current political state. Even though I may not have agreed with everyone's perspective I enjoyed seeing everyone's perspective and learning more about this treacherous scandal. This period of time woke up a lot of Americans and showed them that we can't always trust our political leaders.

If the White House is haunted — Churchill supposedly saw Lincoln’sghost when he (Churchill, we hope) was getting out of the bathtub — then there’sa case to be made that Richard Nixon’s ghost whispers in Donald Trump’s ear, asTrump appears to be taking his playbook directly from Tricky Dick.Maybethat explains the chilling similarities between Watergate and Russiagate as wemark the 43rd anniversary of Nixon’s resignation onAug. 8.

Watergate gave us the lazy media habit ofattaching "gate” to even the most prosaic wrongdoing, from Billygate, whenJimmy Carter’s hapless brother got himself hired to represent Libya, to theepic list of Clintonian gates, from Filegate and Travelgate to Pardongate andTroopergate, not to mention the seemingly quaint, horny simplicity ofZippergate (or, to some, Monicagate).

Beyond a simple suffix connecting Russiagate to Watergate, howmuch does Trump’s White House have in common with that of Richard Nixon?

Both Nixon and Trump were obsessed with leaks to the press. TheWatergate break-in was ordered to find out who "leaked” the news of thePentagon Papers to The New York Times. The burglars were nicknamed "The Plumbers” bythe White House because they were going to plug the leaks.

Trump has set his attack Attorney General and "alternative facts”fact-checker Kellyanne Conway after White House leaks to the press afterembarrassing phone calls between Trump and Mexican and Australian leaders werepublished, which was the cherry on the multi-tiered tottering cake of a Wall Street Journal interview whereTrump made up congratulatory phone calls from Boy Scout officials and Mexico’sPresident.

Both and Nixon and Trump were demonstrably resentful and insecure,with Nixon always seething over the media’s adulation of John F. Kennedy andTrump continually relitigating his (electoral-college only) win over HillaryClinton. Trump Tweets accusations of "Fake news!” at the national media, whileNixon dispatched his vice president, Spiro T. Agnew, to attack journalists withthe much more alliterative, "nattering nabobs of negativism.”

Copyright © 2017 Lori Perkins, Brian J. O’Connor

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Lori Perkins

Lori Perkins is the editor/author of 25 erotic romance anthologies including the first zombie romance short story collection, HUNGRY FOR YOUR LOVE, as well as the anthology 50 WRITERS ON 50 SHADES OF GREY, which looks at the erotic romance phenom from 50 points of view, She is the founder of the L. Perkins Literary Agency, and a former adjunct professor of journalism at NYU. She lives in New York City.

Brian J. O’Connor

Brian J. O’Connor is an award-winning journalist with 30 years newspaper experience on The Detroit News, The South Florida Sun-Sentinel, as well as Manhattan weekly newspapers.

He is a nationally syndicated personal finance columnist who writes the Breaking-Banks.com blog, as well as author of "The $1,000 Challenge: How One Family Slashed Its Budget Without Moving Under a Bridge or Living on Government Cheese” from Portfolio-Penguin. In addition to garnering rave reviews, "The $1,000 Challenge” was named Best Money Management Book of the Year by The Institute for Financial Literacy.

O’Connor is a three-time winner of humor-writing awards from the National Society of Newspaper columnists, among others, as well as three Best in Business awards for his column and news coverage from the Society of American Business Editors and Writer. He was the founding managing editor of Bankrate.com, the Web’s most popular finance site, and his freelance work has been featured in The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, Martha Stewart Living and The Wall Street Journal.

O’Connor holds a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts from Sarah Lawrence College, and earned a master’s of science in journalism at Columbia University, where he was a 2001 Knight-Bagehot Fellow in Economics and Business.