Where I Stand: Hank Greenspun, Nov. 22, 1969: Like one household word, Agnew should be flushed

Saturday, July 1, 2000 | 3:06 a.m.

Of course, President Nixon's biggest mistake is Spiro Agnew and in the vernacular of Jackie Gleason, "You have a biggggg mouth Agnew."

Here's a fellow who before the election was practically an unknown. He admitted he was not a household word and in a short space of time he has become a household word.

Practically the only word that is innate to all households is "toilet" and it appears this is what the vice president has striven for. He is a toilet.

He is receptive to anything foul be it in word, thought, or suggestions, and like all toilets he should be flushed of all the demogogic, un-democratic, un-American thinking he has been spouting lately.

The nation again is headed for an orgy of intolerance and dissension and spearheading the campaign is our own Vice President. We've had them in the past and newspaper have always been the prime target.

The New York Times has been vilified for the last eight decades by every unscrupulous demagogue in the nation but it has weathered the criticism and even overcame a boycott against it encouraged by the late U.S. Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin.

It has outlasted every President who disagreed with it's editorial policy and will be around long after the Agnews are battling the devil in perdition.

Newspapers have weathered every public emotional spree induced by the evil men who inflame passions and whip up prejudices and this is good for the nation because the day newspapers in this country go, freedom, democracy and all the good things in life go with it.

This is time tested and history proven. The nations that dictators destroy they first make sterile, and the quickest way to sterility is to deprive the people of the power of thought. And thought can only be provoked by your daily newspaper.

Agnew's effort to cow the press and public information media is doomed to failure. He may have 99 percent of the great silent majority with him and many newspapers and commentators may succumb to his intimidation but as long as there is one poor newspaper jerk around who is willing to get his brains knocked out until the public comes to its senses, no demagogue can succeed.

We watched Joe McCarthy cow the press and intimidate most of the national magazines and practically the entire government, with the Gallup Poll showing overwhelming acceptance by the public, but we risked reputation, economic life and even freedom until the foul dipsomaniac drank himself to death in a fit of conscience and remorse.

In the words of Spiro Agnew from his speech Wednesday night in Montgomery, Ala. "I am in earnest. I will not equivocate. I will not retreat a single inch. And I will be heard."

And he will be heard only because the press and the public communication media which he condemns will give him the forum.

And that goes for me, too.