I have been deficient in my blogging duties. It's taken until now for me to tell you that last Thursday evening, my friend Shelly Goldstein and I went to a Writers Bloc event: Conan O'Brien interviewing Lawrence O'Donnell about his new book, Playing With Fire. It's all about the 1968 presidential election in this country — an election I watched closely, vividly recall and believe changed America a lot more than most of these elections do. I also think that enough time has passed that discussion of it can occur that's about what really transpired without the partisan filters.
The most interesting thing about it is the charge — which is not a nutcase conspiracy thing as there's genuine evidence that supports this — that Richard Nixon committed a truly treasonous act; that, aware that a then-possible peace settlement in the Vietnam War would be bad for his electoral prospects, he interfered and derailed that settlement. He secretly conveyed to South Vietnam that if they didn't settle and he became President, he could give them more generous terms.
The peace talks fell apart, that opportunity to end the war was lost…and it was many years and deaths later that that war ended. O'Donnell theorizes that a lot of the weirder and criminal things Nixon did later in office were connected to a fear that his treasonous actions in '68 would be uncovered. (Among the uncoverings since then are the handwritten notes of his aide at the time, H.R. Haldeman, which seem to be smoking gun-type evidence that Nixon did what is alleged.)
Much more was covered but if the time period and topic interests you, you probably already want to read O'Donnell's book, as I'm doing these days. A copy from Amazon can be ordered via this link…and this might be a good time to do it since they won't be the least bit busy this Black Friday.
O'Donnell was interviewed by O'Brien, who did a very nice job. This wasn't that hard since I think if you asked Lawrence O'Donnell what time it was, you'd get a very interesting eight-minute answer. But I want to offer an odd observation from that evening about Conan.
I like the guy but I used to like him a lot more when he didn't think his raison d'être was to say something funny every time one of his guests gets to the end of a sentence. On his show, I think he competes too much with those he has on. Mr. Carson used to be really good at switching from straight man to comic — of playing Bud Abbott when Lou Costello was on a roll, guiding him along without stopping him. Then when the guest was somewhat serious, the guest got to be Abbott while Johnny effortlessly shifted into the Costello position.
Conan used to do that on his old NBC show quite well but at some point, it changed. It was around the time Andy Richter left and they didn't replace him with a new funny sidekick. Instead, Conan assumed the duties of being host and funny sidekick. He just became a guy who was trying too hard for me all the time.
He was fine interviewing O'Donnell but then at the end, they took questions from the audience, which meant that O'Brien was no longer an active part of the proceedings except to point to people and say, "You next!" And the change in Conan was startling, especially to those of us in the front row. Shelly noticed it, too. He began squirming and sulking and shifting his body as if he was bored out of his mind by the proceedings and couldn't wait for this misery to be over. O'Donnell seemed to sense it too because he tried to involve O'Brien in some of his responses.
No camera was shooting video so you'll have to take my word for this but it was like he was doing Tim Conway's bit about being tortured to have to listen to a boring speaker…but this was serious and O'Donnell was anything but boring. The whole event was fascinating and so far, so is the book.