Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Twitter Ye Not - President Nixon Resigns


Twitter Ye Not - President Nixon Resigns

A regular piece for the Daily Mail Weekend magazine about how figures in history might have twittered or tweeted or whatever, had they the chance, inclination and technology.

On the 8th August 1974, Richard Milhous Nixon resigned as President of the United States of America in the wake of the Watergate scandal. He remains the only American president to resign from office. Here, we imagine the Twitter feed from that dramatic time.

I have shown the 37th President, shame-faced and crest-fallen, delivering his resignation speech, while his wife, First Lady Pat Nixon, and their beloved springer spaniel, Checkers, look on sadly. Behind Pat hang the new plaid curtains she's just had fitted at the White House (very 70s!).

Tricky Dicky was relatively easy to capture (IMHO), but his wife much less so. As First Lady at the cusp where 60s slipped into 70s there are some great photos out there of Pat Nixon in various garish and ghastly yellow dresses, polo necks, etc and more lacquer in her onion-shaped hair do than you'd find in all Kowloon's furniture factories put together! By the time I'd got a likeness I was happy with I had really grown to love Thelma Catherine "Pat" Ryan Nixon!

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