Why I Don’t Watch Political Speeches
by W. D. Ehrhart I stopped watching major political speeches fifty-two years ago in the wake of Richard Nixon’s televised announcement in the spring of 1972 that he was mining Hai Phong harbor in North Vietnam. It made me so angry that I pulled off my boot and threw it at the president. This was back when televisions were boxlike things with all sorts of vacuum tubes and stuff like that inside. The television exploded. Glass all over my college dorm room, and the television’s insides popping and sparking. I’m lucky I didn’t start a fire. And the television wasn’t even mine. I’d borrowed it …