For some time now, the semantic field of plumbing has been installed in our popular speech to refer to certain dirty but discreet political operations. Sewers and plumbers symbolize that work that few want to do and even fewer can. When Villarejo had not yet done a podcast, in Washington they knew an awful lot about plumbing. The ascenders are great, but when the bargain runs out, you have to go through the downspouts, and pleasant things do not pass through them.
The Watergate case is paradigmatic in several fields at the same time. In politics, for symbolizing the overthrow of Nixon (ignoring many other factors). In espionage, a well-known case of malpractice that would make other serious agents blush. And above all in journalism, since it is one of the few examples in which the fourth estate has managed to be truly relevant. Amplified by Alan J. Pakula’s classic ‘All the President’s Men’ (1976), the feat of Woodward and Bernstein (Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman in fiction) has inspired generations of journalists to believe they are capable of overthrowing governments on the basis of good reports. It has not been repeated much.
In ‘The White House Plumbers’ the role of the press is nil. And it is that it was not journalists who caught the saboteurs red-handed in the Watergate building, nor those who tried them, there are many more actors involved. And this story can also be told from a diametrically opposite point of view: that of the secret services that tried to carry out the coup. And they tried several times. To put the microphones in the offices of the Democratic headquarters, at least three attempts had to be made. In the series it is a despiporre.
Woody Harrelson (who is still in a glorious few years) and Justin Theroux (of The Leftovers, albeit unrecognizable) bring to life the most opposite thing I can think of to Redford and Hoffman. Deeply idiots, they have an idea of patriotism worthy of preschool and the human relations they practice are typical of primitive societies. The mocking tone to which they are subjected is perhaps too stinging, too hard to believe. As much as they caught them, that they played dead, that they tried seven times each more ridiculous, they are still secret agents: the caricature goes beyond exaggeration. In addition, when everything goes wrong, there are very dramatic—real—events that are difficult to combine with the previous joking tone. The events of Watergate have been treated in a thousand ways, but taking them as a farce —deep down as an intellectual and moral humiliation towards the Republicans— gives me mixed feelings. On the one hand, political disaffection deserves an extensive, deep and nuanced debate. On the other, in life you also have to have fun and we already have ‘All the president’s men’, ‘The challenge, Frost against Nixon’ and eight hundred documentaries to be serious.
Several of the raiders were of Cuban origin, opponents of the Castro regime and therefore, apparently, 100% Republicans. One of the best things about the series is the integration with Spanish, since many conversations are in our language, interspersed with English. Communication between Americans and Cubans is tremendously natural through what they know of Spanish, and they know a lot. And above all, attention is not drawn to this fact, but simply passes, like life itself. I don’t want to imagine the challenge for the benders.
Things don’t end well for our protagonists. Political betrayals provoke one of the roundest phrases about those who hold power: “his cause is noble, but his soul… is rotten.” It seems that they learn something… but little. Especially the character of Theroux, who in real life was Gordon Liddy, has a hideous and impervious personality that causes too much rejection. Investigating what is real in the series is a very illuminating process: it seems that Liddy’s flirtation with Nazism is very real, not an invention of the series. The formidable rock group Steely Dan has an anecdote with him: he arrested singer Donald Fagen in college for drug possession, and had his hair cut in Poughkeepsie jail. From the bad drink came the song ‘My old school’, where Gordon Liddy is called ‘Daddy Gee’. A delight to listen to.
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