The Rev. Billy Graham apologized Friday for a 1972
conversation with former President Nixon in which he
said the Jewish "stranglehold" of the media was ruining
the country and must be broken.
Billy Graham, who must occasionally take a little pride in the fact that while Swaggert and Baker and others have fallen, he remains pure and unsullied by scandal, says:
Although I have no memory of the occasion, I deeply regret comments I apparently made in an Oval Office
conversation with President Nixon ... some 30 years ago.
This statement was released by Mr. Graham's Texas public relations firm.
It's disgraceful. He has no memory? He has no memory of a conversation he had with President Nixon, in the Oval Office? He has no memory of the fact that he was an anti-Semite?
The thing is, the comments didn't materialize out of thin air. They don't sound like a man making conversation while waiting for a bus. They sound like a man deep in serious discussion with another powerful man for whom the issues being discussed are not academic or abstract. Mr. Graham, presumably, said what he believed. Why would it be something he didn't believe? It's not enough for him to say now that he doesn't remember saying it, and doesn't believe what he said. It is not enough.
You have to think of other things. You have to think about the civil rights movements and the anti-war movements and the media reporting on it all and the perception widely held among redneck Americans at the time of some kind of global Jewish conspiracy to undermine core American values. Mr. Graham was condemning the media for holding liberal values which he thought were alien to Mr. Nixon's constituency, the so-called silent majority.
"This stranglehold has got to be broken or this country's
going down the drain," Graham said.
"You believe that?" Nixon says in response.
"Yes, sir," says Graham.
"Oh boy. So do I," Nixon agrees, then says: "I can't ever
say that but I believe it."
"No, but if you get elected a second time, then we might
be able to do something,"
Now, what I am disturbed about is this: Billy Graham has a public relations firm?