Power, Lost and Found: America At Century’s End 501“How much more evidence do the citizens need/That the election was sabo-
taged by trickery and greed?/And, if this is so, and who we got didn’t win/Let’s
do the whole goddamn election over again.” Less known, a year earlier, from
a different part of the music world, country singer Tom T. Hall of Kentucky put
out his “Watergate Blues,” singing “There was a big committee to elect the
President/I’ll tell you now, they were a smooth group/Well they broke into
Watergate and tapped people’s phones/The FBI and CIA would not leave folks
alone/The people in the White House were burstin’ with pride/When the votes
were all counted it was a big landslide/ The USA bought a new used car.” His
disgust continued, “But there’s Lincoln and Roosevelt and Truman and Ike/All
turnin’ over in their graves every night.” Finally, Hall expressed his fear of what
Nixon might have unleashed, “Well somewhere in this country there’s a hard-
workin’ man/Readin’ his paper as he tries to understand/Are there no honest
people left anymore?/One night will he hear a poundin’ on his door?/If it gets
that way, Lord help us all.” When people as far apart musically and culturally
as Gil Scott-Heron and Tom T. Hall held the same opinion, the same level of
anger, then you know something serious was going on, and perhaps no one in
the late 20th Century had the ability to provoke such a response as Nixon.
FIGuRE 10-1 President Nixon with Elvis Presley, December 20, 1970