Nixon and Hoover....

Whenever we forget how truly malevolent politics could be back in the '60s and '70s, we are reminded by some new revelation from Richard Nixon's tapes.

Jack Shafer, in Slate, has a new one, from a telephone conversation between Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover (another paragon of virtue), concerning the Supreme Court, Jack Anderson, and Katherine Graham. Listening to Richard Nixon. Truly despicable:

Nixon: She's a terrible old bag.
Hoover: Oh, she's an old bitch in my estimation.

Says Shafer:

For the record, Graham was a mere 54 years old at the time, and judging from photographs, she was still a pretty hot number. The 75-year-old Hoover, on the other hand, resembled nothing more than sun-rotted, wormy calabash.

Shafer is looking for any reference by Nixon to Graham's late husband, Phil. If you know of any, let him know.