Just got done watching All The President's Men on WNET, PBS's local affiliate... sounds like a quiet cry for help, if you listen just right ("Pleeeease! Our funnnding! Impeach the bastard! Helllllp us! Here, we'll even show you how it's done...") Anyway it was really nice to be watching just now, after a few weeks of studying for my certification exams; a little fantasia of Good Journalism viewed from an armchair in this department of communications I call home. I fantasize about being that good of a reporter. Dunno if Woodstein really strategized that way, but it was wicked cool if they did.

A couple of things popped out at me that just wouldn't have when I last saw the movie, in high school. One was the scene where the editorial board is weighing how dangerous the story is to the survival of the Post: it's a nice microcosm of some of Chomsky and Herman's observations about how self-censorship on the part of the press happens after weighing flak, the potential loss of support from government sources, and everyone's perception that you're just plain crazy for running a story which contradicts everyone's common agreement about the moral fiber of the President. Which, as Chomsky and Herman suggest, is probably much more likely to produce a chilling effect on a given day than, say, Rupert Murdoch calling an editor to tell her not to run a story he dislikes in the Post. Anyway, if you could convince high school students to sit still for a minute to watch that scene it would be a nice way to dramatize those patterns.

Another thing that just totally fascinated me was watching the dramatization of 1970s-era technology, which basically had a supporting role in the film. All those bulky CRT televisions with chrome knobs! The newsroom had typewriters everywhere, which make for easier-to-shoot typing scenes; imagine trying to frame both the bustle of the newsroom and Robert Redford typing intently when there's a monitor jammed in his face. Plus that artillerylike noise -- transitioning from a clip of the cannons saluting Nixon's inauguration -- as the final typewriter spells out the fates of the men who were indicted.

And then there's the research scenes: poring through stacks of phone books, library records, plane tickets, bank statements; the secretary arriving with manila envelopes of glossy photographs culled from the newspaper's morgue. All of which would be done from one desk, these days. And sure, they find ways to dramatize it; Minority Report, though it fantasizes about future technologies, still dramatizes that kind of informational movement in a way that feels right for our current moment. Those same scenes where Tom Cruise is dragging data around with his fingertips could be pulled off on one of today's flat-panels to similar effect. But seeing Redford lugging around phone books from Minnesota really gives you vertigo. Not only are we reminded how much data there is out there when you print it all out, but we're also reminded how small phone books could be at the time (how many phonebooks does the Washington Post need to get coverage of the state of Minnesota?!)

Finally, the headlines about McGovern's running mate, Lawrence Eagleburger, dropping out of the election race at the beginning of the movie reminded me of Hunter S. Thompson's book Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72. Thompson was looking at the same race, the same dirty tricks, and what he produced was so incredibly different. While Woodward and Bernstein polished their story until they had their facts clean enough for Ben Bradley, Thompson slashed his wrists and howled until he was dizzy. And I guess ultimately accomplished nothing. What must that have been like? You have a real palpable sense of his outrage at the debauchery of the Nixon team, but I wonder now too if that was exacerbated by a sense that he'd missed an opportunity to really do something about it. Did he feel hamstrung?

The result was a book whose sense of helplessness balmed my terror at the insanity of the 2000 election; the nation was clearly going through similar trials, and Thompson was there to record what it felt like. He was the hermeneut to Bradley's rational empiricist. We needed both, for different reasons.