Someone Johnny Never Had on his Program

When Mr. Carson said goodnight for the last time, it pushed a far more important obit off the front pages.

Saturday we lost Rose Mary Woods, President Nixon's secretary, the person responsible for at keast some of the "18 1/2 minute gap" in the White House tapes. During that 18 minutes, it is highly likely Nixon and his staff said things which would have gotten them all fired, and probably jailed.

Like Ollie North, she destroyed evidence which might have sent a President to jail. Unlike North, she kept her mouth shut, and then faded into oblivion (which is somewhere in Ohio, apprently).

http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/01/23/obit.woods.ap/index.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6858800/

http://www.kcbs.com/pages/kcbs/news/news_story.nsp?story_id=63854502&ID=kcbs&scategory=Computers

This points up one of the reasons I got out of the newz biz. No matter what the medium, newscreatures always choose to flood it with the easy follow-up. There are more hours of Johnny Carson video than almost anyone else in the world. Almost everyone in the entertainment business has a Johnny Carson anecdote. It is so very easy to do follow-ups on him, and they are all over the air waves, and all over the newspapers.

Rose Woods, on the other hand, kept out of the limelight, was rarely in front of a camera, and basically kept her mouth shut. She was with Nixon all through his Senate and Presidential careers. She saw all kinds of interesting things during her tenure, and despite the fact that she was an ace at shorthand and a super typist, she never wrote The Book. Since there isn't much material about her, the press has pretty much ignored her death. CNN didn't even have a posting on their web site until two days after it happend.