20 years after Brown v. Board of Education and what is it like...

... here in "the spring of Nixon's discontent"?

Roger Wilkins wonders where we are. One third of black Americans are still "mired in poverty," and Vernon Jordan says, "If we don't find a way out for that hard core one-third, I believe that we have the seedbed for the most rebellious revolution we can imagine."

THE YEAR THAT BLOG FORGOT IS: 1974.

"Ethically they show themselves to be cynical and unscrupulous."

"Intellectually, they are slovenly. In emotional terms, their rare expressions of compassion are overwhelmed by their prevailing attitudes of manipulation and distrust. Their language is cruel, obscene, cliché-ridden and mechanistic."

The NYT reads the transcripts from Richard Nixon's White House and is duly appalled. The word that strikes obliquely is mechanistic. Are we so concerned that men are becoming machines? Is Nixon's problem that he is not human enough or that he is too human?

THE YEAR THAT BLOG FORGOT IS: 1974.