Listening to this newly released Nixon telephone tape, I was struck mostly by the fact that Warren Burger's response to cases involving pornography was to "come out hard." Awesome.
But on a more serious note, I was actually astonished to hear Burger and Nixon chewing the fat, guffawing about first amendment jurisprudence, waxing wistful about the regrettable longevity of the liberals on the court.
Maybe I've led a sheltered existence wherein I believed the story that the Justices were implicitly telling me as they sat on their hands during State of the Union addresses, but this just struck me as a little crazy. I've read "The Brethren," so I'm not that naive (certainly not about Burger), but I have to admit, this recording kind of shocked me.
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Burger, on the audio tape, with Nixon laughing in approval, discussing the redeeming social value component to the definition of obscenity, and attributing same to college kids:
"If they had one of these outrageous orgies and they mention Vietnam or the condition of the poor then that redeems the whole thing. [Laughter, Oh God.]"
Admittedly, it has been many years since I was on a college campus, and almost as many years since I was young and attractive enough to participate in anything resembling an orgy (if two girls and a guy qualifys), but 1. I don't recall any references during same to Vietnam, or the poor, and 2. Said 'orgy' stands on its own merit, and certainly does not need to be 'redeemed' by the pretext of a political discussion.
Oh, to be 22 again....
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