On the road with Timothy Leary

Liddy was also known for "orchestrating" the so-called Watergate burglary, a freakishly incompetent attempt to raid the Democratic National Committee's Washington, D.C., offices on behalf of Richard Nixon's re-election campaign, a crime for which he spent four years in prison. He subsequently published a biography, Will, that portrayed him as a no-nonsense atheist tough guy; when conservative radio became a thing, he pivoted to a kind of religiose Limbaughian posturing but never abandoned his ultra-square nutcase persona. He even took it on the road with Timothy Leary for a debate tour.

I came to the U.S. from England in 2000 or so, landing a job that occasioned long drives in the conservative southwest, and G. Gordon Liddy instantly came to represent something quintessentially American to me. He was a blatantly demented human goose, a nihilistic reactionary pretending to be an observant Catholic for the money while constantly letting his naked materialism drop, a psycho Inspector Gadget offering tips on killing cops and rambling on about his favorite Nazi airplanes.

In the end you must judge people by what they say and do, and Liddy said and did despicable things. But it is not unimportant that while he was in complete command of what he said, when it came to the doing his was a life defined by its ridiculous and magnificent ineptitude.

- ROB BESCHIZZA