Oscar-Contending Documentary ‘The Martha Mitchell Effect’ Redeems A Watergate Figure Victimized In A Gaslighting Campaign
deadline.comAt the beginning of the Netflix documentary The Martha Mitchell Effect, Richard Nixon, deflated in his ex-presidential phase, sits for an interview with David Frost.
A somber Nixon tells his natty interlocutor, “I’m convinced if it hadn’t been for Martha, there’d have been no Watergate.” What he really meant, one can imagine, is that were it not for Martha Mitchell, Watergate wouldn’t have become the scandal that ended his presidency.
But as the documentary illustrates, blaming Martha Mitchell, obsessing over her, ridiculing and besmirching her had long and troubling antecedents to that Nixon interview.
Generations born after Watergate don’t realize how much the mere mention of Attorney General John Mitchell’s wife set tongues wagging in Washington and across the country.
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