Redeeming Richard Nixon

In the evenings, the boys like a story. They like one particular story. They like Green Eggs and Ham. I don’t know how many of you have ever had to read Green Eggs and Ham, night after night, for months on end, but after a while it becomes necessary to find a way of making the story interesting for the reader as well as the audience.

One of the small joy I get from reading stories—–we all do this, I think—is character voices. The dispeptic antagonist in Green Eggs and Ham could be a peevish and greedy London banker; or she could be an overly picky, overly privileged nasal 1%er from the USA. After trying out several voices, I found a gravelly, slow American voice that was used to power and overly accustomed to denial.

When the boys asked who he was, I suddenly realised it was Richard Nixon. Nixon the diplomat, Nixon the Quaker, Nixon denying all wrongdoing, denying his own fallibility, denying green eggs and ham. ‘I do not like in a box. I do not like them with a fox. I do not like them…’ —–it works, right?

The best part is that Richard Nixon is redeemed at the end of the story. ‘I like green eggs and ham. I do, I like them Sam I am!’. Great stuff.