When Nixon died, on my radio show I started doing sketches with three basic conceits: One, there's a place called Heaven. Two, Nixon got in. And three, he's still taping.
Harry ShearerI think Nixon says a lot about those times. It was possibly hard, in the '90s and early 2000s to understand the grip of fear that communism had on the country in the 1950s and 1960s - a fear Nixon rode like a endless great wave on the Pacific to high office. I'm sure, though there's no evidence of it, one of the things that rankled him down deep was that it was called McCarthyism and not Nixonism.
Harry ShearerThe act of getting married, stripped of the necessity to have a secure setting to raise children, seems to me no less grim than registering your emotions with the government.
Harry ShearerHere's a guy [Richard Nixon] who had no gift for small talk, never liked to be around strangers, was physically awkward, and he goes into the one business that calls for ease with strangers and a gift for small talk.
Harry ShearerI've been doing Nixon pretty much my whole professional life. I was in this comedy group called the Credibility Gap in Los Angeles when he was president. I was doing Nixon on the radio, and when we did live shows I physicalized him - if that's a word - for the first time. And then I did a Nixon sketch on a very short-lived NBC show called Sunday Best.
Harry Shearer