Arlo Guthrie (Again) and the Downfall of a President

So I thought I was oh so brilliant. No, make that genius.

After listening to Arlo Guthrie's Alice's Restaurant this Thanksgiving Day (as is my annual tradition), I noted its length was 18 minutes (actually 18 minutes and 20 seconds). A light bulb then went off in my head. What else is an event of almost exactly the same duration? It was as if I had discovered fire, the wheel and electricity all in one glorious, gigantic thought.  

But it turns out, like every other one of my most astonishing feats of mental gymnastics, that I had slightly overestimated my own capacity. You see it appears that Arlo Guthrie himself had connected the dots nearly a half century earlier. 

The tale was that Chip Carter, Jimmy's son, at his father's inauguration, showed Arlo a tape of Alice's Restaurant which tape he advised had previously been in the possession of one disgraced former President.

And Arlo, able to add two plus two, and knowing a good story when it was handed to him on a silver platter, announced the likelihood that what Rose Mary Woods had erased from that infamous June 20,1972 recording which helped usher Richard Milhous Nixon out of the Oval Office, that unexplained gap of approximately 18 and1/2 minutes, was not in actuality a felonious discussion between a President and his Chief of Staff on how to cover up a break in, but merely two guys listening to an extremely long, comedic, anti-war protest song.

This theory has in fact been the subject not merely of comments from the songwriter himself, but numerous writings through the decades.

And so it is abundantly clear that I was not the one responsible for discovering fire, the wheel and electricity. 

Rather, sadly, what I have learned once again is merely that I am not nearly so clever as I would inform myself (and all those listening to the sound of my ego).