Remember sensational outrages?

How utterly quaint, even touching  — and how profoundly depressing.

Such was the reaction of merely one major newspaper the day after President Nixon said as Charles Manson's trial was in progress that he "was guilty, directly or indirectly, of eight murders without reason."

Press outlets nationwide magnified their headline fonts to sizes that rivaled those announcing the news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Because downright scandalous was that a president of the United States would pronounce guilt on a criminal defendant before his trial concluded, even though Manson's guilt was as thunderingly obvious as his psychosis, and his conviction, inevitable.

Nixon's blunder occurred on 3 August 1970 and, same day, he rushed a "clarifying" statement to the astounded press: "The last thing I would do is prejudice the legal rights of any person, in any circumstances."

He then had his endlessly beleaguered press secretary, Ron Ziegler, do yet more mop-up in his name: "To set the record straight, I do not know and did not intend to speculate as to whether the [Sharon] Tate defendants are guilty, in fact, or not. All of the facts in the case have not yet been presented. The defendants should be presumed to be innocent at this stage of their trial."

That the Nixon-Manson affair was then such an outrage is what renders it so outrageously saddening today. On Saturday, Trump published his idiotic pronouncement of guilt on former FBI director James Comey, U.S. Senator Adam Schiff and Letitia James, New York's attorney general on Truth Social — "They’re all guilty as hell" — and now, the day after, The NY Times' related headline is 10 stories down, regulation font.

If anything can be said in Nixon's defense, is that at least Charles Manson was guilty as hell. A president's saying so was nonetheless a cataclysmic event causing nationwide media upheavals (and, had the defendant been anyone but Manson, likely a mistrial).

Today? A convicted felon and certifiable moron in official possession of Nixon's title cyberscreams that three uncharged, non-prosecuted, rip-roaringly innocent Americans are criminally complicit and, well, the day after is just another day.

I hope someone is keeping track of the notches on American law and the nation's norms, dignity, tradition, character, leadership models, salutary customs, conventional acceptabilities, standards of decency and baseline rationality. Because I lost count a long time ago.

Correction: The referenced NYT headline has now vanished from the front page.

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