Martha Mitchell had a blonde bouffant, white cat-eye sunglasses, a telephone, and absolutely no intention of keeping her mouth shut.
Washington was still a city ruled by powerful white men who expected women to pour the coffee, host the dinners, and leave the important conversations to them. Martha knew the rules. She simply refused to obey them.
She knew what Nixon and his boys were doing, and she tried to warn the country. So they restrained her, drugged her, gaslighted her, abandoned her—and told America she was crazy
She wasn’t crazy.
She was right.
This is the audio version of “Where Is Martha Mitchell When We Need Her?”—about one plucky Southern woman, the suffocating culture of Washington, the terrible price whistleblowers pay for telling truths powerful people want buried, and why we could desperately use someone with Martha’s courage now.
Thank you for listening—and a special thank-you to my paid subscribers, who help me keep digging, writing, recording, and raising hell when raising hell is called for.
Martha Mitchell understood something about Washington that remains true: powerful institutions rarely confess their own corruption, and the people inside them are often more interested in protecting one another than protecting the country. Someone has to break ranks. Someone has to speak.
Whistleblowers do exactly that—and too often, they are punished while the people whose wrongdoing they expose carry on with their lives.
If Martha’s story made you laugh, made you furious, or made you wonder why you were never told the whole story, please share this audio with someone else who ought to know her name.
And if you’d like to support my work, you can subscribe—or buy me a cup of coffee. Coffee helps keep this small corner of the cosmos caffeinated, clear-eyed, and unapologetic.
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Pull up a chair. There’s always more to say.
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