More than their 18-1/2 minutes

The Vega mourns the passing of Johnny Carson (1925-2005), who, when asked how he became a star, replied, "I started in a gaseous state and then I cooled."

Carson, it seems to me, taught America that it was okay to stay up late. I would hazard a guess that since his final sign-off from the tonight show, America's adults have been going to sleep earlier and earlier, to the point where it is difficult to be certain if we're even awake anymore. For thirty years, from 1962 to 1992, Carson decided what was funny -- and sometimes not so funny -- among some of the most turbulent events of the era.

Another memorable moment occurred in 1963, when one of Mr. Carson's guests was Ed Ames, an actor-singer who played an Indian on the television series "Daniel Boone." Mr. Ames was there to teach Mr. Carson how to throw a tomahawk, and he brought along a cardboard image of a sheriff as a target. In his demonstration, Mr. Ames threw the tomahawk across the stage, and it imbedded itself deeply in the sheriff's crotch. The audience was in an uproar; people were literally falling out of their seats with laughter.

When Mr. Ames went to remove the tomahawk, Mr. Carson held his arm and the uncontrolled laughter commenced anew. As the laughter subsided, Mr. Carson looked at Mr. Ames and said, "I didn't know you were Jewish."

But equally important to those of us who joined the Reality-based Community thirty years or so ago, is the passing of Rose Mary Woods, Richard Nixon's longtime secretary, and the "cause" of the infamous 18-1/2 minute gap in the Oval Office tapes. That gap would prove fatal to the Nixon's presidency, as his credibility -- even among his fellow party members -- was doomed.

Miss Woods, the president's private secretary, in 1973 was transcribing secretly recorded audiotapes of Oval Office conversations. She was working on a June 20, 1972, tape of a conversation between Nixon and his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, that might have shed light on whether Nixon knew about the Watergate break-in three days earlier. While she was performing her duties, she said, the phone rang. As she reached for it, she said she inadvertently struck the erase key on the tape recorder and kept her foot on the machine's pedal, forwarding the tape.

A photograph taken of Miss Woods re-creating the event, nearly sprawling to do both simultaneously, made her gesture look like a gymnastic feat. Some wags, according to a Washington Post article at the time, dubbed it "the Rose Mary Stretch."

Miss Woods testified to a federal grand jury in 1974 that she might have caused a four- or five-minute gap in the tape, but no more. Subsequent investigations concluded that there were five to nine separate erasures, but no one has ever determined what was erased. She had complained earlier to the grand jury that some of the tapes were of such bad quality that she doubted that exact transcripts could ever be made.

Adios to them both.

If you have a chance, grab the print edition of the New York Times. On the obituary page there is a still of Carson, with a marmoset on his head, bemusedly looking directly across the page at the photo of Woods in full stretch. It is worth a million words.