And we got a pretty good opera and some darn fine ping pong out of it.

James Maddalena as Nixon and
Russell Braun as Chou En-lai

Still smarting from the savage mocking he received when he walked into the sixth grade dance wearing velvet knee breeches, Richard Milhouse Nixon at age 59 finally succeeded in making a grand entrance that wowed the world, when on this day exactly forty years ago Air Force One touched down in Beijing for Nixon in China--the actual Nixon-being-in-China event, as opposed to the opera, which debuted in 1987 to mixed reviews, some of which predicted its quick demise.

Here's a link to an article by Max Frankel, who won a Pulitzer for his coverage of Nixon's trip, on both the trip and the opera.  Despite those tepid initial reviews and the vow by the opera's director (the comically named) Peter Sellars that "you won't have Peter Sellars to kick around anymore," in fact "Nixon in China" kicked around the country for several decades before its premiere last year at the Met.  http://tinyurl.com/86nah7l

Also today Leslie Gelb, another journalist who covered the trip, and Winston Lord, who was Kissinger's assistant, suggest at The Daily Beast that the stealth diplomacy practiced then (lots of table tennis and Kissinger's secret talks) could work today with Iran.  Or we could just offer to let Iran buy whatever's left of us that China doesn't own.  Here's the link:  http://tinyurl.com/73n2q4r