Richard Nixon mask

A Richard Nixon mask is a mask with the likeness of Richard Nixon. These were commercially available and quite popular in the waning days of the Nixon Administration. They are generally made out of thick latex rubber or similar flexible castable compounds.

One of the notable features of most Richard Nixon masks is the classically caricatured nose. Many of the different versions of the Nixon mask have a wide grinning smile as well.

Although the masks were widely believed to be only a fad that would presumably die down as the public attention on Watergate waned, the masked managed to outlive their presumed fad status by becoming popular during events such Halloween and adult masquerade parties. The Richard Nixon mask remains popular today, worn both for humorous effect, and in protest marches and similar "public displays of disaffection". According to Harper's magazine's October 2002 "Index", Nixon masks were the best-selling political mask for the previous five years for top U.S. costume wholesaler Morris Costumes.^[1]

The masks sparked a commercial demand for masks resembling other famous people, most notably Presidents of the United States. Masks of other presidents have often been most popular either in the term of the current president or immediately preceding term.

Famous people who have worn the Nixon mask

• Hunter S. Thompson - Political reporter
• Bob Dylan - musician and countercultural figure^[2]
• Manic Street Preachers - Welsh band in their video "The Love of Richard Nixon"
• Sonny Cheeba - from hip hop duo Camp Lo in the video "Lucini"
• John E. Fryer - Psychiatrist and gay rights activist who wore a Nixon mask to conceal his appearance during a 1972 APA convention
• The Residents - The Avant-Garde band used a heavily modified Nixon mask, colored black and white, with sunglasses for their shows in 1986 during the performance of the James Brown classic "It's A Man's Man's Man's World".

Fictional characters who have worn the Nixon mask

• The corpse - Men at Work
• Wendy - The Ice Storm
• A shark in the Johnny Bravo episode, "Beach Blanket Bravo" to pass himself off as a human.
• A recreation of the Watergate break in the Spike Lee film She Hate Me
• One of the bank robbers in Point Break, the other robbers wore masks based on other recent Presidents (Johnson, Carter, and Reagan)
• In a nod to Point Break and the mask, an episode of Wings had a Nantucket bank being robbed by an unnamed criminal wearing a Nixon mask; however, he is later apprehended by Antonio and Brian.
• Jack McFarland's biological father on Will & Grace
• Robbers in Best Seller
• A protester in the director's cut of Nixon
• Killer in B-movie Horror House On Highway 5
• Eric Forman - That '70s Show, in an attempt to streak a speech given by the succeeding president Gerald Ford for the 1976 presidential election. Eric is made to wear the only Nixon mask after losing a game of not it, the other guys wore Snoopy masks. Eric saves his nervous father by interrupting the speech then running out the door, being chased by Secret Service agents; a more composed Red asks Ford how the hell could he have pardoned Nixon.
• Meatwad in the Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode, "The Shaving"
• One of the cheerleader bank robbers in Sugar & Spice
• A group of convenience store robbers in Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
• Tok while in the video store in Fulltime Killer
• A gang of "anticlowns" in Transmetropolitan
• Joey Gladstone on Full House recalled streaking on the field at one of his high school's football games while wearing one.
• The passengers on the fictitious "Mayflower" moon shuttle in the movie Airplane II: The Sequel when the shuttle was flying at .5 Worp speed.
• The Book Mobile driver in the South Park episode Chickenlover.
• Cleveland Brown on Family Guy
• A ghoul in the 1984 adult film Driller (a spoof of Michael Jackson's Thriller) wears the Nixon mask and uses it sexually while uttering Nixonisms. He is joined by Abraham Lincoln.
• David Van Driessen in an episode of Beavis and Butthead.
• Alex Keaton on an episode of Family Ties, who sees it as a chance to chase after his little brother and scare him.
• In Doctor Who (1996 film), the newly regenerated Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann) pulls a Nixon mask out of a locker he finds clothes in.
• A scary nun in the comic "Fell" is a recurring character who wears the mask, sometimes seen with an automatic weapon.
• Queen Latifah in the movie "Set it Off".
• In the "Meet Awesome-X" episode of the animated Adult Swim program Frisky Dingo (season 1, episode 2), one of the X-Tacles finds the mask at a party store, puts it on, and then does an imitation of Nixon saying "I will open communist China to the west".^[3]
• In an episode named iPsycho of the popular T.V show, ICarly, the main Antagonist is of a girl named Nora, and in one of the scenes when the gang tries to escape, she comes down into the basement wielding a hatchet and Richard Nixon mask.
• Moby [[1]] wears the mask in the richard nixon movie.

References

1. ^ "Harper’s Index," Harper's Magazine (October 2002).
2. ^ Marshall, Lee (2007), Bob Dylan: the never ending star, Cambridge: Polity, p. 14, ISBN 0745636411 
3. ^ http://tviv.org/Frisky_Dingo/Meet_Awesome-X