Richard Milhouse Nixon sat on a wall.
Richard Milhouse Nixon had a great fall.
All of the fixers and CIA men,
Couldn't put Dickie back up there again.
Nixon and Erlichman and Haldeman were sittin',
in their ivory tower and the world was shitting,
They connived an weaseled with Bebe Rebozo
and the Grand Ole Party they controlled.
Nixon and Erlichman and Haldeman sat
in the place they did because they were white and fat.
And they had no qualms about waging war,
and they didn't fear the law, 'cause they'd never been poor.
But the hero of this song did none of these things,
stuck on the night shift patrolling the wings.
Guarding the Watergate full of Watergate rats,
A black man on the night shift, and that was that...
Frank Wills was out on the rounds one night,
Saw a few things that weren't quite right.
He done his job well and the ivory tower fell.
Them that were ruling were out on the run.
Just doin' his job right was the way that he said it,
Didn't claim a lot or take a big pile of credit.
Didn't write no books or win no Pulitzer Prizes,
but the way it turns out causes no-one surprises.
Nixon and the plumbers get the royalty checks,
and small town America casts out a hex.
Hard times come and Frank can't get a job.
They blamed the man who done right, for the fall of a slob
The presidents and judges, all Nixon appointed,
backed up the ones who had them anointed,
and whitewashed it all and voiced their acquittal,
upheld in their own eyes their own code of justice.
The courts of America still sing different songs,
for white rich and black poor when Frank comes along.
In a story of paradox, he's humble and meeker,
he's sent up a year for lifting $12 sneakers.
In a country of criminals you do the most time,
when you cop an plead guilty to the least of crimes.
Pull the biggest of scams, you get your reward
with number one sellers and writers' awards...
But that's not the end of Frank Wills' tale,
Frank spent the rest of his life in jail.
And when he died he went up to heaven,
and stood at the gates with the Chicago Seven.
St. Peter stands there askin': "Your money or your lives?"
Their pockets are empty so they give him no jive.
"Been a bit of a sinner and a lot of a saint," says Frank,
so Peter opens the gates,
and gives them the fare for the bus into town.
In the front Dean's the driver and sittin' around
are Nixon an his plumbers an the judges and hacks,
who send Frank to the back with the poor whites and blacks...
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