By Steve Rhodes
A year ago I received a PR pitch for One Nation Under Sex, by famed Hustler publisher Larry Flynt and his co-author, David Eisenbach. It got stuck in my queue, so to speak, but now I’m finally bringing it to you, and I recommend it highly. First, the pitch that piqued my interest, then some choice excerpts.
The Pitch
What is the takeaway when America’s most notorious pornographer teams up with a distinguished Columbia University history professor? Well, as it turns out:
* Ben Franklin’s well-earned reputation as a ladies man aided his effort to secure France’s military assistance during the Revolutionary War.
* Dolly Madison was notorious for sleeping with three presidents, one vice president and a multitude of congressmen and diplomats.
* Thomas Jefferson exposed Alexander Hamilton’s affair with Maria Reynolds to foil his plans to modernize the banking system and industrialize the economy.
* James Buchanan’s gay love affair with a slave owner made him a pro-slavery advocate who encouraged secessionists on the eve of the Civil War.
* Abe Lincoln liked to sleep with men.
* During World War I, Warren G. Harding had an affair with a German spy who blackmailed the Republican Party when he ran for president.
* Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt’s affairs helped them become great leaders who guided America through the dark days of the Depression and the Second World War.
* J. Edgar Hoover used his sex files on America’s power elite to torment his opponents and undermine the Constitution.
* The FBI believed that John Kennedy had affairs with a Nazi spy during World War II and an East German spy during the Cold War.
* Jackie Kennedy had a string of lovers including movie stars, billionaires and her late husband’s brother.
* During the Lewinsky scandal, Larry Flynt used his sex files to help save Bill Clinton’s presidency.
The colorful sex lives of America’s most powerful leaders have influenced social movements, government policies, elections and even wars, yet they are so whitewashed by historians that people think Thomas Jefferson and Abe Lincoln were made of marble, not flesh and blood.
The Excerpts
“The Founders did not originally intend for there to be political parties; they feared parties would corrupt elections with dirty tricks, force politicians to make decisions based on party loyalty rather than enlightened reason, and debase political discourse with trivial scandal.”
*
“[W]hen the Southern states stared seceding in the wake of Abraham Lincoln’s election in November 1860, President Buchanan refused to use military force to preserve the Union. ‘The South has no right to secede, but I have no power to prevent them,’ said the commander in chief.
“He continued to rely on his Southern cabinet members for advice even though they were conspiring against the federal government and passing his plans to secessionist leaders. The Chicago Tribune called him ‘the first American Executive to keep traitors in his cabinet after they had shown their treason.'”
*
“Lincoln’s sexual orientation has been questioned for three reasons. First, he had consistently problematic relationships with women, particularly his wife. Second, the most intimate relationship of his life was with a slave owner named Joshua Speed. Third, Lincoln liked to sleep with men.”
*
“In the nineteenth century, scuttlebutt about the sex lives of presidential candidates filled American newspapers and was routinely used by both parties to discredit opposition candidates.”
*
“The Washington Post created a stir when it reported that one one of their theater dates ‘rather than paying attention to the play the President [Wilson] spent the evening entering Mrs. Galt.’
“The Post meant to print entertaining. Dr. Sigmund Freud would have loved that slip and could have cited it in his essay Thoughts for the Times on War and Death (1915), which blamed World War I on subconscious sexual repression.”
*
“After the Lusitania sank, Wilson isolated himself for three days. When he emerged, he visited Edith briefly and then hopped on a train to Philadelphia to make his first public statement on the crisis. In his speech Wilson urged his fellow Americans to resist the knee-jerk desire to retaliate: ‘The example of America must be the example not merely of peace because it will not fight, but of peace because peace is the elevating and healing influence in the world and strife is not. Then came his historic words: ‘There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight. There is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not have to convince others by force that it is right.’
“Wilson’s speech on the need for the United States to avoid being drawn into the horrors of World War I has gone down in history as one of the greatest speeches ever given by a president. But he had not planned on saying those legendary lines. He later told Edith that, after seeing her that day, he was in such a whirl of distraction he did not know if he was in Philadelphia or New York and that when the stood to speak he did not know what he was going to say or what he had said once he sat down. The infatuated president was just winging it.”
*
“On September 27, 1918, the New York Times reported, ‘The President Suffers Nervous Breakdown,’ but in fact the president had suffered a stroke. And the worst was yet to come.”
Wilson was incapacitated. But his wife, Edith, with whom he had had a white-hot, scandalous affair while still mourning the death of his first wife, did not inform the vice president, high-ranking members of Congress, or the press about the president’s condition. Instead, she decided, in her words, to assume a ‘stewardship of the presidency.’ According to [White House usher Ike] Hoover, an ‘air of secrecy’ enveloped the White House and Edith embarked on ‘the beginning of the deception of the American people.'”
*
“Harding’s other mistresses soon learned about the arrangement and demanded their own cut from the slush fund.”
*
“The same press corps that shielded Franklin’s disability from public view also ignored his extramarital relationships with Lucy Mercer and Missy LeHand.”
*
“President Harry S. Truman understood that [J. Edgar] Hoover used sex to threaten the constitutional order.”
*
“Chicago Tribune reporter Walter Trohan observed that ‘some of Hoover’s overwhelming support on the Hill was due to what I can only call blackmail, political blackmail.'”
*
“For almost five decades, Hoover ran the largest and longest sexual blackmailing scheme in history.”
*
“Before his death, [Joe] McCarthy tried to exact revenge against Eisenhower by dredging up Ike’s wartime affair with his shapely brunette chauffeur Kay Summersby.”
*
“Seymour Pollock, a close friend of Meyer Lansky, who was known as ‘the Mob’s accountant,’ claimed, ‘The homosexual thing was Hoover’s Achilles’ heel. Meyer found it, and it was like he pulled the strings with Hoover. He never bothered any of Meyer’s people.”
*
“The CIA also allegedly had photos of Hoover and [close aide Clyde] Tolson.”
*
“James Bacon, who covered Hollywood for the Associated Press, said of his friend Marilyn Monroe, ‘She was very open about her affair with JFK. In fact I think Marilyn was in love with JFK.’ Bacon did not write a word about the aspiring president and the silver screen goddess.”
*
“Hoover opened his first Personal and Confidential file on Kennedy during World War II, when the 24-year-old navy ensign began an affair with a shapely, blonde Danish reporter named Inga Arvad.”
*
“Although agents found absolutely no evidence that Inga was a spy, they did compile a 628-page file complete with steamy audio recordings that could have destroyed the political hopes of the Kennedy family.”
*
“Campbell’s contacts with Kennedy and [Chicago mob boss Sam] Giancana quickly came to the attention of FBI agents, who reported to Hoover that she was sleeping with both men.”
*
“If Jackie’s affair with her sister’s paramour became public, Camelot would be tarnished and his own political future damaged. But RFK had a more personal reason for being upset.”
*
“While the national press, the New York and Washington social elite, and even Ethel ignored Jackie’s affair with Bobby, the FBI did not.”
*
“[Senator Edward] Kennedy left the party with [the late RFK’s] mistress, 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne, and drove off a bridge over the Poucha Pond inlet.”
*
The book, of course, covers the Clinton years and brings us up to date, but what is even more fascinating than the tales told here is the way they – or more accurately, the cover-ups – affected history. Therein lie the real lessons.
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Comments welcome.
Posted on April 14, 2012