The Ventriloquized Pawn of Shadowy and Sinister Forces

May 29, 2022 9:33 AM

The Plot to Out Ronald Reagan (James Kirchick for Politico, an excerpt from Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington)
posted by box (19 comments total)

Maybe it's just me, but I'm not really sure that an article with a click-bate headline, about a lie from a Holocaust-denying antisemite makes for the best post.

From the very end of the article:

McCloskey gave up his House seat in 1982 to run for the Senate, losing in the Republican primary after campaigning against “the Jewish lobby.” In 2000, he emerged briefly from obscurity to deliver a speech at a Holocaust denial conference. In light of this record, his last-ditch effort to torpedo Ronald Reagan with a tale portraying him as the dupe of a right-wing homosexual conspiracy looks like just another episode in a career spent tilting at windmills...
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 9:50 AM on May 29, 2022 [17 favorites]

Very interesting. I was just learning how there were rumors of Regan's supposed potential queerness that haunted him, and that some theorize worsened his response to AIDS... I think on this podcast.
posted by latkes at 9:52 AM on May 29, 2022 [1 favorite]

I read this yesterday. The author definitely follows the the rule of writing which states "Your first sentence should pique the reader's interest."
posted by WhenInGnome at 11:52 AM on May 29, 2022 [3 favorites]

Unfortunately, the final paragraph of this story is not "...and so an enraged Ronald Reagan spent the rest of his long political career doing everything he possibly could to ensure no gay people were ever fearful of being publicly shamed again"
posted by chavenet at 12:19 PM on May 29, 2022 [11 favorites]

Wow, that whole thing. Back in the day, a lot of straight guys made pretend passes at each other as a joke (although, looking back, I wonder if some of them were maybe a bit more than that), but Livingston immediately assumes that the Lavender Mob is after him. I vaguely remember him as part of the house of cards that fell after Newt Gingrich resigned, and ultimately the speaker job went to, of all people, Dennis Hastert. I'm also wondering if there's any connection between his particularly paranoid strain of homophobia and that of former New Orleans DA Jim Garrison, whose conspiracy theory about the JFK assassination has been described as a result of his shock that there were gay people such as Clay Shaw in New Orleans high society.

Then there's this McCloskey guy, for whom the phrase "tilting at windmills" is entirely too kind; maybe "presaging 1/6" would be a better choice. Only Politico would bury that lede. And, while we're talking about allegedly closeted conservatives during the Reagan era, why is Roy Cohn not mentioned once?
posted by Halloween Jack at 4:09 PM on May 29, 2022 [8 favorites]

There’s a P.J. O’Rourke book, probably Parliament of Whores, where he reviews a history textbook that includes the question ‘Who was the last president with a beard?’

His answer, paraphrased: ‘Ronald Reagan, and the beard was Nancy.’

Headline writers gonna write headlines, but I thought this was an interesting dive into a very underreported part of history that, with e.g. Madison Cawthorn oppo photos or rumors about Lady G, still echoes today.

It also makes me wonder about the alternate history where Reagan’s VP is Jack Kemp. Maybe Reagan doesn’t go quite so crypto-racist war-on-the-poor hard right, maybe the Bush and Clinton dynasties never happen, maybe the moderates don’t get chased out. That’s a lot to hang on the shoulders of Jack Kemp, especially when people like Limbaugh and the Murdochs existed, but it’s something to ponder.
posted by box at 4:54 PM on May 29, 2022 [6 favorites]

maybe the Bush and Clinton dynasties never happen

George W. Bush's dad, George H. W. Bush, was the vice president and later president of the United States. His grandfather was Prescott Bush, who was a United States Senator for over 10 years. All three generations graduated from Yale; both George Bushes also went to a selective private prep school.

Bill Clinton's dad was a traveling salesman who had died in a car crash three months before Clinton was born. He got a scholarship to Georgetown University, and won a Rhodes Scholarship to University College, Oxford.

Hillary Rodham's dad was a successful small businessman. She went to Wellesley College, then went to Yale Law School, where she met Bill.

One of these things is not like the other. George W. Bush was a legacy, like Flounder in Animal House, with his dad and grandfather cleaning the way from him. Bill and Hillary Clinton earned their success through intelligence and hard work, and calling them a dynasty because they got married and she took his name diminishes their accomplishments.
posted by kirkaracha at 5:24 PM on May 29, 2022 [48 favorites]

Fair. Let’s strike ‘maybe the Bush and Clinton dynasties never happen’ for ‘maybe George H.W. Bush stops pursuing electoral politics, and Bill Clinton’s Third Way Democratic politics never see a nationwide audience.’
posted by box at 6:09 PM on May 29, 2022 [3 favorites]

Wow, you can basically draw a direct line between this, and the virulently homophobic stances of the Reagan administration, which ultimately culminated in the deliberate mismanagement of the HIV/AIDS epidemic that would eventually kill nearly an entire generation of gay men.

The author never draws that line, but it's really hard not to see it.
posted by schmod at 6:15 PM on May 29, 2022 [6 favorites]

Back in the day, a lot of straight guys made pretend passes at each other as a joke (although, looking back, I wonder if some of them were maybe a bit more than that)

I remember that being a constant, and as being a weird mix of homophobic and homoerotic. Like, I couldn't always tell if it was meant to be ridiculous-funny, or threatening-funny, or both. It's bad enough having it be a defining feature of frat life, but having it influence policy and politics is another level of crazy.

The article (or book excerpt, rather) is just layer upon layer of strange anecdotes and personalities.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:45 PM on May 29, 2022 [4 favorites]

Gay Reagan doesn't really fit with his pre-politics reputation in Hollywood.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 11:34 PM on May 29, 2022 [1 favorite]

I can't access the book content for some reason but the way I heard it described was that he wasn't a tough guy stock Hollywood character so therefore he was hounded by (or perceived himself to be hounded by?) unstated suggestions of fay-ness.
posted by latkes at 11:22 AM on May 30, 2022

Maybe that's what prompted him to take his final role in Don Siegel's version of The Killers.
posted by box at 11:33 AM on May 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

Republican administrations often have scandals with closeted officials and/or gay escorts. Senior officials in the Reagan and Bush 1.0 administrations were linked to a male prostitution ring. Jeff Gannon was a gay escort who got a White House press pass during the Bush 2.0. administration with little to no journalistic credentials.
posted by kirkaracha at 11:48 AM on May 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

Livingston told Woodward it would take “months to do this story right” but he hoped the Post would pursue it because “I don’t want to see the world run by a bunch of weirdos.”

I mean, pot kettle black. This article was certainly a reminder that elected representatives can be pretty stupid people, if nothing else. Having some sense is usually pretty bad for a Republican political career.

Let us not forget that Bob Livingston is of the district that nominated Duke, Vitter, and Scalise, and is a bit of an idiot.
posted by eustatic at 12:21 PM on May 30, 2022 [2 favorites]

This article helped me contextualize the batshit wtf-ery of Jerry Falwell and the Teletubbies. If you came of age in this kind of environment with this degree of insane homophobic conspiracism then of course an oddball foreign children's show must be part of a secret plot to turn America's kids gay. That just makes sense!
posted by Ndwright at 5:43 PM on May 30, 2022 [2 favorites]

This, uh, isn't some weird historical anachronism.
It's still happening right now.
posted by schmod at 7:55 PM on May 30, 2022 [2 favorites]

I mean, IMHO, homophobia has changed a lot since the 80s! In many ways it has almost totally shifted to trans hysteria and it has such a different flavor now and primarily targets a very small and vulnerable population, although of course that transphobia impacts all of us in that it punishes any perceived variation from the gender regime.
posted by latkes at 8:03 PM on May 30, 2022

(Here's a pretty good review of Secret City.)
posted by box at 8:51 AM on June 6, 2022 [1 favorite]