According to “files obtained by Salon,” 1996 Republican vice-presidential candidate Jack Kemp was investigated by the FBI because everyone thought he was really, really gay. So score one for Salon’s crack investigative team, we guess, for finally bringing down that dead guy who lost his election 14 years ago. The FBI looked into the matter as part of Kemp’s background check when George H.W. Bush appointed him HUD secretary for being hip and urban. And what they were able to dig up about Jack Kemp’s gay condo and gay Ronald Reagan sex parties will have a major impact on this dead man’s career, now that these documents are out.
History lesson time!
The columnists Jack Anderson and Drew Pearson broke the news in 1967 that what they called “a homosexual ring” had been “operating” in Ronald Reagan’s California gubernatorial administration. And while Reagan publicly denied it, he had in fact fired his chief of staff and another aide after an internal investigation concluded that they were gay.
Kemp, then in his early 30s and the quarterback for the Buffalo Bills, was at the time working on Reagan’s Sacramento staff during the off-season. He had purchased a cabin in Lake Tahoe in partnership with Reagan’s chief of staff; that’s where some of the “homosexual parties” reportedly happened. Kemp later maintained that the cabin was merely a real estate investment and he never visited it. But the columnists had referred to an unnamed “athlete” who was a member of the “ring,” a clear reference to Kemp. The rumor that would follow Kemp for the rest of his life had been born.
But according to the people the FBI talked to, none of this gay Jack Kemp stuff happened. Still, the rumor pretty much ruined his career ambitions by keeping Ronald Reagan from selecting him as his running mate. When Bob Dole picked him in 1996, the rumors persisted, and who wants to be Bob Dole’s running mate anyway?
What a country, huh? Why did we let this happen? Mark Foley, what do you have to say about this?
Exactly right. We must take this message to children’s instant messenger accounts and sneak into the congressional page dormitories to spread the word. Intolerance must end now. [Salon]
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"He had purchased a cabin in Lake Tahoe": the original log cabin Republican!
Tahoe Cabin Republican
Oh yeah there was some logging going on in that cabin.
Well who DIDN'T know a homosexual ring operated under Regan?
One Homosexual Ring to rule them all!
Log Grabbin' Republican.
You know what they say: nothing brings down a politician faster than being caught in bed with a dead girl, a live boy, or Jack Kemp.
Had the rumor proved true, Buffalo Bill fans would have died of embarrassment at having a queer QB. They survived instead, only to be mortified by their team's repeated futile attempts at winning the Super Bowl. Great moments in History.
As some one who remembers the Bills in Kemp's era, I remember the repeated calls to bench him and play Darryl Lamonica.
For a lot of Bills fans, having had a gay quarterback would probably be more embarrassing than what their star 70s running back did.
"Reagan's Sacramento staff?" Yeah, I'll bet he worked the hell out of it.
A log cabin Republican with an actual cabin for "logging" is like a…ah…er…I need a metaphor! Stat! Help me out now or this thread is going to die!
um….
… a Tea Party that serves Long Island iced tea?
… a Repubican judge with hookers and blow?
… Ted Swaggart with massage boy and meth?
… Christine O'Donnell with meat balls in her mouth?
Oh I have some meaty balls for Christine. I am sorry I just couldn't resist the really bad joke.
Naturally, Time Magazine has run a special issue on this very timely story. I particularly like the "Life on Mars" caption, which cogently expresses the utter insanity that is the Republican Party.
Wait, I thought it was the FBI's job to investigate those. (Hey-o!!)
In other news: Mark Foley is determined to become the new Mark Zuckerberg, developing an online tummysticks social network.
So was Reagan's gubenatorial homosexual sex ring gayer than the one that was run out of GHW Bush's White House? Inquiring minds want to know!
In what sense "gayer"? A hall of fame NFL quarterback who is closeted is certainly very gay in the sense that it's so sensational. You know, its a spectacularly gay story, an explosion of hidden gayness. But W's white house? There you had some guys (Rove, Mehlman and Gannon) who were superficially very gay. Definitely gayer than Jack Kemp. But, especially with Gannon and Mehlman, the gay was simply obvious and not very spectacular. If we can't go to video for comparisons we will probably never be able to answer your question.
I don't know if being on the wall of fame in Buffalo or in the Greater Buffalo Hall of Fame makes Jack a hall of fame quarterback in a football sense. And despite being a conservative he founded the AFL Players Association which makes me think he might have been a closet social liberal. Amongst other closets he resided in.
W's old man was rumored to have run a ring out of the White House; like father, like son…
Reagan's gays were 'fancier' but Bush's did the more extreme homosex sex acts.
During his professional football career, his favorite offensive play involved giving it to the tight end.
Oy. I always thought the seriously gay action was between the center and the QB.
Next, Salon will try to out Abraham Lincoln.
That's old business. The Librulz did it:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9f...
Doesn't mean that Salon won't try to out him, again.
Snarkoff for a moment, but it always bugged me the interpretive gymnastics people go through to establish that Lincoln was gay, when it was much more obvious that his immediate predecessor definitely was, and that this was more or less an open secret at the time. I mean, yes, on one hand, Lincoln is an actual positive figure in history, while Buchanan, under the most charitable interpretations, was an abject failure, and I'm sure this figures into it somewhat, but I think we should probably be a bit wary of crafting a mythology here.
Well, yes, it doesn't matter what sexual orientation Lincoln was. If he had had sex with sheep, who probably wouldn't have minded it very much (who would?), he'd still be a great American.
Well, my point is that mainly it's an effort by a marginalized group to identify a "hero", even if it means kinda screwing with history and inventing some myths in the process. And they're not really alone, there, honestly- a lot of neurodiversity groups love attempting to diagnose notable historical figures, often based on some pretty flimsy rationales. Lincoln was a great man whatever his sexuality, yes- I just bristle a bit (while sympathizing with the motivation at work, honestly) at the degree mythmaking that goes into turning him into a gay icon, especially as Buchanan is a far, far likelier candidate, but also extremely unpopular.
The original Log Cabin Republican.
They didn't call him the Railsplitter for nothing.
Based on what we've seen in the GOP DNA, it seems more that the GOPer eelights were jealous Jack spent time in the locker room showering with fit male athletes and bending over in the huddle.
It had to be hard to approach a center in that position every play and not be aroused.
Next thing you know, we're going to learn that Nancy Reagan was running some kind of coven in the White House.
No, but she did have her astrologer in to help Ronnie run the country. And rumor was she also gave the best head in Hollywood.
Hmmm. Kemp distinguished himself as being surprisingly unhateful and nonracist given his status as a "conservative Republican".
That is why they thought he had to be gay.
He also tried to get the Republican Party to reach out to minorities and came up with policy plans to help the inner cities. In other words, totally gay.
Gay Old Party! The whole of the fucking GOP is gay.
At least O.J. wasn't gay.
Please, when has there been a Republican VP candidate that wasn't gay or insane?
Jack Kemp was Reagan's beard. Ronnie Jr's apple didn't fall far from the bicurious tree.
What an old Fox Reagan must have been. After wearing out Gary Cooper he goes and snags a football player.
Don't forget Rock Hudson!
You know what Barry could do to make me love him again? He could scoop up all the cool documents that are going to be declassified in 25 years, when it won't do a damn bit of good because the world will be a smoking cinder of disease ridden hopelessness, and just release the damned things now, on account of national emergency or whatnot.
Yes, some people would be embarrassed and some peoples careers would be ruined. That's sort of the idea. Do it, Barry. Do it.
Better yet, Barry should pull a Cheney and selectively declassify documents that will embarrass his opponents.
Come to think of it, why isn't he doing that?
Because he's not the Chicago machine politician people accuse him of being.
Right you are. Black people are not allowed to be machine politicians in Chicago, or didn't used to be. Fortunately for Obamar, the Republicans are playing by the rules, giving him credit where his actions warrant it, and asking that their proposed policies be compared on their merits to those of the Dems. "TARP is working, and the economy is saved!" they say, and "It's good that more people will have health insurance, even if we disagree on the means by which this desirable end is achieved!" So there's no need to go down and dirty.
I always thought that if I were President, on my very first day I'd go marching into the CIA and ask to see all the undisclosed JFK and UFO files. Screw fixing the economy– I want to know who was behind the grassy knoll. And the moment I get hit with some sort of scandal, out comes some Area 51 files. The press would never care that I've accepted millions of dollars of oil lobbyists money to drill in Disneyland if I showed them pictures of dead aliens.
Hah–request that stuff and your first stop will be a one-on-one with the Cigarette Smoking Man.
Trust no one!
Oil worker Mickey slaving away for Scrooge McDuck. Sounds like the republicans to me.
This is what Jesse Ventura wants to do! But he's too smart to run for Pres. Mexico and surfing in the winter, Minnesota and fishing in the summer are much better choices.
*George H.W. Bush appointed him HUD secretary for being hip and urban*
And for blowing him….
Is Salon going to follow up on the rumors that GHWB was a nude model while in college? Oh, wait, he isn't dead yet….
At Yale, cheerleader = nude model. Boola boola!
Logjammin'…
isn't that a Jackie Treehorn production?
Don't be fatuous.
The Coctober surprises keep rolling in. Nice cover Jack, with the lede "Life on Mars." Does that refer to Bob Dole or were the FBI agents Martians?
The FBI? They still won't admit J.Edgar was a cross dressing,closeted homosexual living with his gay lover. Don't expect anything but a cover up from them.
I call bullshit. Football players cannot be non-heterosexual (except in Europe where soccer is football). Especially the quarterback who must reach between the center's wide-stanced legs for the snap ("oh no he di'int!"). Because if non-heterosexuals were on the team, unit cohesion would suffer.
You know, the Ponderosa Ranch from that old Bonanza program backed up on Lake Tahoe.
http://423smith.com/index.php/2008/08/06/bacon-bo...
And if "Bonanza" was anything, it was a gay fantasy life. Hoss =bear, Little Joe = twink, Wise elder bro Adam = Andrew Sullivan.
And Pa? Captain Adama.
Oh, wrong set of geek references. Nevermind.
Not sure who Hop Sing, the coolie cook, would correspond to in the current iconography either.
In Ron Moore's GrimDark re-imagining of Bonanza, Hop Sing would be boldly redefined as a cocky, gun-and-hash-slinging assassin (possibly lesbian, though this is only hinted at), played by Margaret Cho. The stereotype-defying running gag would be that she is absolutely no good at martial arts.
The Bonanza theme will now always bring up new images for me.
True or not, this makes me like the Kempster just a little more. To paraphrase Heathers, I love my dead gay failed Vice Presidential candidate.
Last night I was at a little party, doing some guy's wife from behind, while he was trying to hold the camera still. All of a sudden, the guy that was choking her says, "You know something, Tdog, I feel like Jack Kemp really got railroaded by these gay rumors." And he is a black guy, so you know he was extra sincere about it.
Thank god all the defense contractors are straight.
Of course, this explains those old bumper stickers: "I'm Totally Gay for Reagan!"
Still not a gay as Lindsey "Lindsey" Graham. "Lindsey" is such a gay man's name.
At long last this great nation has an an appropriate face to put on the three dollar bill.
If that is what life on Mars looks like, I recommend nuking from orbit. It is the only way to be sure.
Also, Kemp being a homosexual is a big deal while being a draft dodger that got out of Vietnam due to a "bad knee" while continuing to play in the NFL is no big deal. Especially after all the classy remarks he made about Clinton not serving in the same quagmire.
Mark Foley was a pioneer in notifying kids it was okay to be gay by driving up to the page dorms while drunk out of his mind and honking his horn. I believe they have refined that method today.
That's right. Today you can send a drunkenly misspelled text message instead of honking.
An FBI investigation into his son, Jeff Kemp, concluded that he was not a very good quarterback, as shown by his poor performance in '91 after both Randall Cunningham and Jim McMahon were injured.
Before that, he was a back-up with the Seahawks. In '88, when Dave Krieg got hurt, it took three-fourths of a game for Jeffy to be benched in favor of Kelly Stouffer. Dude sucked ass, and not in a sexytime way.
I remembered he had sucked with someone else before the Eagles desperately took him after the injuries, but couldn't remember who. He was just horrible.
I hope it was a tasteful homosexual ring, not too flashy with a huge stone way out of proportion to the band size.
Considering that Jack Kemp was happily married for years, had several children, who in turn had several grandchildren–some of whom can be seen around town today, in 2010–and considering that if anyone took the time–about five minutes–to talk to anyone who actually knew Kemp (as some of us folks in government, politics, law and journalism have through the years), it's pretty damn obvious that Jack Kemp was straight, has always been straight, and was straight for his entire life. Jack Kemp was straight.
As for alleged gay parties among politicians and staffers working in Washington for presidential administrations–that occurs, quite normally, under every single administration in the history of this country, whether it's Whig, Reform, Independent, Libertarian, Green, Socialist, Democratic or Republican.
As for the FBI in these case, it's obvious someone didn't know what they hell they were doing, or what the hell the FBI is supposed to be doing. Such "investigations" are against the law, point blank.
People, for god's sake–there's no story here. None!
Come on, do you really think the FBI stopped illegal investigations into public figures' personal lives stopped when J. Edgar Hoover died?
No–I didn't say I thought the FBI stopped such stupid acts. I said they're illegal. They're illegal, they're carried out by paranoid, closeted troubled people with sexual hang-ups and irrrational fears and completely psycho thought processes. It's not done as much today, but in years past, such illegal, corrupt, unethical, and just simply psycho acts were indeed routinely carried out. But the important point is that they were always illegal, they were illegal under the Reagan administration, they are illegal today, and if anyone hears about such acts by the FBI, or by anyone else, they are illegal. Even in the military, such witch-hunt tactics are illegal, also. It's amazing the level of ridiculousness in these areas that have existed in the federal government, but they definately have been there. Crazy!
One can never protest enough when it comes to denying homosexuality. But, honestly, if you had only said he was straight one more time I might have believe you. Ha-ha.
He was disappointed when he found out that HUD didn't stand for "Handling Uncircumcised Dicks".
thank you bum fug.
♪♫ I'm a quarterback, and I'm okay! ♪♫
I get fucked all night, and get sacked all day.
Oh you guys.
You had me at monday-morning gay-quarterbacking.
It's a good thing Dick Butkus didn't enter politics.
BTW, there's a low-hanging Bowie reference on that TIME cover that you totally whiffed on. A minute's Googling turns up "sailors fighting in the dance hall" and "it's the freakiest show", and I'm just the unpaid comment trash around here.
Also, both Liza Minnelli and Barbra Streisand covered that song, so…y'know?
"The columnists Jack Anderson and Drew Pearson broke the news in 1967 that what they called “a homosexual ring” had been “operating” in Ronald Reagan’s California gubernatorial administration. And while Reagan publicly denied it, he had in fact fired his chief of staff and another aide after an internal investigation concluded that they were gay."
So, when these conservative gay rings are in operation, what are they supposed to be doing? Getting cooties on the pieces of legislation that propose to cut taxes?
But today I'm sure there's no closet cases in the NFL, the players are just all straight, I mean it's not like sports fans tend to be more homophobic than the country at large or there's very extensive rumors that, say, the star quarterback for the Indianapolis Colts is in a secret relationship with a country music star.
He was a Mason. Just sayin'.
"after an internal investigation concluded that they were gay."
So what's that, like if they can get it in all the way to their balls, you're gay? Thanks FBI.
I'm sure, Wonkette, if you put yr mind to it, you could do a much better job of outing than this. It's so much more fun if they're still alive and have wives who stand by them. I love wives who stand by their gay husbands. Also, please how many current U.S. senators are wearing toupes. Please, pretty please…
As soon as every US politician has been dead for a few years, let's start a rumor that he was gay. This will hasten the decline of the US and make it easier for all of the unemployed to take jobs in the factories that the Chinese will build here, because they own so much of our debt already and have to make good on the investments they already have. Wonkette, please aid this process by posting a few learn-Chinese-words advertisements, instead of Jimmy Smits tv shows.
WTF is wrong with you people? In case you all have forgotten your Social Sensitivity 101 lessons, gay jokes are rude, not to mention signs of incipient bigotry.
Also, Stueff's point was that the fucking idiots at the FBI went on an illegal fishing expedition and ended up ruining the career of a decent human being, even if he was a Republican. (And Kemp was a decent man who got sandbagged by his own party.)
I'm going to pretend that this miserable thread didn't happen.
It tells me that the government needs to invest in improving their gaydar technology. The gays already have this ability but the rest of the country is unprotected from stealth gay attacks. We must close the gaydar gap.
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