I share my birthday with Dick Nixon and his secret gay affair

My birthday is January 9th. I share the day with a number of celebrities. The best known is former president, Richard M. Nixon (1913-1994). President Nixon would be 100 this year. Other famous January 9 birthdays include: Kate Middleton, Jimmy Page, Dave Matthews, Crystal Gayle, Joan Baez, Bob Denver, Susannah York, Gypsy Rose Lee, and Gracie Fields.

We are going to have a little fun with the disgraced former president. The rest of this blog entry is going to force you to think about about Nixon in a sexual way. As Nixon once ordered H.R. Haldeman, “Could we please investigate some of the cocksuckers?” A year ago a book came out about President Nixon that was written by a former journalist for United Press International. It makes several controversial claims including that “Tricky Dick” Nixon had a "down-low" gay affair with Charles “Bebe” Rebozo, a Florida banker from Key Biscayne with ties to the mob. The book is “Nixon's Darkest Secrets: The Inside Story of America's Most Troubled President” by Don Fulsom. Before there was a "Brokeback Mountain," a Dick could go down in Key Biscayne.

The author’s revelations listed on Amazon blurb include:
 * That the future president sabotaged the 1968 Vietnam peace talks for political gain.
 * By the time Nixon became president in 1969, he had links to the mob for more than two decades and, as president, had a close connection with New Orleans boss Carlos Marcello, the most powerful Mafioso in the nation.
 * The president had a drinking problem and top aides referred to him as "Our Drunk".
 * Nixon had a misogynist streak and was abusive toward first lady Pat Nixon.
 * Testimony alleging that the president had ordered the killing of White House reporter Jack Anderson.
 * The intimate and possibly homosexual nature of Nixon's relationship with confidante Charles "Bebe" Rebozo, a banker with mob ties.

Nixon and his best pal, dashing Cuban-American playboy Charles “Bebe” Rebozo, swam, sunbathed and dined together during guys-only vacations in exclusive Key Biscayne, Florida. During the men-only visits, the twosome reportedly frolicked together in and out of the water, and gushed over their shared passion for Broadway musicals.

They were once spotted holding hands under the table during a dinner with K Street power brokers, according to a Times magazine reporter.

Another Washington reporter told Fulsom that he once spotted a boozy Nixon nuzzling Rebozo "the way you'd cuddle your senior prom date."

The pair's friendship was no secret to Washington insiders, and the book claims that there were whispers that the two were more than just pals up until Nixon's death in 1994. (Rebozo was by his side. He died four years later.)

Nixon’s final chief of staff, Alexander Haig, reportedly joked about the pair being lovers and threw in an imitation of Rebozo’s limp wrist for good measure.

White House aides at the time said Rebozo was nothing more than "the guy who mixed the martinis" and showed the notoriously stuffy Nixon how to hobnob.

Jackie Gleason with Bebe and Dickie

Did you know that Jackie Gleason and Richard Nixon had a fondness for UFOs and shared the love of dead aliens? (Yes, Google it.) “Bang! Zoom! Straight to the moon!”

What a threesome: Bebe and Dick with J. Edgar Hoover in the middle.

When Dick Nixon heard the news of the death of J. Edgar Hoover, he erupted: "Jesus Christ! That old cocksucker!" Publicly, he called Hoover a "truly remarkable man" and "one of his closest friends and advisers." Nixon loved using the word "cocksucker." There are many quotes of him using that phrase. You could even say it takes one to know one.

A shirtless, hairy chested Dick.

Pat n Dick at the beach.

A young hairy Dick rises from the surf.

In his 1977 book "Nixon vs. Nixon; An Emotional Tragedy", Dr. David Abrahamsen concluded that Nixon was a psychopathic personality suffering from a severe character disorder, orally and anally fixated. (I'm sure it was just a coincidence that he loved to smoke a pipe!)

Michael John Sullivan's 1994 book "Presidential Passions: The Love Affairs of America's Presidents: From Washington and Jefferson to Kennedy and Johnson", observers that "Nixon had always shown a profound disinterest in women. In a sexual or romantic context, he had always seemed oblivious to their existence."

"After Nixon lost the California gubernatorial race in 1962 and had his painful emotional breakdown in public, he told the world that he was going to go home and spend some time getting to know his family again. But, instead, he went off to spend three weeks alone with Bebe on Paradise Island in the Bahamas."

"Nixon had always publicly shown a most pronounced contempt for homosexuality and those suspected of it. For him, the accusations of being gay was the ultimate weapon that could be used to destroy a man, and during his opportunistic career he had often tried to successfully employ it. Part of this "dirty tricks" of the 1972 presidential campaign had been to smear his Democratic opponents, Senators Humphrey and Jackson, with the tag of homosexual." 

This is typical behavior seen again and again in self-hating gay politicians, especially closeted gay Republicans. For more Republican homophobia, check out my entry "Why Republicans Love to Hate Gays."