Wow, lest you think the culture portrayed on “Mad Men” is exaggerated, it seems it might be smoothed over to protect our delicate nerves instead.
There is a story Gore Vidal tells about J.F.K.: having sex in the bath, he liked to suddenly push a woman’s head back underwater, causing her to fight for air, just as he was about to climax.
The one thing about feminism that amazes me is that things changed so fast that we forgot how bad things really were.
Of course, the rest of the story (not the post, but the Vanity Fair article) is unmitigated bullshit, so this might be as well. Let’s hope so.
37 Responses to “Casual cruelty”
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…and of course, the farther away my/your/our frame of reference (being too young to have lived through some of the “good old days”), the easier it is to have a distorted view of the way things were, skewing toward the good and/or bad depending on the discussion at hand.
And “bad” is obviously a judgment that may or may not have been valid regarding some behavior/reality back in the day.
In regards to JFK specifically, the truth lies somewhere between him being a knight in shining armor come to rescue America, and the Antichrist come to destroy the world. He was deeply flawed - but most of us are. We’re just not on the world stage to have our flaws revealed…
What will be really interesting to see is how many people who lived through “The Bush Years” will look back on them and ignore the glaringly awful and build-up the handful of good things in order to make it seem like a better time than it really was…
I don’t buy it. Not because JFK was some kind of saint, but because having sex in a full bathtub is usually a losing proposition. The sloshing/wave pool effect generated by the, umm, rhythmic motion makes nearly all the water sloosh out. I, for one, was very disappointed that it’s not like in the movies. I guess if someone was a really motivated asshole they might be into faux-drowning, and maybe JFK was that guy, but overall - sex in tubs is much less fun than sex outside of tubs.
Older and wiser, I have discovered that bathtubs are for primarily for wanking.
That particular story has been around for a long time, although possibly of one of JFK’s Hollywood friends rather than JFK himself. Even if it’s nonfactual, the existence of the story (and not told in a condemnatory fashion) tells you what the attitudes were.
(And your comment section tells you how patchy the progress has been.)
I’d take anything written by Gore Vidal with a grain of salt. I suspect that JFK didn’t discuss his sex life with casual acquaintances (especially writers). As someone elsewhere noted, that is an improbable scenario considering his back problems. Like all the Kennedys, JFK was a conflicted character but I doubt he enjoyed searing, debilitating pain any better than the rest of us.
I’m not sure why back problems are an argument against sex in the tub. I could see it being a reason to do it in the tub, if it’s a big enough tub. Takes the pressure off your back.
Amanda,
Thanks for the link in the post above this one.
It’s not the doing it in the tub that makes it improbable for a guy with JFK’s back problem, it’s the way he’d have had to pretty much lifted the girl and leaned her backwards and held her up while holding her under, while she was fighting (I’m assuming she wouldn’t have volunteered for this or wanted it).
A commenter over at my place says he has heard Vidal tell this anecdote himself only with details that make it an even creepier story and an even more improbable one. Vidal claims a Secret Service agent was standing by to do the heavy lifting for Kennedy.
Vidal’s telling a fib.
And he’s telling it in order to make us hate JFK.
And that’s the point. That’s why Wolff included it in his article, to make his readers disgusted with JFK. There’s more twisted thinking in that article than just the misogyny. Wolff’s making the case that middle aged politicians having sex (middle-aged MALE politicians; middle-aged women are not only post-sexual in his thinking, they are irrelevant) are disgusting by definition. Kennedy’s existence probably seemed to him as the first evidence that would be used against him. Imagining the handsome and dashing JFK making love to Marilyn Monroe is just not in the same league of disgusting as imagining Eliot Spitzer in his knee socks with a prostitute. In order to deflect his readers from thoughts of Marilyn, he needed a story that would creep us out about Kennedy. The article is as anti-sex as it is anti-female. Actually, it’s pretty much anti-human. People seem to creep Wolff out, in general.
Well, I can see the bath being supportive to a point, but not if JFK were on top and forcing someone’s head under water.
I see him more on the bottom letting the woman do the work, which would make drowning her much more difficult.
Mostly I don’t buy the story b/c why the hell would Gore Vidal know? I don’t think JFK was a saint (except in comparison to the current administration) and I do think the Kennedy boys all have issues with women, but this sounds too much like a Penthouse letter.
What will be really interesting to see is how many people who lived through “The Bush Years” will look back on them and ignore the glaringly awful and build-up the handful of good things in order to make it seem like a better time than it really was…
Bush aside, the times we are living in are really that bad?
Even with the proliferation of blogs, the Television Renaissance, wikipedia, first private space flight, and No Country of Old Men?
I eagerly wait for the time when I could tell my kids “Oh yeah, I lived during the naughts. I lived through all the naughts. And shit was crazy”
I doubt the validity of the JFK story. I think Vidal is just trying to spin his own fantasty.
Watching “Mad Men” has been an eye-opener for me at times. Escpecially during the sexual harassment scenes at work I’m constantly saying that I am so glad I don’t have to work in an environment like that. Those first women to enter the workforce were so brave.
Amanda,
Thanks for the link in the post above this one.
It’s not the doing it in the tub that makes it improbable for a guy with JFK’s back problem, it’s the way he’d have had to pretty much lifted the girl and leaned her backwards and held her up while holding her under, while she was fighting (I’m assuming she wouldn’t have volunteered for this or wanted it).
A commenter over at my place says he has heard Vidal tell this anecdote himself only with details that make it an even creepier story and an even more improbable one. Vidal claims a Secret Service agent was standing by to do the heavy lifting for Kennedy.
Vidal’s telling a fib.
And he’s telling it in order to make us hate JFK.
And that’s the point. That’s why Wolff included it in his article, to make his readers disgusted with JFK. There’s more twisted thinking in that article than just the misogyny. Wolff’s making the case that middle aged politicians having sex (middle-aged MALE politicians; middle-aged women are not only post-sexual in his thinking, they are irrelevant) are disgusting by definition. Kennedy’s existence probably seemed to him as the first evidence that would be used against him. Imagining the handsome and dashing JFK making love to Marilyn Monroe is just not in the same league of disgusting as imagining Eliot Spitzer in his knee socks with a prostitute. In order to deflect his readers from thoughts of Marilyn, he needed a story that would creep us out about Kennedy. The article is as anti-sex as it is anti-female. Actually, it’s pretty much anti-human. People seem to creep Wolff out, in general.
Isn’t the White House bathtub enormous, per Taft’s requirements?
Good point, Lance. I can definitely see that from a man’s perspective, this article is terribly insulting. Unfortunately, far too many men are willing to degrade themselves in order to justify bad behavior. Far too many men are willing to say, “Yeah, men are pigs, but we just are, so leave us alone when we commit acts that are at bare minimum wretched and sexist and sometimes even criminal.”
And by “bad behavior”, I don’t mean sex. I mean, humiliating and abusing women, going to prostitutes (instead of a straightforward and more understandable adultery). Men who try to insinuate that misogyny is crucial to sexual desire for men, and women who resist being treated like dirt are somehow going against nature. Women, apparently, don’t have our own natures worth respecting.
There’s also the weird housework angle, of men who claim not to see dirt when it’s on them to help clean it. (When it’s someone else’s job, dirt is much easier to see.) Denigrating themselves in order to get out of being more decent. Many men rightfully see this man-hating for what it is, and rightfully say, “No, I’m not actually a born asshole.”
The thing is, it really doesn’t matter if the JFK story is true or not - the important thing is that it comes across as titillating, or a testament to his power or charisma, maybe “naughty” or “scandalous” at worst.
Jonathan, maybe it’s my “ageism” showing through…and I won’t say it’s not possible.
But I genuinely believe there is a whole lot of shit on our plates right now that is pretty ugly.
“Our” president, with the help of his VP and various other advisors has all but declared himself Dictator For Life? Adds “signing statements” to virtually every bill he signs claiming he cannot be bound by laws passed by Congress and signed by him? They have trashed the Geneva Conventions, are still trashing the Constitution, are destroying the separation of church and state. They don’t just spy on Americans, but they try to get laws passed to retroactively “legalize” the spying already done, plus indemnify the companies involved to protect themselves from prosecution. They arbitrarily declare preemptive war on countries not attacking us (or capable of attacking us), they arbitrarily declare who is and is not a terrorist, who is and is not worthy of a real trial and a presumption of innocence, they treat torture which we have condemned when used by other parties against us as just another legitimate interrogation tool, etc. Racism is alive and doing better than it has in a long time. Religious bigotry is not just tolerated but actively embraced. Our “media” are more useless and corrupt than they have been in the last 100+ years. We’re stuck in a war that kills about 900-1000 American soldiers/year with no end in sight, and also generates 5000+ (often horribly) injured soldiers each year, we’ve generated enough hatred of America across the globe to last for generations…
That isn’t even getting into the rapidly declining state of the economy, with indications that the next recession(s) may be as bad as the Great Depression.
It looks pretty ugly to me, and I was (young but) alive during Vietnam, Johnson, Civil Rights Marches, the ‘68 Democratic Convention, Nixon, Kent State, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, the LA Riots, Clinton, Bush II, and I’m watching our electoral system go to hell right now.
FWIW…
100 years from now, what do you think will have a more lasting effect, the War on Iraq or all of the petty technological and cultural advances I listed above? Despite all of your hyperbole, and despite all of Bush’s oversteps of justice, he is not the worse president ever or the worse president we ever had (or. sadly, the worse president we will ever have) and in less then a year the lame duck president will be out of office and a couple years from now most of his damage will be reversed, just like with all of the other assholes we have in office.
I mean christ, going back to what I said above, what are you going to tell your kids?
“Christ, boy, it was horrible! Certain news cycles where dedicated to cheap shots on Obama’s race issue! And there was Fox News, a conservative news outlet! And there was a an unjust war…no, son…not just like all of those other unjust wars we had in the past 6,000 years…well…it was kind of just like all of those unjust wars we had in the past 6,000 years, but this one was in Iraq! I can’t believe I survived those horrible, horrible times!”
I mean really, would you walk up to someone who lived through the Civil Rights movement, a time where certain people couldn’t even sit where they wanted to, and tell them that, by living through the naughts, that you now sympathize with the utter horror they went through?
That isn’t even getting into the rapidly declining state of the economy, with indications that the next recession(s) may be as bad as the Great Depression.
I’m sorry, how is that not a utter hyperbole? Are we going to have people standing in long lines? King of the Hill situations where scrappy orphans eat images of food from a magazine to substitute for real food?
Is that really how you looked at the situation, squared it up, and came to the conclusion that the sky was, in fact, going to fall on our heads?
I doubt if Taft’s tub was still there in 1961, 50 years later. Remember, the White House was completely gutted and rebuilt inside while Truman was President.* There are photos taken inside the shell of the building that make it clear how much was redone….
*He lived in Blair House during the rebuilding time.
FWIW, Seymour Hersh, when he was working on his book about JFK, called Vidal to confirm this story that he had heard about through his own research with retired Secret Service agents.
“I’m sorry, how is that not a utter hyperbole? Are we going to have people standing in long lines? King of the Hill situations where scrappy orphans eat images of food from a magazine to substitute for real food?”
…and in 1928, if you had been able to lay out the actual facts of the coming depression, almost all would have reacted the same way. So the apparent “absurdity” is meaningless.
“Christ, boy, it was horrible! Certain news cycles where dedicated to cheap shots on Obama’s race issue! And there was Fox News, a conservative news outlet!”
Obviously, in the long term scheme of things those things will be seen as minor, although the increasingly blatant racism is not trivial.
“And there was a an unjust war…no, son…not just like all of those other unjust wars we had in the past 6,000 years…well…it was kind of just like all of those unjust wars we had in the past 6,000 years, but this one was in Iraq!”
It isn’t that this war is more unjust than many, many (many!) others, it’s that we as Americans like to believe we are not capable of such things - and we are. We think our country was created to advance culture, not demonstrate we are just as bad as all the previous cultures. It represents yet more evidence that America is not exceptional.
But the dichotomy between that realization and the years of propaganda we have all received as Americans is incredibly obvious.
I would also say, that if you, your wife, your son, daughter, or anyone close to you died in Iraq, it wouldn’t really matter if they were the only ones or if 50,000 more were dead with them - it’s still a stupid, pointless, tragedy and a great example of national hubris. It’s also a sin on all Americans that won’t soon be washed away.
Besides, know that people have done really bad things to each other over the millenia is no defense of our own stupidity.
“I can’t believe I survived those horrible, horrible times!”
I’ve had cancer twice. And even though I lived through the treatments, it’s still very hard to believe I survived some of the stuff I had to go through. And compared to many I had it good.
“…what are you going to tell your kids?”
Believe it or not, I struggle with that now. I have a (almost 17) daughter. And I am often embarrassed by much of the crap that’s going on. I struggle to help her see the ideal while we observe in real life the ugly reality.
And, honestly, I often feel guilty for (helping) bring her into the world to face this stuff. The prospect of misery and death no longer bothers me that much, but knowing that I helped bring those things to my daughter hurts.
Jonathan, I’m really hoping I’m wrong and you are right. But I also fear that I am right and you are wrong…
I actually support the larger point that all times are shitty in their own way. This time is no exception. Some people in the future will look back and think good thoughts, other will think bad thoughts, and only those of use who lived through them will have any actual information against which to measure those thoughts…
Gore Vidal is a distant cousin of Jackie Bouvier/Kennedy/Onassis — he might have made this story up, but part of the point of this story is that it wouldn’t have been something men refused to discuss over drinks and cigars with the “right kind” of people (and Gore Vidal was absolutely that kind of person back then). I could imagine someone telling him something like this in a sort of class-confidence way (”Funny thing about your cousin’s new husband — did you know…”).
Whether Vidal himself imagined it, as Lance speculates…I can’t know. Has he ever explained where he heard the story?
Did Hersh confirm it, though?
Whoops, sorry, not a “distant cousin” but I suppose a step-sibling (through Hugh Auchincloss).
To back up what Pesto said, even if the story is not true—and I’m quite able to believe Vidal made it up—it certainly isn’t the sort of thing men refused to tell each other. Half the point of humiliating a woman sexually is to brag about it to other men. I’m sure we are all adult enough to have heard that sort of bragging.
Somebody with Nexis access should be able to locate one of the last times this story went around. My memory has it as Washpost in the early-mid Reagan years.
And I think some of yez are being uninventive if you think it’s a physical difficulty issue.
Amanda, apparently Hersh’s confirmation on the story was Vidal himself.
Vidal isn’t to be trusted on the subject of JFK precisely because of the family connections. There’s an awful lot of spite and emnity in that side of the family, much of it arising from the doings of Jackie’s father, who wasn’t a much beloved figure among his inlaws and step-relations.
Plus we think of the Kennedys as American royalty, but the folks in Vidal’s family and social circle would have thought of them as vulgar upstarts.
All of Vidal’s writings, his essays and fiction and plays, are peppered with spiteful shots at JFK. He has issues with the guy. But I don’t know if he made the story up. He might have heard it from someone who heard it from someone who heard it etc. He could have believed it and passed it along because of his feelings about Kennedy.
At any rate, the point here is still that the story is not sexy and is not meant to be sexy. It’s meant to demean sex.
Was this next to the condom Christmas tree?
You’d never heard this about JFK? I thought it was common knowledge.
Lance Mannion is right on target. Vidal is not to be trusted on the subject on JFK, and on precious little else besides.
This is a man, after all, who called Timothy McVeigh an American patriot (or whatever his obnoxious formulation was—I don’t feel like looking it up), in an essay that ran in the September 2001 issue of Vanity Fair!
If anything a tiny fraction that embarrassing happened to me, I’d take it as a sign that the universe was telling me to shut up. Apparently Vidal is impervious to karmic messages.
“Back” underwater sounds like a reference to oral sex to me, which makes the scenario seem a lot more plausible than PIV sex.
I won’t be one of them. My nieces and nephews will hear me lament the horrors of the past 8 years, and if McCrap gets elected, they’ll hear me project the next 4 as well.
Sounds like the 1960s version of a donkey punch. (Which, IIRC, is the supposed act of punching a woman in the back of the head — during anal sex, to boot — right before the man climaxes. I guess because someone punched in the head is pretty likely to clamp down, muscle-wise).
Like rainbow parties and other oft-told tales, it’s really hard to tell which are real and which aren’t, and how often they happen.
There’s nothing our nation loves more than scullious sexual tales.
i read this in i think “time” magazine when i was in my really early teens and it freaked me the fuck out, tho in that version of the story it wasnt so she would fight for air, but rather the shock of her head being pushed under causing her body to tense up and basically she would do an involuntary kegel.
nothing so much surprises me about it, and i dont doubt its validity, in my poli-sci class the prof told a story about how a president, im pretty sure it was johnson, would swim in the nude while doing interviews in order to intimidate reporters. you have to be at least a bit of a crazed narcissist to crave a presidential level of power. theres no logical reason that sort of attitude wouldnt cross over into your sex life.
This is just so ugly. I don’t know what the real JFK story is, but Vidal sucks for dealing it as a bit of lurid miscellany. Back in 1985, near my town, a bank executive named Leslie Arthur Byrd murdered a 19 year old woman (Cynthia Engstrom, thereafter always referred to as “a prostitute” although she’d been in the business for only a few weeks). See. Byrd had the erotic bath tub fantasy, but he didn’t mess around with the logistics of copulating in the tub. He just had sex with her, tied her up, then filled the tub and watched her panic as she drowned. He’d been fantasizing about this for a while, apparently, and waited until his wife and daughter went away for the weekend for some Girl Scout function.
Then he dumped Cynthia’s body, unclothed, of course, in someone’s driveway on the other side of the county. Eventually he was convicted of second degree murder, despite testimony that demonstrated he was one sick fuck, not an absent-minded jerk who forgot to untie the girl, who drowned by accident. Nope. He got his one perfect day. Lost everything, but not his life. His first time up for parole in 2002 got denied. According to the records, his next time up was 2006, but I can’t find out if he made parole. Anyone know how to find out? I’d like to throw him in Norquist’s tub.
I know this is off-topic. But blame Gore Fucking Vidal for my flashback, and note that Byrd’s rush was watching her die, not having sex with her.
re larkspur & jesselikewhoa- yep; this is a typical of sadistic murderers, the whole range.
ive never heard this about jfk,just that he liked sex in a swimingpool. but i could easily see him or any other misogynist of the era thinking that sexual humiliation of women was funny. this is also why i cant stand watching. Mad Men. I think there’s a bit more titilation going on at showing all of that than is ever mentioned.
Vidal wrote an essay wherein he described being asked by Hersh about this story, Hersh having heard it earlier from his own SS sources.(Sorry if I didn’t communicate that fact in my earlier comment in an understandable form.
Vidal appears not to be the only source, unless Vidal was lying about talking to Hersh in the first place about this subject……..
It’s Gore Vidal - if he told me the sun was rising in the east, I’d go check before believing him
Mannion is being disingenuous aobut JFK. Vidal had lots of good things to say about him, it was Bobby Kennedy that Vidal hated.
It was Vidals’ essay, The Holy Family, that earned the undying wrath of the Kennedy Family, but he was always more against Bobby than JFK.