Two Centuries of Presidential Sex Scandals

I thought this might be fun on a Friday evening.. Some of the scandals I was unaware of.. I guess there is nothing new under the sun.

Two Centuries of Presidential Sex Scandals

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/02/21/two-centuries-of-presidential-sex-scandals/

Excerpt:

George W. Bush was a political disaster. Failures from the illegal Iraq war to the Katrina catastrophe to the Great Recession mark his administration. History will judge his presidency as the worst in the post-WWII era.

Bush is haunted by two sex scandals. One involved a criminal complaint and lawsuit of rape by Margie Denise Schoedinger, who later committed suicide; the second was an accusation by Tammy Phillips, a former stripper, of having an affair with Bush that ended in 1999. They were successfully dismissed as crank complaints, effectively sweeping them under the proverbial rug.

In 2002, Schoedinger, a 38-year-old African-American woman who lived in the Houston suburb of Missouri City, TX, filed a lawsuit against Bush alleging that he had raped her in October 2000. In her suit she alleged, “race based harassment and individual sex crimes committed against her and her husband.” Schoedinger died on September 22, 2003, of a gunshot wound to the head, nine months after filing the suit. The Harris County, TX, Medical Examiner’s office ruled the death a suicide.

Phillips, a 35-year-old partner in a gym in Carrollton, TX, and (based on some accounts) an Austin exotic dancer or stripper, reported an affair with W that ended in June 1999. She claims to have been introduced to then-governor of Texas by her uncle, a prominent Republican, in December 1997 during a political function at a hotel in Midland, TX. Reports differ as to whether the alleged affair lasted 9 or 18 months long.

The scandal got coverage in “The National Enquirer,” “New York Post” and other media outlets, but disappeared as the 2000 presidential campaign got underway.

One Texas politico expressed surprise about Bush’s alleged affair with Phillips, “It means that he stopped fooling around just prior to announcing his presidential run.” Phillips seems to have disappeared and not pursued the accusation.

One can only wonder if W got his education in philandering from his papa, George H.W. Bush. Kitty Kelley’s no-holds-barred exposé of the Bush clan, “The Family,” mentions two alleged affairs involving # 41. One involved Jennifer Fitzgerald, who served as White House deputy chief of protocol during his administration, and the other an Italian woman with whom he set up house in a New York apartment in the 1960s. The senior Bush has denied the allegations and Fitzgerald has refused to comment.

However, the sexual exploits of Clinton and Kennedy define the post-modern media era as both were notorious philanderers. Clinton’s trysts with Monica Lewinsky, Jennifer Flowers, Juanita Broaddrick and who knows how many others became a national scandal.

John Kennedy’s affairs with Marilyn Monroe and Angie Dickinson; Inga Arvad, a Danish journalist; the stripper, Blaze Starr; Judith Exner Campbell, mistress to mob boss Sam Giancana; and White House secretaries Priscilla Weir and Jill Cowan, who were referred to as “Fiddle” and “Faddle,” among others, have moved from scandal to presidential lore.

 

I'm still trying to figure out how Laura Bush could have accidentally run over an old boyfriend. Coincidence, I guess. He just happened to be standing where her car was going. But there CAN'T be that many streets in Midland.