From yesterday's Taylor Lautner fake People magazine cover scandal to Internet petitions campaigning for Ernie and Bert to come out of the closet, Americans have always been fascinated with who our public figures are diddling behind closed doors, whether they be movie stars or athletes or musicians or beloved children's puppets. Now, former U.S. president Richard Nixon is the latest celebrity to be the subject of gay rumors, with a new book by a former White House correspondent claiming that the 37th President had an affair with Charles "Bebe" Rebozo, a Florida banker (above, with Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover).
In Nixon's Darkest Secrets: The Inside Story of America's Most Troubled President, author and former United Press International correspondent Don Fulsom argues that Nixon had a decades-long relationship with Rebozo, a Key Biscayne, FL-based banker with alleged ties to the mob. The two regularly vacationed together, bonding over their shared love of deep sea fishing, Broadway musicals and, presumably, being super-rich white men. Rebozo was even at Nixon's bedside when he died of a stroke in 1994, and gave millions to the Nixon library when he passed away four years later.
Fulsom uses interviews with former White House staff members and ex-members of Congress, as well as official government documents, to support his claims. Yet even if the allegations in the book, which is set for release in January, turn out to be totally baseless, two questions remain: who's going to play Nixon and Rebozo in Judd Apatow's inevitable bromantic comedy adaptation; and, given Nixon's love of musicals, will the sex scenes be scored to the soundtrack from The Fantasticks?
