Former Special Counsel to Richard Nixon and the first from his administration to become a Watergate jailbird, influential Christian leader and anti-gay activist Chuck Colson remains hospitalized in critical condition after suffering a brain hemorrhage last week. In Colson’s honor, Joe.My.God. reminds us of the ridiculous Born Again Christian comic based on Colson’s evangelical memoir of the same title.

Quoting from Gamma Cloud:

Published by Spire Christian Comics in 1978, Born Again is the sugar-coated, “feel good” story of Chuck Colson’s suffering and redemption.  It’s a relatively typical tale in some respects, as Colson professes that he was converted to Evangelical Christianity through the help of his friend Thomas Phillips who had himself been “saved” some time earlier.  Phillips provides Colson with a copy of the C.S. Lewis book Mere Christianity and Colson subsequently immerses himself in the text, learning all kinds of Jesusy insight. (Incidentally, despite the fact that he apparently needed “saving,” Colson effectively maintains that he was basically law-abiding – and apparently naïve and blissfully oblivious of the wrongdoing and unethical behavior swirling around him – throughout all of his work with the Nixon administration and CREEP.) While serving time in a Federal prison for convictions related to the Watergate scandal, Colson shares his enlightenment with other inmates and he ultimately decides to start a ministry and devote his life to spreading the word far and wide.

Well…I guess some of that story is true.

The fact of the matter is that Chuck Colson: Born Again is nothing short of a grand and glorious collection of obfuscation and half-truths.  Colson’s yarn portrays the man himself as an pious martyr acting in service of a naively innocent Richard Nixon.  In one of the more laughable parts of the story, it’s inferred that John Ehrlichman learned of the Watergate break-in while watching the evening news.  Indeed, the entire question of wrongdoing and guilt is effectively marginalized through the omnipresent argument that Richard Nixon’s coterie of henchmen acted under the Nietzschean principal that “what is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.”  With respect to this particular version of the Watgergate story, it’s basically unclear as to whether the “love” that spurred Nixon and co. to action was an unfettered and dogmatic love of country or a just good old-fashioned lust for power, influence and control.

As soon as I saw the cover, I recalled leafing through this silliness at my parents’ church in the late 70s. At the time, I was reading Kurt Vonnegut’s then new Jailbird and if you know what that’s about, you’ll laugh at the thought of picking up Chuck Colson: Born Again at the same time.

In 2008, George Bush gave this asshole the Presidential Citizens Medal.
 

 

 
File this one anywhere you want: A soon to be published biography of Richard Nixon by former UPI reporter Don Fulsom makes the claim that Nixon was bisexual. Yeah, Nixon. Insert your own “Tricky Dick” joke here, I can’t be bothered:

From Queerty:

Due out next month, Fulsom’s racy bio, Nixon’s Darkest Secrets, asserts that Nixon carried on a decades-long affair with Mafia-connected Floridian Charles “Bebe” Rebozo, unquestionably one of the 37th U.S. President’s closest confidants. Rebozo often vacationed with Prez Dick in Key Biscayne, both with Nixon’s wife Pat along and not. 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.

But was there ever anything more than a strong bromance between the dark duo? 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.

Of course this could easily be chalked up to Haig’s jealousy over Rebozo’s unshakably close connection to the president.  But what of the repeated journalistic whispers—like the Time magazine reporter quoted by Fulsom, who claimed that when he once bent down to retrieve his fork at a Washington dinner, he realized that Nixon and Rebozo were holding hands under the table?

Richard Nixon once called San Francisco “the most faggy goddamned thing you could ever imagine,” and he blamed the fall of Rome on homosexual emperors. Anyone who has read the transcripts of the Nixon tapes knows how many times “[expletive deleted]” appears in the text, quite often in place of the word “cocksucker,” an expletive Nixon apparently loved to throw around. The man was clearly not comfortable about the topic of homosexuality. The idea that Nixon was bi seems as utterly preposterous to me as the idea of Nixon being sexual at all (although of course, he did have two children so we know he got laid at least twice).

In the completely ridiculous tape below, John Ehrlichman, Bob Haldeman and Nixon discuss homosexuality and “Archie Bunker” in the Oval Office on May 13, 1971. There is a 14-second bleeped out section where Nixon is meant to be running down a list of supposedly gay entertainers. It starts to pick up steam in the latter part of the clip, at around 5 minutes in, in terms of the yucks value.
 

 
More of these at Bostworld.

 
From today’s Los Angeles Times, the little known tale behind the famous photo of Elvis Presley and Richard Nixon, including the top page of the letter Presley wrote to Nixon that led to the meeting:

“Dear Mr. President, First I would like to introduce myself. I am Elvis Presley.”

In five pages, Elvis explains he loves his country and wants to give something back and, not being “a member of the Establishment,” believes he could reach some people the president can’t if the president would only make him a federal agent at-large so he can help fight the war on drugs.

“Sir, I can and will be of any service that I can to help the country out. . . . I will be here for as long as it takes to get the credentials of a federal agent. . . . I would love to meet you just to say hello if you’re not to [sic] busy. Respectfully, Elvis Presley.”

 

 
Picture of Elvis and Nixon is worth a thousand words (Los Angeles Times)