Armistead Maupin was a right winger Nixon recruited to criticize Kerry!

He was on Your Call/Working Assets Radio talking about this. It was really funny.

He talks about how he knew NOTHING when he came back from Vietnam. His first job in the media had been working for Jesse Helm's TV station, and he came from a right-wing, misogynist, racist family. He talks about how, growing up in the south, the Democratic party was the party of tradition, and the Republicans were the party that wanted to get government out of your life.

Anyway, it's pretty interesting.

He tells a story about Nixon being really odd, trying to relate to the young soldiers by talking to them about how sexy vietnemese women are.

http://www.yourcallradio.org/archive/archive.html (yesterday's show).

I think he must have been in the group O'Neil was in (VVFJP).
http://mediamatters.org/items/200405040004

That Dub was/is in his: scion of wealth in a powerful family that hardly ever even heard the word "no", let alone took it for an answer. His political career was tied to Jesse Helms' and all of the extreme right-wing Democrats (in the old days) and later Repubs that Jesse supported.

Must have been interesting working for Nixon, though. Talk about having one of the wierdest (not to mention crookedest) characters in politics for your boss!:eyes:

Armistead Maupin learned his dirty tricks skills not just from Gordon Liddy and Donald Segretti types in the Nixon WHite House, but from that master of down-and-dirty treachery, Jesse Helms.:grr:

B-)

Maupin says the democratizing influence of the bath houses in San Francisco opened his heart and helped him see the world in a more generous way.