Since this item from The Smoking Gun involves (in no particular order) fakery, John F. Kennedy, infidelity, and the 1960′s, I couldn’t help but share it with BoK!
TMZ Falls For JFK Photo Hoax
Photo that “could have changed history” actually from a Playboy shoot
In a colossal screw-up, the gossip web site TMZ today published a photo purporting to show John F. Kennedy frolicking on a yacht with a harem of naked women–except that the image actually appeared as part of a November 1967 Playboy photo spread, The Smoking Gun has learned. The TMZ hoax was billed as an “exclusive” featuring a photo that “could have altered world events” had it surfaced prior to JFK’s presidential campaign. “It could have torpedoed his run, and changed world history,” the site added. In reality, the photo appeared in story about Playboy’s “Charter Yacht Party: How to Have a Ball on the Briny with an Able-Bodied Complement of Ship’s Belles.”
Now that TMZ has acknowledged being faked out by the photo, it’s fun watching their ”expert” testify to its “authenticity”. Remember GIGO (“garbage in, garbage out”).
6 Responses to “Single Boob Theory”
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This is casting serious aspersions on TMZ's reputation as a bastion of journalistic integrity.
Even if it hadn't been a fake, that photo wouldn't have "changed history."
Back in that day, reporters protected politicians from sex scandals. For instance, every one of the high-up politican newshounds knew LBJ and JFK were, ahem, "ladies men" — but there was a "gentleman's agreement" that it wasn't done to release personal info which might effect political outcomes.
Only if the politician himself made it so public (divorce) that they were forced to cover, would it be covered.
Also: no "family newspaper" or magazine (all of them, because they went into homes), or TV station would, or could, publish a photo with nudity.
There was no internet, no "citizen journalists" and even the men's magazines like Playboy weren't playing "gotcha" with personal, sexual information about male politicians' lives.
(Although that gentleman's agreement didn't cover a 1950s Congress woman hounded out of public life because the husband — she was separated from — went public with his outrage that his wife was not at home. That attitude seems to permeate Mad Men: the men are protected from their sexual peckadillos by a hush-hush policy, the women better watch their step.
If memory serves, the gloves started to come off in the 1970s, including when Governor Rockefeller died in the arms of his 20-something mistress.
It wouldn't have been published but the other side (Nixon) could've used this photo as blackmail if they got a hold of it.
Anyway I always suspected TMZ was too hasty, and I still feel that the reason they were first with Michael Jackson's death is because they guessed…I don't think they had any hard confirmation at all. I believe Harvey Levin feels that the internet moves too fast tp have mistakes and this is why they are so bold…even yesterday, they just quickly shuttled this story to the bottom of the page when it was proven false.
This is so obviously fake. When you see the extreme closeup of the real JFK next to the faked one it's quite obvious. A real photograph would NOT have that dotted effect clearly seen on the faked photo, which is due to the printing process. A real photo from a film camera is not "printed". It is exposed from a light source onto photo paper and would not have that dotted, mottled look, no matter how much you enlarge the picture. Where'd they get that "forensic expert"? ha.
"It wouldn’t have been published but the other side (Nixon) could’ve used this photo as blackmail if they got a hold of it."
Again, no.
No newspaper would, or could have, published it, no popular magazine, either. It also wouldn't have made TV or the radio, which were both puritanically self-censored in that era.
Nixon had his own political scandal, but it involved taking shady money when he was Vice President. That kind of scandal could make the press.
I know it's hard to believe 50 years later when politicians are made and unmade by sex scandals (unless they're Republicans who are forgiven by their voters if they've voted consistently against taxes, abortion, or poor people.)
But having been alive and sentient myself in that period, I can assure you that there was no such thing as a political sex scandal, as we know it.
Which were reserved for Hollywood stars who cheated on their spouses, too publicly. Dirtier details like cross dressing, homosexuality, actual sex acts, you name it, were also missing from "sex scandals" of Hollywood in even the entertainment press, except for during a short period in 1952-57 of innuedo from Confidential magazine (and even then, was not picked up, or then trumpeted by the rest of the media.)
I've since read extensively about the "gentleman's agreement" in the press of that era regarding politicians — it was thought unfair among the gentleman of the press to affect political outcomes by personal conduct.
Nixon would have had nowhere to go with his "blackmail," if it existed — besides, the White House press corp was fairly familiar already with at least some of JFK's philandering, and none of that made press at the time.
(Even if they'd been aware of the Marilyn-connection it would also have been censored during that period. Even hot stuff with a Hollywood star didn't make print!)
The Kennedy philandering, LBJ, etc. didn't start coming out until the '70s, an age of more sexual openess in the press.
Also the decade in which a photo surfaced of (then deceased) former FBI head J. Edgar Hoover in a dress, along with the rumor that the reason Hoover had never directed the FBI to pursue the Mafia (had never even acknowledged that the Mafia existed) was that the mob knew and had evidence of Hoover's homosexuality.
Hoover himself supposedly kept blackmail material on most politicians and national figures, including JFK, perhaps one reason for Hoover's longevity as head of the FBI.
If their blackmail was effective, I suppose it was because neither Hoover, nor the Mafia, would be much for "gentleman's agreements."
But again, even that information about Hoover and the Mafia only became public knowledge in the 1970s, when the gloves started coming off in the press.
Dirtier details like cross dressing, homosexuality, actual sex acts, you name it, were also missing from “sex scandals†of Hollywood in even the entertainment press, except for during a short period in 1952-57 of innuedo from Confidential magazine (and even then, was not picked up, or then trumpeted by the rest of the media.)
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A book on the history of Confidential magazine was recently released, if anyone else is into Old Hollywood scandal.
http://www.amazon.com/Shocking-True-Story-Confide…