I got a text from a friend today asking me to help him brainstorm “under-reported scandals in American history since WW2 that still resonate with today’s times.”
He mentioned the 1978 Boston College mob point shaving scandal as an example of what he’s looking for.
I didn’t have any ideas except to outsource it to you fine people. Got any scandals, Qt3??
Nixon’s sabotage of Johnson’s Vietnam peace talks at the end of their election.
Gerry Studds’ sex scandal:
At the bottom of that article are links to a bunch of other scandals (including Clinton’s, but the rest are less remembered.)
The spate of weird '90s stories? The Menendez Brothers killing their parents, young Amy Fisher shooting her boyfriend’s wife, Lorena Bobbitt slicing off her abusive husband’s penis, the kid who got caned in Singapore, Tonya Harding vs. Nancy Kerrigan, the O.J. Simpson thing…
Financial deregulation and market collapses due to fraud. Start with the Savings and Loan crash.
Iran - Contra and Oliver North.
Credit card deregulation and the race to the bottom by states to house them.
While Puperkub’s suggestion of the Iran-Contra Affair was widely reported, it was massively mischaracterized/sanitized on a routine basis so that’s a good one. If we’re staying on Reagan, Debategate is an often forgotten scandal. Depending on your definition of scandal, one could also say nuclear close calls like Able Archer in 1983 would qualify.
If we leave Reagan alone for a bit, there’s Nixon’s Checkers Speech (well, the campaign funding scandal which triggered it).
Thanks, everyone! I shared these with him… hopefully some will click. (He’s writing for a podcast that covers these kinds of subjects.)