Definition: Sinatra Republicans

[catnhatnh]

A powerful gang of old white men just "hip" and tolerant enough to include 1 "negro" -if he is exceedingly charming and willing to tap dance by request of the group. It helps if the "negro" is also "Jewish". See:Rat Pack, Candyman.

"It would have to be one mother-fucking charming pig!" Jules-Pulp Fiction

[mzteris]

1. don't forget

connections to organized crime . . .

[Tangerine LaBamba]

3. Just like

JFK, right? His old man was more connected than any Sicilian who ever lived.

[Jackpine Radical]

4. I think the gangsters pretty much used Frank;

I don't think he got much in return. I think he was just naive and dumb, not evil himself.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

12. He got nothing

Given that he had been the runty old child from Hoboken who always wanted to run with the Big Boys, that was my reading of his gang association, too.

Back then, if you were Italian and you were in show business, there was gonna be Mob. You just couldn't avoid it.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

2. Time warp........

You're mixing up the Rat Pack era with the right turn Sinatra's personal politics took long after the Pack had dissolved.

The support of Reagan was Sinatra's, and Sinatra's alone. The Rat Pack were alarmingly apolitical. And, don't forget, Sinatra was a rabid supporter of civil rights, even winning an Academy Award for a movie he made - I think it was during WW II, but it might have been later - and I think it was called "The House I Live In."

Check out Sinatra's charitable history - he bankrolled a whole lot of left-wing causes and never made any of it public, except when he refused to stay in any hotels that wouldn't allow Sammy Davis, Jr. to stay there as well. This was in the era of segregation, in the 1950s.

[jwirr]

5. I agree - the left wing period included JFK and the right wing era

started with Sammy Davis Jr kiss of Nixon. It would be interesting to know what changed them so radically.

[tomreedtoon]

7. What changed? They got old and scared.

Davis was worried about black activists. Then he was worried that black activists would turn the black community against him, so he started sucking up to them and tried to be "now."

Sinatra was also shaken when the Beatles came in, and for a while wore Nehru jackets (remember them?) and married the very young Mia Farrow. Then he realized he didn't understand it at all and went with Nixon and went back to tuxes with butterfly bow ties.

[mitchtv]

8. JFK stood Frank up on a promised visit

to Palm Springs . Frank had completely renovated the estate, or so the local gossip has it

[Tangerine LaBamba]

10. Built a heliport, even

He had a plaque installed on the doorway to the guest suite where the President and his wife were to stay.

But, his association with The Mob - which had worked to JFK's benefit in Illinois, when he needed the votes to go his way - was deemed bad PR by Bob Kennedy, and so the Kennedys stayed at Bing Crosby' Palm Springs estate.

Rumor is that Sinatra took a sledgehammer to the concrete of the heliport, he was that angry, tore down the plaque, and was never involved with Democratic politics again. He only got involved in anything political when his old friends, Ronnie and Nancy Reagan, asked him to.

He never supported GOPig politics, though. For Sinatra, it was all social.

[Tutonic]

6. Thanks. Sinatra was never right wing.

[AyanRand Is Dead]

9. So Steele = Sammy Davis Jr?

[Tangerine LaBamba]

11. Much worse

Davis had talent.

[DutchLiberal]

13. Don't diss Sinatra.