Photo: AP
This week’s New Yorker profile of gonzo GOP operative Roger Stone tells us a lot of things that we already knew, like how he was involved in some shady dealings trying to help Richard Nixon get elected, that he claims credit for shutting down the Miami-Dade ballot recount in 2000, and that he may have made a threatening phone call to Eliot Spitzer’s dad last year. But Jeffrey Toobin’s lengthy piece tells us several things we did not know, nor had we ever considered. For example, Toobin, as a result of interviewing Stone, has now visited Miami Velvet, the leading “swinger’s club” in Miami. Other amazing tidbits below:
• Donald Trump hates Stone almost as much as he hates Rosie O’Donnell: “Roger is a stone-cold loser,” he said. “He always tries taking credit for things he never did.”
• “The key to a good Martini is you have to marinate the olives in vermouth first,” Stone explains, adding that Nixon gave him the recipe. Nixon got it from Winston Churchill, apparently.
• According to Stone, legendary McCarthy lawyer Roy Cohn “was not gay”: “He was a man who liked having sex with men.” We knew that was the party line back in the eighties; we just didn’t know people still believed it.
• Women “love” Stone’s back tattoo, which is of Richard Nixon’s face.
• After years of denying that he and his wife placed swinger’s ads for “similar couples or exceptional muscular…single men,” Stone finally admitted that they paid for the ads.
• Stone drinks four triple espressos a day.
• He also has owned up to four Jaguars at once.
• He claims to have played a crucial role in piecing together the Eliot Spitzer hooker-ring bust.
Which is all pretty interesting, except Stone has made a living out of being somewhat outrageous and credit hogging. We’re frankly still stuck on the image of Jeffrey Toobin at a swinger’s club:
A flat-screen television on the wall plays porn videos, and many clubgoers disappear into locker rooms and emerge wearing towels. From there, some of them go into a lounge, a Jacuzzi room, or one of about half a dozen private rooms to have sex — with their dates or with new acquaintances.
To make matters more clichéd, Stone brought along a bottle of p.i.n.k. vodka for the visit. Oh, Jeffrey! You’re America’s overinformed uncle! What are you doing in a den of sin like that? What if you accidentally sat in the wet spot? You could never talk to Sandra Day O’Connor again!
The Dirty Trickster [NYer]
