Roger Stone's Really Secret Past
CPAC event director Lisa De Pasquale (yes, she helped bring GOProud to that dance) spends some of her time interviewing politically connected folks for a regular feature in Human Events called "De Pasquale's Dozen." Her lastest installment is with political operative Roger Stone:
4. What pop culture souvenir do you own that people would be surprised to learn that you cherish?
STONE: My bong in the shape of Nixon's head—a head shop souvenir from the '70s. An ebony cigarette holder that belonged to Tom Dewey or a homburg owned and monogrammed for Al Jolson.
5. What's your current "guilty pleasure" non-news television show?
STONE: "Boardwalk Empire" on HBO. It's terrific. The costuming is great. If those producers study history, when Boss Nucky Thompson goes to jail there is internal GOP struggle for power in which Atlantic City's flamboyantly gay Mayor "Two Gun Tommy" Taggert tussles for power with square-jawed Catholic and local sports hero Assemblyman Hap Farley to get control of the Republican machine….
7. What was the first rock concert you ever attended and where did you sit and who went with you?
STONE: 1976, The Young Rascals, Staples High School, Westport, Connecticut, with my ginzo cousins and some cute WASPy preppy girls from Wilton. Felix Cavaliere kicks ass on the Hammond Organ. Dino Danielli—one of the great unappreciated rock drummers in history.
Whole megillah, including a Milton Berle shlong joke, here.
Given both Stone's age and rock-star carbon dating, I'm guessing that the 1976 regarding the Young Rascals concert should be 1966. By about 1968, the band had dropped the prefix Young in deference to reality and hipness. The Rascals–young, middle-aged, or otherwise–are one more piece of evidence that Italian Americans run the world, as three of the foursome had names ending in vowels. But Stone's love for Dino Danelli is, to my half-ginzaloon genome, as misplaced as Fredo Corleone's loyalties.
Here's 13-minutes plus of evidence, in the form of "Boom," a cut from the band's epic (read: bloated like Marlon Brando circa The Island of Dr. Moreau) double-seems-like-quadruple-god-make-it-stop-did-I-really-buy-this-just -for-that-Freedom-Train-song lp, Freedom Suite (1969).
Members of the jury, I rest my case.
Reason.tv has featured Stone in many interviews. Here's some of them, all worth watching.
De Pasquale was good enough to do a Dozen with yours truly. Check it out here.