Retro Raunch Revisit

This month marks the 95th anniversary of the publication debut of SEX magazine (1926) with its last issue being Jul 1928. Into the frivolous Jazz Age, post-WWI America saw art deco in vogue, and private intimacy enter the public discussion. Both style & topic combined in SEX, one of the earliest saucy men's mags presented as near-coffee table material with sculpturesque nudes posed tastefully beside progressive articles about marriage & divorce, philosophy, contraception, heartthrob Rudolph Valentino, flappers, and the intelligence of chorus girls. Visually alone, similar & spicier publications were quite prolific in Paris and Berlin, but what was steeped in the boom time of the Roaring 20's also had a very sinister surface. One woman alleged to be involved with the publication was Margaret Sanger who headed a birth control organization and whose connection however may have had less to do with proto/semi/quasi-feminist promotion of women's health, and instead more so with the then-popular (and now widely regarded as odious) eugenics* movement which controversially theorizes the emphasis of largely Anglo-Saxon white superiority over minority racial ethnicity. The models were said to be chosen of only the 'purest' females representing the ideal form, and Sanger's hubris supposedly extended to her being pro-male masturbation in the belief that it was a deterrent to inferior breeding(!) *[American & European proponents of eugenics used this as a backing for forced sterilization. Nazi Germany in particular followed with its nightmarish march culminating in terror & horror -- first in the killing of the mentally & physically challenged in its Aktion T4 Program of involuntary euthanasia, and then with the regime's extreme anti-semitism whose architects proposed the Final Solution that led directly to extermination in the Holocaust].


SEPTEMBER 1926 ON THE WORLD STAGE Latest reports reveal that the real name of the bomb thrower at Italian leader Benito Mussolini is Gino Lucetti (26), who was born in Tuscany and had been living at Marseilles for the past few years. Although in the initial stages, investigations indicate that it was not the isolated deed of a maniac or an anarchist, but an elaborately hatched plot by political expatriated Italians. Lucetti has been taken to the city prison and subjected to lengthy cross-examination. He is reported to have admitted cynically that he left France with the avowed intention of assassinating Signor Mussolini. Asked why he was carrying a revolver, he replied: "you wouldn't expect me to present Mussolini with a bunch of flowers." The police now believe that Lucetti had been hiding in Rome for weeks, awaiting a favorable opportunity. Other arrests have been made with more expected but the identity of the prisoners is not disclosed. A young girl informed the police that she saw 5 men in a motor car waiting near the scene of the outrage. Lucetti threw his bomb at the Duce's passing car which smashed against the windscreen. It failed to detonate, bounced unto the running board and only exploded when it was some metres away on the pavement. In the confusion, he ran away but was caught by bodyguards in a doorway who kicked & punched him. Upon his capture, he was in possession of a second bomb, a pistol with poisoned bullets, and a dagger. The British United Press representative had an exclusive interview with Mussolini just as he came from the balcony where he spoke to cheering crowds. He said, "Tell the world how I feel. My first thought when I knew it was a bomb was to catch it. It was a good-sized affair. I've been through the trenches, and in air raids & aeroplane accidents. These attempts are nothing to worry about." While speaking to the BUP interviewer, Mussolini was still being cheered by the outside crowd but continued to speak in calm tones, merely nodding his head when a particularly loud cheer was raised. Following the attempt on his life, Mussolini kept an engagement to bid farewell to the retiring commercial secretary of the British Embassy who had not heard of the outrage. Mussolini did not refer to it until the crowd's loud roaring was overheard. Then the Italian Prime Minister explained & declared, "These attempts are useless; it had been predicted that I shall not die a violent death. I believe in prophecy and am convinced that I shall die naturally. Therefore it would be a waste of an assassin's time to make an attempt." The French Charge d'Affaires in Rome, protesting against an article appearing in "Giornale d'Italia" has expressed hope that the Italian Government would not allow Italian opinion to be misled, because the criminal was an Italian although he came from France. Monsieur Aristide Briand (French Minister for Foreign Affairs) has sent a message of congratulation to Mussolini on his escape from injury. "Le Temps" commenting on Mussolini's declaration against guilty tolerances over the frontiers, points out that France cannot take action against foreigners living in France simply because they disapprove of their home Government's policy. The paper recalls that when an Italian anarchist assassinated President Sadi Carnot in Lyon in June 1894, nobody dreamed of making the Government or the people of Italy reponsible.

This month also marks the 65th anniversary of the publication debut of GENT magazine (1956). Shortly after the magazine's production, it was soon prosecuted for obscenity by the US Postal Service but was found not indecent at that time. A 2nd prosecution happened in New York State reaching the Court of Appeals who determined since it was not hardcore porn, the ruling again said the finding was not indecent. And still a 3rd prosecution took place in Arkansas where this time a jury delivered a conviction. The US Supreme Court reviewed the case and overturned the decision, saying that because the subject matter is not sold to minors or forced upon unwilling audiences, the magazine was constitutionally protected. This final pronouncement is now widely seen as a de facto ending of American censorship of written material. In later years, GENT was disparaged as a "working-class PLAYBOY-wannabe" and the final print issue was May 2011.


SEPTEMBER 1956 ON THE WORLD STAGE Delegates of Nicaragua’s Nationalist Liberal Party convened in the steamy town of León to pick portly & genial President Anastasio Somoza, who has been the country's unchallenged boss for 22yrs, to be their candidate in next year’s election. After the flattered & proud, “Tacho” Somoza celebrated by mingling with the shortsleeved crowd in the local Somoza-founded Workers’ Social Club, one of the attendees pulled a snub-nosed Smith and Wesson .38 revolver and opened fire on the strongman. Before he got off his 5th shot, the gununman, a 27yr named Rigoberto López Pérez, was immediately riddled by a deadly fusillade from presidential bodyguards. But he had already hit Tacho 4 times. US Ambassador Thomas Whelan, a poker-playing personal friend of Somoza, was at his side and was told by the dying man, "I'm a goner. They got me this time, Tommy." Whelan urgently notified Washington of the news and the White House moved fast, sending a radio flash to the Panama Canal Zone to awaken American doctors, ordering them to fly to Nicaragua. At first light, a helicopter took off to whisk the wounded President back to Managua the capital, and then President Eisenhower who met Somoza at last July’s Conference of Presidents in Panama, sent off another plane from Washington carrying Major General Leonard D. Heaton, commanding officer at Walter Reed Hospital and chief surgeon at Ike’s recent ileitis (inflammation of a part of the small intestine) operation. One of the bullets hit Somoza in the right forearm and broke it while 2 other bullets lodged painfully in his right shoulder & right thigh. The 4th bullet was the most serious having entered through the upper right thigh and stopped at the base of the spine. The doctor’s recommendation was an operation at the Canal Zone’s famed Gorgas Hospital. A blue ambulance crept through the lonely, moonlit streets of Managua to take Somoza, his wife and the task force of doctors back to Panama. Once at Gorgas, the surgery commenced lasting 4hrs and 20 min. Still in the hospital, Somoza died 9 days later. The assassin López Pérez was a slight, short, pencil-mustachioed Nicaraguan who was a poet, composed romantic music and had worked until lately as a salesman of phonograph records in neighboring El Salvador. Some witnesses claimed they counted 35 bullet holes in his body. López Pérez could never reveal his motive but as an occasional contributor to local newspapers, he had left at least one clue that hinted at an obsession for martyrdom in a piece of literary criticism he had written 10 days before the slaying. In it, he said: "Immortality is the aim of life and of glorious death." His acquaintances said that he grumbled incessantly against Somoza. His act was patently suicidal, and his reason may well have been an itch for self-glorification just as much as suspected revolutionary principles to strike at tyranny. When the US Marines ended their occupation of Nicaragua and left in Jan 1933, the 37yr old Somoza became Head of the Army (Guardia Nacional). In Jun 1936, he led a miltary coup against President Juan Bautista Sacasa (the uncle of Somoza's wife). Somoza once said, "I'll give this country peace if I have to shoot every other man in Nicaragua to get it." His totalitarian regime arrested & jailed thousands while his private army, shot scores of dissidents. Alongside repression & inequality, there was peace. Somoza himself amassed an enormous personal fortune and is believed to have had owning interests in over 400 separate properties, from farmland and textiles, to sugar and coffee. At the expense of personal enrichment, the country remained poor & undeveloped. The Nicaraguan Cabinet declared a state of siege, but no sign of an uprising appeared to make the shooting seem like part of a large plot. Instead, Somoza’s elder son Luis (President of Congress) smoothly took on his father’s powers and the replacement had the complete support of his West Point-educated brother, Anastasio Somoza Jr., Chief of the Army.