J. Edgar Hoover

[[File:Hoover-JEdgar-LOC.jpg|right|thumb|165px|I've got a little list.]]
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{{cquote|Why is J. Edgar Hoover on your phone?<br>I don't know.  He's on everybody else's phone, why shouldn't he be on mine?}}

'''John Edgar Hoover''' {{lived|1895|1972}} was a famous [[American]] [[Crime|extortionist]] and [[asshole]] who headed the Federal Bureau of Investigation ([[FBI]]). He was evil, like [[Herbert Hoover|the other Hoover]] unrelated to him. President [[Richard Nixon]] had a large building in [[Washington, D.C.]], unfortunately named after J. Edgar Hoover in May 1972, two days after J. Edgar died.<ref group=note>Nothing to do with the Hoover Dam; that's [[Herbert Hoover| someone else]].</ref> J. Edgar Hoover ran the Bureau for 37 years (1935 to 1972) and was known for both his improper and illegal conduct, both at the behest of and independent of the [[POTUS| Presidents]] he served under.<ref>http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,879504,00.html</ref> Hoover organized surveillance not only of famous activists like [[Martin Luther King| Martin Luther King, Jr.]], but also of officials in presidential administrations.<ref>http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4638275/</ref>

Evidence of Hoover's [[racism]] can be traced back to his membership in the {{wpl|Kappa Alpha Order}} [[fraternity]] while at law school (graduating in 1916). Kappa Alpha had been founded immediately after the [[American Civil War|Civil War]], and was intertwined with the [[Lost Cause of the South]] mythology for most of its existence.<ref name=gage/>{{rp|38}}

In 2011 Leonardo DiCaprio, under the direction of Clint Eastwood, presented a more dignified portrait of the man than ever existed in [[reality]], in ''{{wpl|J. Edgar||''.}}  At least he never talked to a chair. And no, Leo did not get an Oscar for that.

==Red-baiting==
While J. Edgar Hoover didn't start the trend of [[Joseph McCarthy|McCarthy-ish]] political delusions of seeing the [[Communism|commies]] everywhere, he certainly exacerbated it to another level entirely. His career in law enforcement really took off when Attorney General Alexander Mitchell Palmer gave him the noble task of rounding up [[Trade Union|loudmouth pinkos]] and assorted [[xenophobia|foreigners]] during the 1919 [[Red Scare]], and he just sort of stuck with what he knew after that, regardless of what was actually happening around him.  This culminated in his being convinced that the aforementioned Dr. King [[Red-baiting|was a communist]] and declaring the [[Black Panther Party]] as the greatest political threat to the United States. Even the United States Department of Justice thought he was taking his rhetoric too far.<ref>[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eyesontheprize/about/pt_206.html "I think, frankly, that he overstated the concern, the real concern, that the Black Panthers were to the country."] Jerris Leonard, first Administrator of the Law Enforcement Assistant Administration</ref>

Of course, Hoover was more than eager to turn a blind eye to ''actual'' American [[terrorists]] on the Right, at one time even withholding evidence on the notorious 16th Street Baptist Church bombings from Alabama prosecutors until all but blackmailed into releasing it. Maybe if he didn't coddle the [[Ku Klux Klan]] and {{wpl|White Citizens' Council}} so much he wouldn't have had to contend with the black power backlash... you know, the thing MLK '''explicitly warned him about'''.<ref>"Although King was hesitant to criticize Black Power openly, he told his staff on 14 November 1966 that Black Power 'was born from the wombs of despair and disappointment. Black Power is a cry of pain. It is in fact a reaction to the failure of White Power to deliver the promises and to do it in a hurry... The cry of Black Power is really a cry of hurt.'" [http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_black_power/] </ref>

==Homophobia==
[[File:Hoover & Tolson.jpg|thumb|right|165px|Hoover and Tolson, vacationing together in [[Florida]] in 1939]]
Hoover and the FBI under his directorship spent decades harassing and spying on [[homosexuals]].<ref name=yarrow>[https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/love-and-death-the-legacy-of-congressional-cemeterys-gay-corner/2021/08/12/e14c6fe4-ef0a-11eb-a452-4da5fe48582d_story.html Love and death: The legacy of Congressional Cemetery’s 'Gay Corner'] by Andrew L. Yarrow (August 16, 2021) ''The Washington Post''.</ref> Even after his death and the rise of [[gay liberation]], Hoover managed to continue harassing the [[LGBTQ]] community: the now-defunct J. Edgar Hoover Foundation<ref>[http://www.jedgarhooverfoundation.org/ J. Edgar Hoover Foundation]</ref> managed to get a (probably unenforceable) restraining order against the tour guides of the 'gay corner' that was intentionally placed adjacent to Hoover's and FBI deputy director Clyde Tolson's adjacent graves.<ref name=yarrow/> Hoover and Tolson had often been alleged to have been longtime lovers.<ref name=yarrow/>

According to Susan Rosenstiel, a wife of {{wpl|Lewis Rosenstiel||}} who was a friend of Hoover and [[Roy Cohn]], Hoover was a [[cross-dresser]] in private. She had discovered her husband in bed with Cohn, knew that her husband was gay, and witnessed Hoover in [[drag]]:<ref>''Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover'' by Anthony Summers (1993) Plume. ISBN 0399138005.</ref>{{rp|254}}
{{cquote|He was wearing a fluffy black dress, very fluffy, with flounces, and lace stockings and high heels, and a black curly wig. He had makeup on, and false eyelashes. It was a very short skirt, and he was sitting there in the living room of the suite with his legs crossed. [[Roy Cohn|Roy <nowiki>[Cohn]</nowiki>]] introduced him to me as ‘Mary’ and he replied, “Good evening,’ brusque, like the first time I’d met him. It was obvious he wasn’t a woman, you could see where he shaved. It was Hoover."}}
Historian Beverly Gage is suspicious of Rosenstiel's account however since the activity would have put Hoover in excessive risk of exposure and because Rosenstiel had been paid for the account, something that does not meet current journalistic standards.<ref name=gage/>{{rp|535}}

Hoover and Tolson's private life together was evidentially erotic, both [[Anecdote|anecdotally]] and photographically. For example, among Hoover's personal effects was found a poem by Elsie Robinson, "A Song of Men" which framed a photo of a statue of two naked men holding hands with the poem including the text, "Everything shared. And yet always something withheld. Each man coming out and finding the hand of his friend yet never quite coming out yet.<ref name=gage>''G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century'' by Beverly Gage (2022) Viking. ISBN 0670025372.</ref>{{rp|189-190,plates}} The poem and photo had originally been published in a 1927 issue of ''Cosmopolitan''. Hoover's copy was slightly altered from the publication.<ref name=gage/>{{rp|plate}}<ref>[https://archive.org/details/sim_cosmopolitan_1927-07_83_1/page/n5/mode/2up A Song of Men] by Elsie Robinson (July 1927) ''Cosmopolitan''.</ref>{{rp|25}}

==See also==
*[[Police brutality]]
*[[Secret police]]

==Notes==
{{reflist|group=note}}

==References==
{{reflist|2|80%}}

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[[Category:Completely heterosexual]]
[[Category:Conspiracy theorists]]
[[Category:Government incompetence]]
[[Category:Government surveillance]]
[[Category:Homophobia]]
[[Category:Internalized discrimination]]
[[Category:JFK assassination]]
[[Category:Law]]
[[Category:Racists]]
[[Category:United States politicians]]

Categories: Completely heterosexual, Conspiracy theorists, Government incompetence, Government surveillance, Homophobia, Internalized discrimination, JFK assassination, Law, Racists, United States politicians