So did Ike boink Kay?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Of course this thread is because the Petraeus apologists have brought up General Eisenhower’s involvement with his driver, Kay Summersby, as some sort of precedent proving that we need to overlook personal peccadillos in the name of the greater good, or else we’d all be eating Teryaki McKnockwurst today. Maybe, but in princible, as a member of this message board, I keep calling “cite?”

Here’s my argument that it didn’t happen:

Kay claimed that they attempted sex a couple of times, but Ike couldn’t bring the troop to attention. But this was revealed years later, after Ike died. There was no Linda Tripp girlfriend she’d told this to for later corroboration. Possibly Kay was venting as woman scorned: like an insensitive ass, Ike didn’t keep in touch with her after the war. Not back in the US, and not when he was in Europe leading NATO. He cut her off like any she was any other junior employee.

Harry Truman claimed to have magnanimously destroyed a letter from Ike to George Marshall, asking to divorce Mamie and marry Kay. That’s the kind of life decision made by guys who are “young, dumb and full of come” make, not executives who are plowing their way through the typing pool. Eisenhower was not the first two of these things, and even if Kay was accurate, Eisenhower was not even the third one.

The story of the letter came from Truman years later, after his and Ike’s relationship turned ugly during the 1953 presidential election. Eisenhower was set to speak in Wisconsin, and planned on “taking a shit” on Joe McCarthy on his home ground. Instead, to his disgust, he was persuaded to limit his remarks to defending Marshall, whose career had been destroyed by McCarthy. Truman slammed Eisenhower for being cowed by the GOP right wing. But the fact is that Truman himself hadn’t done much of anything to stop McCarthy as president, but instead installed the national security state and enforced loyalty oaths from government employees.

Eisenhower actually wrote to Mamie about Kay, all the time he was with Kay, playing cards and taking vacations. This was an era when American males were totally out of touch with their feelings, and Ike was probably oblivious that he was having an emotional affair with Kay. As far as he knew, as long as they weren’t having sex, they were perfectly innocent. Mamie was furious, and had to be dissuaded from divorcing Ike by the army wives back in Washington. But if Ike had been having a fully physically intimate relationship, he wouldn’t have told Mamie shit.

There’s plenty of pretty good scholars here, so let me know if I’m missing any evidence

2

Eisenhower biographer Jean Edward Smith writes, “Whether he and Kay were intimate remains a matter of conjecture. But there is no question they were in love.”

Not sure there’s a factual answer to be found beyond that.

3

Boink.

Just like saying it.

4

You rang?

5

Ugh. Get off me!

6

If he got close enough to attempt forcing a wet noodle in, that counts as “boinking” in my book. Or do you want to argue that the bear actually shit in the meadow part of the woods so that doesn’t count either?

7

I find Kay’s claim that they made the attempt a couple of times, but didn’t actually carry through, to have a certain ring of truth. In this day and age the claim not to have is rather more surprising, and hence more genuine, than a claim to have.

8

Since there is no factual answer to this, let’s move it to IMHO.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

9

I don’t know nothin’ about Ike and Kay. However, from now on whenever I have to give my name at a restaurant where I’ll be called over the PA I shall be known as Teryaki McKnockwurst

I can kind of see the greater good argument. And if I were married to someone whose extremely high pressure job involved being halfway around the world I could probably manage to forgive some dalliances much more easily than I could forgive letting our private business end up in the news.