Who would Elvis vote for?

[Kamika]

What do you think? Personally i think he'd be a big gop whore, buying everything Rush would cram down his throat at the retirement home.

[ikojo]

1. The "King" of Rock n Roll would vote for

the boy king...Bush.

Elvis was a pug.

[NightTrain]

2. Sad to say, I think you're right

Sometimes I think Elvis should've died four or five years sooner. That way, his reputation would be considerably more intact!

[PROGRESSIVE1]

3. He was a Rethug. Remember he was a BIGTIME Jesus Freak..

southern conservative Chrisitian type.

[Kamika]

4. yeah sure

But he was pretty damn liberal in alot of issues, especially racial.

[PROGRESSIVE1]

5. He was no racist. His music was inspired by R&B. He tilted.....

towards the nationalist traditional values camp on family issues.

Was he faithful to Marie??????

[NightTrain]

7. Who's Marie? Do you mean Priscilla?

If so, I got a little story to tell you.

After Priscilla gave birth to Lisa Marie, Elvis wouldn't have sex with her anymore! Seems Elvis couldn't bring himself to think of a woman who had given birth as sexually desirable.

Just one of the hundreds of sad tidbits I got from Peter Guralnick's two-volume Elvis bio, "Last Train To Memphis" and "Careless Love." It presents the King of Rock and Roll as a character as tragic as any Shakeapeare ever created.

[ForrestGump]

19. Marie's the name

of his latest flame...


:P

[Philostopher]

6. He was also a buddy of Tricky Dick Nixon's.

Didn't Nixon make him an honorary member of some drug task force? I wouldn't have remembered that, but the irony almost made my head explode when Commodore Elvis died the way he did.

[Maddy McCall]

9. He wasn't nixon's "buddy"--he met him once during his drug-addicted days.

Hardly a buddy.

[Maddy McCall]

10. So he was a christian--he didn't live a fundy lfestyle by any means....

I know a LOT of southern christians who are democrats.

[Maddy McCall]

8. Jeezus I can't believe how many people here are completely uninformed

on Elvis. He was completely benevolent and gave away over twenty million dollars in his lifetime.

When a tornado destroyed my home town in the 1970s, he heard about it and did a concert in Jackson, Mississippi--paid for all expenses to have the concert, and donated the 100-and-some-odd-thousand dollars he made to the people whose homes had been destroyed.

In his later years, yes, drugs took a toll on his judgement, as the Nixon fiasco shows, but that is not any reason to assume he would now be a "big gop whore," and quite frankly it is stupid to even speculate on how he would vote or what party he would be affiliated with.

All I know is that his past experiences with sharing his PERSONAL wealth and helping out MANY people in need doesn't sound like "big gop whore" to me, but more democratic.

[NightTrain]

11. Good point! Elvis really was generous -- to a fault, even.

Elvis loved giving gifts to people. Some speculate that it was due to his deep insecurity, which led him to be an approval-seeker. Others insist that it was because Elvis was a loving person with a big heart. My guess would be that it was a combination of both factors.

However you look at it, though, Elvis Presley was a very generous man. And though it's possible that he'd be a Republican were he alive today, I seriously doubt that he'd be an asshole about it.

[Spider Jerusalem]

15. Yeah, Elvis was incredibly generous..

stories of his incredible generosity abound...like the time he was at a car dealership, saw an old woman looking through the window at a shiny new Cadillac, and asked her "you like that car?"

"Sure do...too bad I'll never own one," she said.

So Elvis goes in, talks to a salesman, pays for a car and goes and hands the woman the keys.

One of probably thousands of stories like that...


Elvis made over a billion dollars in his career, and probably gave away almost a tenth of that...he was essentially just a simple southern good ol' boy who made it rich and never forgot where he came from, and liked to help people when he could, which I admire...but he was still politically rather conservative.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

20. I'm not clear on that point. I recall an interview in Vegas where

he was asked about the Viet Nam war and he responded, "I'm just an entertainer, I would prefer no to comment." When the reporter asked him if other entertainers should keep their opinions to themselves, he curtly responded "no."

[ForrestGump]

18. You got it!

Mrs Mennie L. Person with the $11,500 Cadillac Eldorado given to her by Elvis on July 27, 1975.

Elvis was essentially apolitical. And, as he said in his 1972 press conference that preceded four Madison Square Garden concerts, he'd just as soon keep his political views to himself - he chose the opposite tack to that taken by John Lennon et al. His prerogative.

By all accounts of those who knew him, Elvis really was not involved in the political process. He never voted. He was conservative on some issues, 'liberal' on others. He liked guns and fast cars (fast anything, actually - he took the governors off golf carts and raced them around Graceland's grounds) but so do many DUers. He was extremely progressive on racial and ethnic issues, especially given his formative years as a poor white Southerner from a family that featured its share of racists and anti-semites. There's an entire book that dispells the myth of Elvis' racism, and testimonials galore from employees and friends of all persuasions that also counter such allegations, so I won't even bother with that.

So it looks like Elvis was a social liberal and a social conservative, depending upon what the issue was. Middle-of-the-road. And if his personal example is any indicvation at all, he was definitely a fiscal liberal. And then some. The guy spent and gave away all of his money - "it's only money" was like a catchphrase to Elvis.

His traditional Christian upbringing - all right. let's take a peek at Elvis' spiritual side. Well, the Assembly of God preachers of his childhood both inspired unconscious aspects of his stagecraft and scared the hell out of him (and put him off the kind of old-time religion that's based on fear). Some of his best singing, in my opinion, can be found amidst his gospel and 'sacred' offerings. Again, many DUers would go along with the lyrics of his 1960 song, "I Believe In The Man In The Sky."

But Elvis was nothing if not a complex man and anyone who's categorizing him as a fundamentalist Christian hasn't read much of anything about him. Elvis was way into esoteric philosophies and religions, rabidly reading tome after tome in search of questions that plagued him his whole life: what was he here for? why did he live and his twin died? why did he become Elvis Presley. The kinds of thing he read were stuff like "The Prophet," "The Impersonal Life" (he loved that one), "The Urantia Book," a bunch of stuff by Ernest Holmes (I think he's a prime influence on the Chusrch of Religious Science), books based on Taoism and Buddhism as well as ancient Jewish mysticism, numeralogy, etc. He also was big into "The Autobiography of a Yogi" and in the '60s he got seriously into Yogananda's yoga and meditation, etc, being a regular presence at the Self Realization Fellowship in Pacific Palisades.

Bear in mind that a lot of this stuff, in the '60s and '70s, fell under the 'occult' category. And for Elvis it was not some passing fancy or drugged-out '60s showbiz pretension - he was heavily into it and desperately wanted to understand. The dude didn't have much formal schooling but he read these books and other materials hungrily and scoured the dictionary as he went. He also gave copies of these heavy books out to friends and acquaintances and frequently held forth on these topics, for hours at a time (it was not unusual for Elvis to have a bunch of girls in his room who were spellbound, if not a tad nonplussed, by having Elvis read to them from the Bible and his other texts and discuss what the meaning of it all was). In short, Elvis was far from one-dimensional in spiritual matters. And his hangers-on were threatened by his interest in such matters, as were Priscilla and the Colonel...it all came to a head when Priscilla burned a pile of his books, but that's another story. And, ironically enough, Scientology (adopted by Priscilla and passed to Lisa Marie) was one 'spiritual' outfit that Elvis was most definitely not enamored of.

Anyway, in short, Elvis was not a political animal. He had his own personal worldview and functional set of 'political' opinions and guidelines, but he was neither Democrat nor Republican. The 1970 Nixon encounter was one of the freakiest episodes of his life but, when you come right down to it, it boils down more to Elvis' oft-revealed inner child acting up (he wanted a badge for his collection, that he was building up at the time, and he basically ran away from home) than to any poltical motivation. Elvis was most definitely a patriot, but he would most likely be loyal to whatever President was in power. Would he have voted for or currently support George W. Bush? I don't know, because the coup of 2000 was as unprecedented as was Elvis himself. I'd sure prefer that Elvis were still around, though, to vote for anyone. Or to not vote.



With Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter, July 3, 1973.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Just popping in 'cos I got the Elvis alert signal, so will pop out again for a while. But it was definitely worth the popping, 'cos I love your signature picture, jchild!

:loveya:

:yourock:

Shake it, but don't break bake it, baby!!




Elvis on stage in Jackson, MS, on May 5, 1975 (tornado benefit show).

[THUNDER HANDS]

12. darn I thought you wrote "who would the ELVES vote for"

I was about to really ponder that and think who the wise and fair elves of LOTR would vote for. I hope Democrat. I know the orks would be Republicans.

:)

[Screaming Lord Byron]

22. No. Denethor's a Repub. The Orcs are libertarians. Duh!

;-)

[populistmom]

13. I don't know

I think it could go either way. Too bad Forrest isn't around. I'd love to hear his viewpoint on this one.

(Too cute of a sig by the way, jchild!)

[Spider Jerusalem]

14. Elvis would've voted for Bush...

And here's the famous Presley-Nixon meeting...Nixon gave Elvis an honorary DEA agent's badge...Elvis collected badges and police paraphernalia...he had a serious fascination with cops. And guns. He was actually kinda scary in many ways. (Hell of a singer, though...but so was Sinatra, even though he was a right-wing asshole...)

[BringEmOn]

16. A hunka hunka burnin' bush

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

17. Elvis Costello would never vote for Bush

[Screaming Lord Byron]

23. Costello's totally old Labour / NDP.

[heypunk]

21. I think you're right

Anybody who would make that many pro-military movies would be a big goper