August 13, 2015

The DNA tests on Warren G. Harding are in and the truth is out at last.

Love child: yes. "Black blood": no.
The Nan Britton affair was the sensation of its age, a product of the jazz-playing, gin-soaked Roaring Twenties and a pivotal moment in the evolution of the modern White House. It was not the first time a president was accused of an extracurricular love life, but never before had a self-proclaimed presidential mistress gone public with a popular tell-all book. The ensuing furor played out in newspapers, courtrooms and living rooms across the country.
Nan Britton was right.

25 comments:

rhhardin said...

Close but no cigar.

Anonymous said...

I was waiting for this critical information

Jim said...

So she was as much a tramp as she claimed to be. Congratulations to her.

chickelit said...

Tempest in a Teapot Dome

Brando said...

Ah, so Bill Clinton still is our "first black president." Which makes it okay that he used race baiting against Obama in 2008, it's okay when they do it to each other, you see.

David said...

I thought this had been established long ago.

As I read the story she slept with him the night she first met him in search of a job. Poor innocent naive girl.

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

Seems to me that a colorable claim can be made that keeping high-ranking government officials distracted from their official duties is the ultimate act of patriotism.

Mitch H. said...

Not that I'm doubting the not-secretly-passing conclusion of the Hardings' genetic test results, but I have to wonder what percentage of the descendants of a very mixed-race couple would likewise show no sub-Saharan genetic markers. The randomized tumblers would have to line up occasionally with results entirely from the Caucasian side of each ancestor's genes, wouldn't they? At the fifteenth or sixteenth generation of distance, and that particular ancestor's genes have sorted entirely out of a given branch of descent, what actual value is there in knowing or caring about the fact of ancestry?

This sort of thing occurs to me when I hear claims that all of Europe's living aristocracy is descended from Mohammed via a supposed Fatamid marriage in old al Andalus during the dark ages.

~ Gordon Pasha said...

Adding additional credence to the rumor that Mrs. Harding had him poisoned.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/sex-scandal-and-death-in-the-white-house/

Greg Hlatky said...

Now, what about Chelsea Clinton?

Peter said...

Paternity testing is OK if the child and father are both dead, but perhaps not if they're still living?

"Ordering a DNA test in France is a crime punishable by heavy fines and jail time"

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20130208170535AAxeGge

tim in vermont said...

Have they figured out if Chester A. Arthur was Canadian yet?

tim in vermont said...

Ordering a DNA test in France is a crime punishable by heavy fines and jail time

Female privilege is supreme in the West.

Smilin' Jack said...

Nan Britton was right.

Well, she's no Marilyn Monroe, but she was over 30 years younger. So good on ol' Warren G.

Twelve said...

Harding defamed for nonwhite ancestors. A hundred years later Warren and Dolezal defamed for having none. Only looks like a reversal. Racial spoils system in all cases.

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

Black supremacists claim almost every dead white guy who did anything great, and their accomplishments, as their own. I'm not saying Harding was great, but he was president, a great position. Now they'll want to test Beethoven, Lincoln, and Hamilton.

mikee said...

Imagine the problems Bill Clinton would have, had he been president then.

walter said...

"carnal adventures in a White House coat closet"

Seems about right..nice n dark..maybe some of gin of the era...

traditionalguy said...

I for one am glad that the birth control pill invented in the early sixties forever changed the Baby Boomers sexy Game. Now that blow jobs are not sex at all, the birth control pills are sort of important, but not sine qua non anymore.

Mitch H. said...

Black supremacists claim almost every dead white guy who did anything great, and their accomplishments, as their own. I'm not saying Harding was great, but he was president, a great position

I can't tell if you're being ironic or not. One of Harding's hardcore-racist Democratic enemies ginned up the stories about him being black in the course of the 1920 campaign. Republicans were generally associated with integrationist policies, and the Democrats segregationism and explicit racism, to the degree that the 1924 Democratic convention was known as "the Klanbake".

Anonymous said...

I have it on good authority that President Harding himself was spreading the rumor that he was part Black.

Perhaps he used to ask young ladies to guess which part?

I'll leave that to the historians

Andrew said...

Presidents are magnets for mattress backs.

walter said...

Sounds like it was done standing up...
I expect Spatula insights on this soon.

Badger said...

I read a biography of Harding's wife Florence by Carl Sferrazza Anthony who has written several other books about First Ladies. There's a picture of Nan Britton in her 80's in it and she's still pretty and flirtatious. He also fathered another child with a family friend.

Rich Rostrom said...

Harding supposedly remarked, when queried about the possibility of a black ancestor, that "anyone might have a nigger somewhere in the woodpile."

But then, George Tillman (brother of arch-segregationist "Pitchfork Ben" Tillman) told fellow delegates to the South Carolina constitutional convention that they should reject a de facto "one-drop" rule for disfranchising blacks, because "we're all niggers to some degree."