Johnny's crack about Wayne Newton's sexuality

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Wayne Newton did appear on The Lucy Show and Here's Lucy in the 1960's. Lucy really liked him.

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Maybe Johnny was right. Maybe Newton is gay.
Certainly seems like it if he is going to Johnny to threaten him to protect his false sexuality of being straight.

Damn, I'm good.

that joke was too ahead of its time. I remember one joke-- that young urban upwardly mobile people are called yuppies, and their is a new one called guppies-- gay urban upwardly mobile people--nobody laughed, you could hear a pin drop in the studio.

The problem with Newton's story is the logistics involved. Would he really have made a special trip from Vegas to LA just to personally threaten Carson over lame joke? Then there's the matter of how would he get into Carson's office, at all. I can't imagine NBC's office personnel, let alone security, letting an incensed Newton see Carson for no apparent reason.

And there's Bushkin supposedly confirming it. Remember, at the time of his book Johnny had been dead for a decade and Bushkin wasn't concerned with the truth, but most interested in selling books. So, putting the 'confirmation' in there could easily be seen as just something to that end.

Finally, there's Carson himself. It's not like he was some kind of milquetoast. Honestly, even if Newton had made it into Carson's office and actually threatened him, I would be willing to bet that Carson, rather than cowering, would more than likely just laugh at Newton and tell him to get the hell out of his office. It's no secret that Carson was combative and backing-down just wasn't really in his nature.

I would be more inclined to think that what really happened was either Newton or a lawyer contacted Bushkin and threatened some sort of legal action. Bushkin told Carson and suggested rather than chance it, for Carson just to back off any future aspersions suggesting Newton was a homosexual. From that, Newton came up with his fable and Carson just ignored it.

That is, unless Newton ever needed anything in LA. Likewise, I'm sure that Newton would do what he could to make Carson's life miserable if he ever needed anything in Vegas.

In fact, there 'is' a story in Bushkin's book about Carson once having a hissy-fit about not being treated like he thought he should while doing some event in Vegas. Bushkin got it sorted out but I wouldn't be surprised, at all, to learn that Newton was somehow involved.