There’s a ‘semper fi’ joke here somewhere. From the Washington Post:
HONOLULU — The actor best known for playing the TV character Gomer Pyle in the 1960s has married his male partner of 38 years.
Hawaii News Now (http://bit.ly/14tFM3U) reports Jim Nabors and his partner, Stan Cadwallader, traveled from their Honolulu home to Seattle to be married Jan. 15…
The 82-year-old Nabors says you’ve got to solidify something when you’ve been together as long as they have.
They couple met in 1975 when Cadwallader was a Honolulu firefighter. Cadwallader is 64.
Nabors says he’s been open about his homosexuality to co-workers and friends but never acknowledged it to the media before…
Gol-lee, the things we didn’t know in the 1960s. A gay Marine, out of Mayberry! — I wonder whether Andrew Sullivan will rush to claim Nabors for his team? Best wishes to the happy couple, in any case!
bago
He chose the right town…
Punchy
And here I thought the gay one was Don Knotts…
liberal
Even more to like about Hagel.
greennotGreen
How is it he never acknowledged his homosexuality to the media, but we all knew about it? Oh, yeah, gaydar has its own network.
BillinGlendaleCa
Watching Morning Ho, Al Gore is fat.
greennotGreen
@liberal: Yeah, that is something to like!
Elizabelle
heartwarming
Craig
Didn’t he sing “Back Home in Indiana” at the Indy 500 for years and years, too? And if so, does that have anything to do with anything?
FFrank
mai naem
I thought Jim Nabors strongly denied he way gay or am I confusing with another Gomer Pyle actor?
Watching Al Gore on Mornin Ho. First time I’ve seen Mika aggressively ask questions from a politician. She just had to go after him on selling Current TV to a media company that gets it’s money from oil. Now, Ho, will have the green eyed monster showing for at least the next half hour. Surprised Mika didn’t ask Gore about his weight and if he drank sugary drinks and junk food.
Calming Influence
Just shows to go ya, Gaydar ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. I just thought he was goofy.
Judge: So Mickey, you want a divorce because Minney is crazy?!?
Mickey: No, Your Honor, I want a divorce because Minney is fucking Goofy.
lou
Congrats Gomer!
Huh. I always thought it was common knowledge that Jim Nabors was gay. Sort of like Rock Hudson. In fact, wasn’t there a rumor about the two in the 70s?
RSA
Flipping channels on the TV the other day I saw a minute or two of the Andy Griffith show. There was a crying kid with his dad in the police station, and Andy asked the dad if they needed a nice quiet place to have a talk. “There’s a woodshed out back…”
Omnes Omnibus
FWIW Nabors was a member of Delta Tau Delta. Best wishes to Jim and Stan.
Suffern ACE
@mai naem: well because the second you raise environmental concerns the only thing you can do is go to the desert and join a low impact commune or you’re a not only a nut, but also a hypocrite.
/msm
J.D. Rhoades
@Calming Influence:
It’s even funnier if you do the voice.
J.D. Rhoades
@lou:
I know, right? I was more surprised to hear he was still alive.
jon
I always had him tagged in the Asexual category. Gomer Pyle, gospel albums, liver troubles, and a great cover of ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ made me think: dork. Not gay, just dorky.
Congrats and good wishes to you, dork.
cathyx
Some people don’t need to come out, because it’s so obvious. He is definitely one of them.
mai naem
I read that Lindsay Graham(maybe Nabors can have a talk with Lindsay) is going to hold Hagel’s nomination until Obama comes clean with Benghazi. Thought this sheet was supposed to stop with the new filibuster rules package.
Suffern ACE
@lou: yeah, but Nabors falls into that category of friendly and kind of effeminate southerners, and in the gay permit class, there is a small paragraph warning you off of making that assumption.
Raven
Eat the apple and fuck the corps Gomer!
ruby slippers
@lou: 1967, I was in 4th grade in Venice CA, my best friend told me Gomer and Rock were getting married. So yeah, some of us always knew!
Suffern ACE
@mai naem: I think he can do that with his cronies on the foreign relations committee.
MikeJ
Maybe this will be the push Hawai’i needs to re-recognize gay marriage. Because of the way the constitutional amendment was written, all they need is a vote of the lege. (The amendment didn’t ban hay marriage, it gave the lege jurisdiction and they outlawed it.The same mechanism will make it easier to fix now that equality polls better.)
WereBear
@Punchy: Au contraire! To those in the know, Don Knotts was an incredible ladies’ man.
And yes, as soon as I had gay friends, I found out about a LOT of people I didn’t know about (and this was in the early ’70’s.) My own grandmother burned his gospel records sometime later, as word reached the more backward pockets of the world.
Grover Gardner
Wonder what “regular folks” are going to do with all those gospel albums of his they paid good money for.
Edit: I see WereBear has already answered that! :-)
Schlemizel
Heck I heard that rumor about him when I was a kid – its been out there forever.
Joey Maloney
@MikeJ: A bill has already been introduced into the Hawaii senate this session. I don’t know the players well enough to know if it’s going anywhere this time.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@ruby slippers: That didn’t make it very far outside of CA. If that had been known in Abilene, TX, I’m pretty sure the city would have banned Andy Griffith.
Don K
@lou:
That rumor was all over the place in the mid-70s. I was working summers for the state of New Jersey, and the revelation went something like:
“Did you know Rock Hudson is a fag? And Jim Nabors is his boyfriend?”
El Cid
I didn’t know he was even still around. Good for him.
Omnes Omnibus
@J.D. Rhoades: It doesn’t work without the voice. I love that joke.
Mr. Longform
I remember going into school all excited to see if the nuns liked “The Flying Nun” when it debuted. They were pretty meh about it. Sister Mary Marcia said, “We like Gomer Pyle much better.” That freaked me out a little. I thought they would be allowed to watch a show about a nun, but a show about regular people? … but nothing is as it seems.
Scott
Sha-zam! That Rock and Gomer story went coast to coast!
Almost like the Rod Stewart story.
quannlace
Phew, for a second when I first saw that headline, I thought, “Oh no, don’t tell me he died”
Congrats, Mr. Pyle.
But I can just see Barnie staying in denial. “But Andy, He works in a garage. It just ccan’t be!”
Countme-In
Barney can’t nip this one in the bud.
Fred
I remember when a super market tabloid “outed” Rosie O’Donnell. My reaction was ‘Well Duh’.
So now Gomer is coming out? Say it ain’t so!
Steve M.
It was rumored in the 1970s that Jim Nabors and Rock Hudson were married, according to Snopes. I have vague memories of hearing that — I definitely remember Jim-Nabors-is-gay snickering going back decades….
Bobby Thomson
Seriously, I thought Nabors had been out since the 70s. The 80s, at the latest.
Judas Escargot
Gomer Pyle was a little before my time. But I have vague memories of him dressed up as an android with Ruth Buzzi on some children’s show in the early 1970s.
WTF was the name of that thing?
aimai
Oh, fuck, Deval Patrick named some guy friend no one has ever heard of to Kerry’s old seat. What a loss of voice for MA over the next few months. I can’t even wrap my head around how Patrick thinks this was a good idea. He named a place holder who can do literally nothing but sit around and be ignored–he’s a personal friend and assistant from North Carolina who moved up to Boston and became a Boston Lawyer and then Patrick’s assistant in some capacity. What the fuckity fuck? We could have had a bomb thrower who was totally familiar with all the players and all the ins and outs of the budget up there and we have a non entity who will be able to contribute about as much as a bridge dummy?
James Gary
@Judas Escargot: “The Lost Saucer.”
ricky
I do not begrudge Jim Nabors for taking the advantage of
the opportunity afforded him with the spin-off Gomer Pyle USMC. However, the trade of Goober for Gomer on the Andy Griffith Show can clearly be linked to the decline in respect for full service gas stations.
Tom S
Can’t say my gaydar was well-developed at age 10, but there was always something “un-marine-like” about Gomer Pyle himself.
Omnes Omnibus
@Bobby Thomson: This wasn’t him coming out; this was him getting married.
Persia
@aimai: Why does MA produce so many douchebags? Ugh.
Good for Gomer. Another guy in the long line of men my grandmother loved who came out of the closet (or were forced out) years after she died. I often wish she’d lived long enough for me to figure out if she had really good gaydar or what.
shortstop
@Tom S: Only if you think there aren’t a significant number of gay Marines.
aimai
@Persia:
Well, Deval is from Chicago so I refuse to take the blame for him. He’s doing some incredible things as governor during his last two years so I’m dissapointed in this choice. He seemed to be showing something approaching real political courage and deep economic insight with the proposals with which he is going to the legislature. Maybe this is part of a deal to get those through the lege? Can’t imagine how.
Omnes Omnibus
@aimai: He seems to have some very particular ideas about appointing a pure caretaker in these cases.
Persia
@aimai: See, that’s what’s going on – MA is getting to him! (I like a lot of MA politicians, it just seems that when they suck they really suck.)
Bobby Thomson
@Omnes Omnibus: I was responding to “Nabors says he’s been open about his homosexuality to co-workers and friends but never acknowledged it to the media before.”
Bobby Thomson
@Omnes Omnibus: Yes. Bad ones.
Forum Transmitted Disease
Shit, I thought he was dead.
As to his being gay, well…you should have figured that out already.
Good for him and his new spouse. I hope they get a lot of happy years together.
shortstop
@aimai: Hey! You’re not shoving him on us. This incredibly stupid move came from a governor who’s YOUR problem.
kindness
This is one time they get in line to ‘take one for the team’.
Meg
Well, surprise surprise surprise
(the totally missed post title)
Forum Transmitted Disease
@Punchy: Heh. No. That guy’s gotten more tail than a snake.
GregB
Is it true that Gome Pyle married Dr. Smith from Lost in Space?
Oh the pain, the pain!
handsmile
@aimai:
WTF! Was Patrick’s horse not available? This selection seems utterly arrogant. How selecting his former chief of staff will advance Patrick’s state legislative agenda escapes me. Is this just another example that pissing on progressives supposedly demonstrates one’s gravitas in seeking higher office, as Patrick is rumored to desire.
That Cowan is African-American is completely irrelevant in this case. In the fiscal/budgetary battle royales that will dominate the interim Senator’s tenure, Barney Frank has the abundant experience, knowledge, personality, and media savvy and reputation that national Democrats desperately need. Mo Cowan has exactly none of these.
With conservative Democratic congressman Stephen Lynch about to announce his Senate primary challenge to Ed Markey, once more the Massachusetts state Democratic party reveals its rank amateurism.
NotMax
It’s a beautiful day in the gayborhood
A beautiful day for a Nabors
Would you be mine?
Could you be mine?
Judas Escargot, Bringer of Loaves and Fish Sandwiches
@aimai:
Local media is spinning this as a ‘low drama’ pick (as compared to Barney Frank, I assume).
Also, the MA Bar Association basically runs our Dem party at the state level (that’s how we got Martha Coakley up against Scott Brown in 2010). Patrick’s choice of an insider attorney virtually unknown outside of those circles should probably surprise no one, in hindsight.
Not the first AA to be a Senator from MA, BTW (that was Ed Brooke, the Rockefeller Republican from way back when).
Optics aside, by all accounts the man’s competent and will make an excellent placeholder as the
barroom brawlspecial election moves forward.Judas Escargot, Bringer of Loaves and Fish Sandwiches
@handsmile:
Ugh, Steve Lynch. Dear MA Dem Party: If I wanted to vote for anti-choice social conservatives, I’d be a Republican.
The idea is that he’ll peel enough of the white 50+ Lunchpail Birchers away from Scott Brown to win, but I just don’t see that happening (not really a demographic known for changing its mind, sorry).
I’m not voting for Steve Lynch, ever. Sorry.
J.D. Rhoades
@Tom S:
That was the point of the show, wunnit? But probably not the way they intended.
@suffernAce
Who somehow usually end up being church organists or choir directors.
Quaker in a Basement
By all accounts, Nabors is a nice man. Good wishes to him on this happy occasion.
Andy Hall
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Andy Griffith, too? I had no idea. ;-)
Wally Ballou
@ricky: I preferred when Goober was strictly an offscreen character. (You know, “Goober says hey, Andy.” “Hey to Goober.”)