Profumo and the Song of the Day

John Profumo, former British secretary of war and center of a sex-and-spies scandal in the early ’60s, has died. He was cut from a cloth very different from that of today’s politicians, as the New York Times obit remarks:

…after his fall, he withdrew permanently from public office, refused to discuss the scandal that ruined him as a politician and, instead, turned to charitable work among the poor in the hardscrabble East End of London. He achieved a degree of rehabilitation in 1975 when he was honored as a Commander, Order of the British Empire.

Unlike more modern politicians, he refrained from publishing memoirs or even rebutting allegations about his association with Christine Keeler, a prostitute he met at an upscale party.

I haven’t seen “Scandal,” the 1989 film based on the Profumo affair, but I do know Dusty Springfield’s “Nothing Has Been Proved,” from its soundtrack, which summarizes the story in about 4 minutes and 40 seconds. But if you’re going to dabble in ’80s Dusty (beyond “What Have I Done to Deserve This,” that is), the melancholically exuberant “In Private” is the tune I’d recommend, and that’ll serve as the song of the day.

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