Bean catalog: obituary edition
The simplest way to have all your misdeeds forgotten is to die.
Maine news organizations are wimpy about turning scandals, scurrilous statements and other sins of commission into the focus of their cautiously edited stories about important peoples’ demise. Few in the local media seem willing to speak ill of the dead, no matter how ill the dead had spoken (and/or acted) before hitting the down button on life’s elevator.
Take the case of Linda Bean, the L.L. Bean heiress who was consigned to the discontinued-items bin on March 23 at the age of 82. The Portland Press Herald referred to her as a “well-known philanthropist” who started a variety of businesses. The Bangor Daily News touted her lobster companies and timberlands. The Associated Press managed to squeeze the words “conservative activist” into its lede, although only after labeling her an entrepreneur and donator to charities.
At least that story mentioned her opposition to abortion, LGBTQ rights and gun control, as well as her illegal donations to a PAC supporting Donald Trump. (She gave Trump tens of thousands of dollars more than the legal limit of five grand, under the allegedly mistaken impression that she was contributing to a super PAC, which has no limits on incoming cash.)
Her support of Trump prompted some liberals to call for a boycott of L.L. Bean, where Linda Bean was a board member, but the protest fizzled.
Her obituaries neglected to mention the 1991 lawsuit accusing Bean of sexual harassment when she published her short-lived conservative weekly, the Maine Paper (a case that went all the way to the state Supreme Judicial Court and resulted in one of the more salacious decisions in its history). Also not mentioned: her successful financing of the effort to defeat the Maine Equal Rights Amendment in 1984 or her tendency to accuse her political opponents of being either gay or gay-friendly.
All that journalistic pussyfooting ignored Bean’s decades of right-wing political activity both as a candidate and a behind-the-scenes force in state politics. Bean was a major financial backer of an unsuccessful 1986 statewide referendum to ban pornography (although she lied about her involvement until campaign finance reports proved otherwise).
In 1992, Republican Gov. John McKernan, who was seeking reelection, promised gay-rights supporters that if a civil rights bill passed the Legislature, he’d allow it to become law without his signature. The measure won approval, but Bean threatened the governor, saying she’d cut off all support for the GOP unless McKernan vetoed it. He did.
In 1996, after spending millions on political campaigns for herself and other Republicans, Bean wrote an op-ed for the Maine Sunday Telegram complaining that teachers’ unions were trying to buy elections for Democrats.
In between all that, Bean lost nasty races for Congress in Maine’s 1st District in 1988 and 1992. She underwrote referendums to enact property tax caps in several Maine municipalities. She feuded with her neighbors in Tenants Harbor and Weld. She feuded with me, disputing the facts in nearly every story I wrote about her. And she kept changing her name.
She was born Linda Bean, but became Linda Clark when she married the first time. Her second marriage resulted in her becoming Linda Bean-Jones, although she still used Linda Bean. The third time around, it was Linda Bean-Folkers. Finally, she ended up back where she started as plain Bean.
Her short-lived reputation as a shrewd businesswoman didn’t develop until 2009 when she consolidated her various lobster companies under the Linda Bean’s Perfect Maine title. While some of her operations were successful and even expanded out of state, her Portland restaurant was a massive failure. By 2017, she had sold or closed many of her operations as she prepared for retirement.
All those lobster rolls couldn’t camouflage her uglier political instincts. In 2012, Bean sent a fundraising letter to her right-wing allies claiming “OBAMA IS HITLERIAN.”
She may have picked up that idea at meetings of the Council for National Policy, a secret right-wing society that the Southern Poverty Law Center described as “a key meeting place where ostensibly mainstream conservatives interact with individuals who are, by any reasonable definition, genuinely extremist.” Among her fellow members: evangelists Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, as well as Virginia (wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence) Thomas, along with an assortment of conspiracy theorists, anti-immigrant chuds and book-banners.
Some positives: Bean gave generously to charity, including LifeFlight of Maine and various arts organizations. She served on several nonprofit boards. PETA didn’t like the way her company prepared lobsters for eating, but PETA wouldn’t approve of the way I cook lobsters either, so I’d be a hypocrite if I held that one against her.
Still, it’d take more than those few pluses to offset the political damage she did, both major and petty. So I won’t begrudge anyone who celebrates her death by singing that well-known refrain from The Wizard of Oz soundtrack.
Ding, dong, I’m not dead, so you don’t have to say nice things when e-mailing aldiamon@herniahill.net.
