Friday, May 06, 2005

The Johnson Treatment


click to enlarge

LBJ once asked a reporter:


  • "Why do you come and ask me, the leader of the Western world, a chicken-shit question like that?"

In these pictures, Lyndon as majority leader in the Senate takes Theodore F. Green, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for a ride.

---o0o---

4 comments:

El Snoozo said...

Jeez..I didn't know showing the "essence of your power" was muscleing up to a Wilford Brimley looking old man who is 2 feet smaller than you are.

When I do it people say I'm a "jerk" or "disrespectful"...But I'm not the leader of the free world.

Keekee Brummet said...

There's a really awful picture of him doing the same thing to Eartha Kitt in in the 60's. He towers over her (she must be about 4'11").

El Snoozo said...

He did the same thing to CATWOMAN?
Hopefully he was just trying to use his "essence of smoothness" and get a lil' closer to Eartha.

I'd like to see him get in Adam West's face.

Keekee Brummet said...

It was pretty interesting. Eartha spoke out at a WH function held by Lady Bird. She talked about the war. The story goes she made lady bird cry:

RE/Search: When you were invited to a White House luncheon, didn't you cause a scandal?

EARTHA KITT: In 1968, during the Vietnam War, I was invited by Lady Bird Johnson to give my opinion about the problems in the United States, specifically, "Why is there so much juvenile delinquency in the streets of America?" The First Lady seemed to be more interested in decorating the windows of the ghettos with flowerboxes. I mean—it's fine to put flowers in the ghettos, but let's take care of the necessities first: give people jobs, and find a way to get us out of poverty.

When it came my turn to speak, I said to the president's wife, "Vietnam is the main reason we are having trouble with the youth of America. It is a war without explanation or reason." I said that the young ghetto boys thought it better to have a legal stigma against them—then they would be considered "undesirable" and would not be sent to the war. In their opinion, in this society the good guys lost and the bad guys won.

I didn't say this ranting and raving, but we were in a large room, we didn't have microphones, and we had to speak loudly enough to be heard. That incident, reported in such a way as to deface me in the eyes of the American people, obviously had to have been given by someone from the White House—probably the press secretary: "Earth Kitt makes the First Lady cry..." There were no reporters present! So this was a manufactured furor.

R/S: Didn't you suffer because of this?

EK: Of course—within two hours I was out of work in America.