RIP - Lady Bird Johnson

[brettsomers]

supreme rudeness?

naïveté maybe? i imagine the meeting was what we would now call a publicity stunt or photo-op?

certainly war affects working-class youth. shame on Kitt for not playing along with the White House charade!

 

[danemodsandy]

Gently...

All I can say is, that's not how the game is played.

Kitt would have done far better to use her "meet and greet" time to wangle an appointment with the President, where she might have discussed her views calmly and with the Big Guy's full attention. If such an appointment wasn't possible, asking if she might send a letter to the Prez would have been another option. After making such a request, the letter would most definitely have been read- if not by LBJ, certainly at a very high level.

Embarrassing your host is never the way to GET your way, trust me. Part of having rights is knowing how to exercise them without offending others. You have a perfect right to relieve your bowels. But you don't do it on the street.

 

[sudsmaster]

I was 11 years old when Kennedy was shot. It was a terrible time, but I was still too young to understand the fill impact of that tragedy. In the ensuing years, I remember LBJ getting mercilessly pilloried by critics across the political spectrum. In fact I was known in my homeroom class for my drawling and probably very bad impression. That and a very pathetic and juvenile Hitler shtick. LOL.

In any case, over the years I've grown to respect LBJ and what he accomplished. The War on Poverty was a monumental undertaking, and it truly benefitted millions of Americans - myself included. I don't know if I would ever have entered a first class university and graduated had it not been for his initiatives.

Fortunately Lady Bird was spared the ridicule her husband seemed to attract like a magnet. Most people seemed to think that beautifying America was something you really couldn't object to. But I guess some did regret exchanging the elegant Jackie Kennedy for the more mature and down-to-earth Lady Bird. It surely wasn't her fault!

I guess there are a lot of theories about LBJ's decision to retire from politics, but I suspect that his unpopularity was only part of it. The man must not have been in very good health, as he died before Nixon could be impeached.

I have an old newspaper I saved from 1965 (when I was a paper boy in SF). Inside it has one of those little human interest features newspapers occasionally run. In this case it was a photo of LBJ's custom made boots with the presidential seal on them. That this was considered newsworthy was a sign of the times; later coverage would not be so benign.

I can't agree with LBJ's decision to escalate the war in Vietname during his years in office, but I also suspect that foreign policy was not one of his stronger points. His handling of that matter certainly tarnished a reputation that could stand on its own based on his considerable domestic achievements.

 

[63getelevision]

C'est Si Bon

As much as I like Eartha Kitt, she could have been more subtle, no matter how right she was. I'm sure even Lyndon Johnson could be reasoned with.

 

[sudsmaster]

While Kitt may have overstepped some social bounds by speaking off-topic, what subequently happened to her was not right at all.

And, as I recall, those who opposed the war were elated that Kitt had the courage to speak out about it in the White House.

But I don't think Kitt would ever have been given the chance to "reason with" President Johnson. I gather he wasn't at the luncheon anyway, just the First Lady. Kitt, who says she has always lived one day at a time, saw her one chance to make a statement and took it. For that she paid dearly, having to perform only in Europe (her American career collapsed, nobody would hire her) for a decade. If the Johnsons didn't want to hear the opinion of a bright, extremely talented, and very resourceful actress/dancer, perhaps they shouldn't have invited her to the White House in the first place?

 

[dalangdon]

Something about Lady Bird that I did not know was that she did a whistlestop tour of the south in the aftermath of the Civil Rights bill. At the towns along the way, she encountered many people who were very angry, and said the most vulgar things about her and her husband. But she stood up to them, with intelligence and grace and, more often than not, at least won their respect.

 

[tomturbomatic]

Yeah, why was EK there? Was it simply because she was Black and would make good window dressing for a feel good event that would make good press and accomplish nothing? Did the people who drew up the guest list know nothing about Eartha Kitt's personality?? She was the last person you would invite if you were looking for some mealy-mouthed lady who would nod yes to everything. She probably would not have had as bad an aftermath if she had shared her thoughts with someone from the media. I am sorry that Eartha Kitt had 10 years of exile because she told the truth.

Sandy, I am no stranger to the White House or shaking a president's hand, but your servile manner is not what makes for a successful democracy. Jefferson said that if he had to choose between government and a free press, he would choose a free press, so important was the people's voice. Johnson did not need to read a letter from EK to know that the war was going the wrong way, but he had "advisors" who kept telling him it was winnable and they had the daily body counts to prove we were succeeding. There are such tragic circumstances when people do not know history and do not learn from it. We won our independence by fighting successfully against the far larger, but regimented forces of the British Army because this was our land and the citizen soldiers knew every creek, swamp, hill and hollow. They were able to conduct a successful guerilla war against the British and yet we have never considered that when we have hauled off and gone to fight against people in their own land.

I am not saying anything against Claudia Alta Taylor Johnson. I think that she was a smart woman and cared for her husband, her country and its people far more than some who have grown up wealthy. I loved the cadence of her speaking voice and the flowers she planted. I believe that we are a far better country because of very unpopular human rights legislation that Lyndon Johnson was able to get through congress because he knew the dirt on everyone from having served so long on the Hill. It is not entirely his fault that congress found it easier to put people on welfare instead of helping them to work meaningful jobs. Having said that, I have friends' names on that wall and I have other friends who died in VA hospitals here from injuries sustained over there whose names are engraved only on their headstones and in the hearts of those who knew them. I like to walk along the wall at night when tears are not so noticible and fewer people make it a more intimate experience. Other friends came back but used drugs or chain smoked to calm nerves,to help keep the nightmare memories at bay and they were not smokers or drug users before they left. So you might understand my sympathy is with a woman who knew plenty of young men who could not get or stay in college and were subject to the Draft. She saw the damage first hand in the Black community and was this gathering not billed as a discussion on the problems of inner city youth? Given the close association between President Johnson and the war, it was a factor that most would have chosen to sidestep, but she was truthful, if maybe too direct or passionate for a bunch of white ladies at a luncheon in the White House and for Sandy, but if more people spoke truth to power or even had the guts to do it, we would be a far better nation.

A further obscenity of the war was the way that industry was allowed to make weapons while still producing products for consumers. Nobody felt any inconvenience. A friend told me that when the guys had just a few weeks left in Viet Nam, who should come to visit them but a sales representative from General Motors who was there to help them custom order their new car so that it could be ready and delivered to their base when they returned to the United States. We were looking at his Olds Cutlass, gold with a black vinyl roof, on a very hot day. That was the story behind his forgetting to order air conditioning.

I am sorry for going off, but this was a time in my life that I remember very well. It's like an area of burned skin that is more sensitive to heat than the surrounding flesh. The ensuing years have done nothing to lessen the extra sensitivity.

 

[danemodsandy]

Tomturbomatic:

I was there, too. The Sixties were a strange and wonderful decade, and I share your mix of wonder and pain at the things that were going on at the time.

One thing I particularly remember was how much got done- I mean real accomplishment- at dinner parties, in board rooms, at church functions, and the like. There were people rioting in the streets demanding change. The change was happening far away from them, in a civil fashion.

My dad knew Martin Luther King (we're Caucasian). He knew people like Mills B. Lane (head of the Citizens & Southern Bank here in Atlanta). He knew many of the South's other leading citizens. I saw the power of civility at work, as these and many other people shook hands with their enemies, made small talk, and then worked around to the business at hand, which was civil rights. Our Mayor Hartsfield was particularly effective when requesting people to set aside decades of segregation: "Don't leave it for the children to do," he said, gently reminding people that their kids would have to deal with whatever world they left them. And I saw a highly racist society voluntarily lay down its prejudice- at least so far as human nature permitted- and begin a new era. We have by no means completed the journey begun at that time, but by grannies we started on it, and we started on it against all odds.

The rioters didn't do that. Not even the Freedom Riders- God rest their souls- did that, though they certainly brought great focus to bear on the situation. The people who knew when and where to press their cause did it.

That's all I can tell you.