News and Notes

Commentary From the Editors

Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Lyndon Johnson, Fresca Fanatic

Lyndon Johnson "gave up alcohol and drank tea, Tab and Fresca" after he became president in 1963, as we note in our profile.  We didn't know until now that he used Fresca as a weapon, too.

Backstory: Fresca was a diet soda made by Coca-Cola. (Fresca is still around, in fact).  Johnson was such a fan that he reportedly had a "Fresca" call button added to his private White House study (though not an actual Fresca tap in the Oval Office as sometimes rumored).

Here's an anecdote from the late Ted Kennedy's 2009 memoir, True Compass.  The year is 1968.  Kennedy has just returned from a fact-finding trip to Vietnam, and (with aide Dave Burke) is giving a negative report to the pro-war LBJ at the White House.

The president... suggested that before I continue, Dave and I might like some coffee, tea, or Fresca.  We politely declined.  The president persisted and asked Dave, "Aren't you going to have a Fresca with your president?"  Dave, of course, said he would have a Fresca.

LBJ seemed preoccupied with our soft drink needs as that meeting went on, Burke's especially. Every time Dave found an opening to voice his opinions on Vietnam, Johnson would interrupt to ask whether he would like another Fresca.  It finally became clear that the president was trying to keep Dave off balance -- and off the topic of Vietnam.

"Aren't you going to have a Fresca with your president?" Heh! Well played, sir.

Labels: Lyndon Johnson, Soft Drinks, Ted Kennedy

Posted by Mr. Holznagel at 6:07 PM0 comments  

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Thanks for Nothing, Ted Sorensen

Here's a belated book review of my most frustrating read of 2009: Ted Sorensen's book Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History.

The book came out in 2008 and it's billed as Sorensen's frank personal memoir of his 11 years as John Kennedy's speechwriter and right-hand advisor.

Sorensen says in the preface that he was still in shock from JFK's assassination when he wrote his 1965 memoir Kennedy, plus Jackie and family were still alive and he didn't want to insult anyone and etc, etc. This time he's going to tell the truth, as well as he can remember it, for history. Great!

(Incidentally, you could call me a Sorensen fan.  I'm certainly a Kennedy fan, and Sorensen had the kind of brainy, working-for-the-good career I have always thought was admirable. )

The first 100 (large-print) pages or so of the book are recollections of Sorensen's childhood in Nebraska, then there are another 80 pages of his early years in Washington and early working years with JFK.

(Sorensen almost hired on with Oregon Senator Wayne Morse, incidentally -- another high-minded liberal and later one of only two senators to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin resolution in 1964. Sorensen then turned down a job offer with Washington's Scoop Jackson to take the job with JFK. Jackson was more of the Democratic rising star at the time, it seems. Sorensen asked both Jackson and JFK what he'd be doing for them. Kennedy told him he wanted him to research and write up detailed analysis of, and offer solutions for, the fading economic industries of New England. Jackson said, "I need a smart lawyer to get my name in the paper more.")

On to page 180, where we get a chapter titled: "My Perspective on JFK's Personal Life." Great! Finally, finally, I'm going to get the straight dope, from someone who knows, about exactly what shenanigans there were and how we can resolve the adultery-happy horndog side of JFK with the smart, idealistic statesman we also believe he was. Right?

Well, wrong. Instead I get 13 pages of Ted Sorensen wagging his finger at me for wondering about it and admonishing me not to believe everything I read in the paper. Well, 10 pages of him finger-wagging, and 3 pages of oblique references that seem to admit that JFK fooled around but really don't tell me a thing. (Sample: "To paraphrase E.B. White, 'He awoke every morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy it.'" And: "JFK had many virtues, and would probably have been a less interesting men if he had no vices.")

Sorensen admits that Kennedy has affairs ("After 1956 I was aware of a few flings and fancies along the campaign trail") but insists that most women who say they slept with him are untrustworthy, and who would ever trust a Secret Service agent who was breaking his oath to remain silent anyway? He even offers this remarkable quote from Arthur Schlesinger, Jr: "Questions which no one has a right to ask are not entitled to a truthful answer." Wha--?

Sorensen never met Marilyn Monroe and doesn't know if she and JFK had a romantic relationship. "Nor did I ever arrange a date for him... He never asked me to lie to the press or to his wife." And of course, "I do believe JFK loved his wife dearly, enough to take pains not to confront, humiliate, hurt, or anger her with public misconduct."

Then he rushes to wrap up with a denunciation of our salacious media age.

Well, heck.  As a fan, a Democrat, a student of history, and a citizen, I just don't think it's really wrong to puzzle over that part of JFK's life.  Most of the rest of his career has been revealed fairly clearly, from several angles.  I feel like I have a handle on it.  This, I still can't quite make sense of.

We're not talking about a few "flings and fancies" (what an artful phrase) with sweet young things on the campaign trail. That seems to happen to nearly every politician out there. (Except surely not George W. Bush or Barack Obama!)

We're talking about nutty stuff, and a lot of it: claims that Kennedy had naked women in the White House pool, had women sent in when Jackie was away, made it with Marlene Dietrich upstairs at the White House, etc, etc. God knows how much of it is true -- surely some of it is not -- but any part of it makes you think "Wait, how?"

Sorensen plays dumb. Oh, he does mention the pool: "Even hijinks in the White House swimming pool, long alleged, were perhaps inappropriate but not illegal." Yes, long alleged indeed. Alas, he just can't tell us if "hijinks" occurred or not. I'm sorry, but it's very, very hard to believe that the president was having it on with naked women in the pool and Sorensen never heard a word. Because, you know, in the White House nobody gossips.

It's just strange. It's very unsatisfying (and I imagine that this one chapter is the entire reason that Harper Collins agreed to publish the book in the first place. They must have been BEGGING Sorensen to address it frankly).

So we're still in the dark. We can believe biographers like Kitty Kelly and Thomas Reeves, with Kennedy making it with women in the upstairs bath while loyal Secret Service agents stand by to assist, or we can believe Ted Sorensen, who worked side by side with Kennedy for 11 years and barely heard a whisper about it.

But whatever the truth was, I'm a bad guy for wondering about it. Phagh.

It's too bad, because the rest of the memoir is quite lively.  Sorensen does get off a good little speechwriting story about Lyndon Johnson, too:

"I was told that, when LBJ received a speech draft containing a quotation from Socrates, he scratched out the philosopher's name and replaced it with 'my granddaddy.'"

Thus endeth the review.

Labels: Jackie Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Ted Sorensen

Posted by Mr. Holznagel at 11:33 AM0 comments  

Monday, January 11, 2010

Martin Luther King PHOTOS from the 1960s

Martin Luther King's birthday is a holiday celebrated on the third Monday in January.  (Dr. King was actually born on 15 January 1929.)

Here are some photos of Dr. Martin Luther King from his years of greatest achievement, the 1960s.


Dr. Martin Luther King (left) with Attorney General Robert Kennedy on 22 June 1963, during a meeting between civil right officials and members of the John F. Kennedy administration.



Martin Luther King speaks in front of the Lincoln Memorial during the famous civil rights march on Washington, D.C. on 28 August 1963.  (Photo from the collection of the National Archives.)



Photo proof of the march on Washington in 1963. Dr. King can be seen (barely) near the top in the main row behind the press truck. (Photo by Warren K. Leffler, now in the collection of the U.S. Library of Congress.)



Photo of Martin Luther King preaching in 1964.  (World Telegram and Sun photo by Dick DeMarsico.)



Photo of Dr. Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders meeting with President Lyndon Johnson  in the Oval Office of the White House on 18 January 1964.  Johnson had been president for about two months at this point.  From left to right: King, Johnson, Whitney Young and James Farmer.



Martin Luther King shakes hands with President Lyndon Johnson at the signing of the Voting Rights Act on 6 August 1965. They're in the rotunda of the Capitol in Washington, D.C. 



The intensity and boredom of laws being made: Dr. King listens with President Lyndon Johnson during a White House meeting on 18 March 1966. 



And one picture from the 21st century: Marchers in Los Angeles remember Dr. King on his 76th birthday in 2005.  (Photo credit: Gary McCarthy/WENN)

More photos of Martin Luther King >>


(All Lyndon Johnson photos by Yoichi R. Okamoto, from the collection of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum.  Photo with Robert Kennedy by Abbie Rowe, from the JFK Library and Museum.)

Labels: Bobby Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Martin Luther King

Posted by Mr. Holznagel at 9:12 AM0 comments  

Thursday, August 27, 2009

LBJ Talks to Ted

From the Houston Chronicle: A page with links to audio of President Lyndon B. Johnson calling Ted Kennedy on the occasion of his brother John's death in 1963, and again on the occasion of his brother Bobby's death in 1968.

The audio comes from the archives at the University of Virginia. Direct links are here (John) and here (Bobby).

On this date in 1908 Lyndon Johnson was born.

Labels: John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Robert F. Kennedy

Posted by Mr. Hehn at 11:10 AM0 comments  

Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Obama's New Limo is an Armored "Cocoon"

Made by Cadillac.

"One news agency, noting its 8-inch-thick doors, says the limo can withstand a 'direct hit from an asteroid.' But GM spokeswoman Joanne K. Krell laughed off the comments. 'And it will fix you a latte if you ask,' she jokes."

A $25 billion latte, if you include the cost of the GM buyout.

Meanwhile, a historical side note:

"In 1965, Lyndon Johnson was the first president to ride in a bulletproof limo in an inaugural parade, less than two years after his predecessor, John F. Kennedy, was shot and killed while riding in an open car."

Labels: Barack Obama, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson

Posted by Mr. Holznagel at 11:53 AM0 comments  

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