So, exactly how repulsive was Lyndon B. Johnson? He was horrid enough that the way he said things was almost as bad as what he said. Anyone who came into contact with him was at risk of encountering a spectacle of burping, farting, nose-picking and crotch
HOW JOHNSON GOT AWAY WITH HIS BEHAVIOUR FOR SO LONG WAS COMPLICATED, BUT DISTRACTION HELPED.
As the world awaits the next nasty utterance f rom Donald Trump, one can only marvel at how history itself has ended up in ( language alert!) — a “shithole.” Amid the chronic shock and horrified reactions, people have become blind to the fact that he is not ( yet) the most disgusting U. S. president in living memory. That title actually belongs to a Texan Democrat, Lyndon B. Johnson, a howling, flatulent tormentor of women whose cussing and racism remain breathtaking today. And if you’re offended by Trump’s level of vulgarity, you really — really — don’t want to read any further.
How Johnson got away with his behaviour for so long was complicated, but distraction helped. The very way he attained power — by succeeding the slain John F. Kennedy — caused some critics ( notably writer Robert Sherrill and activist Barbara Garson) to focus scornfully on that. The agony of the Vietnam War likewise diverted attention.
But Johnson was also an intense networker, and he succeeded in cultivating or otherwise entangling several prominent journalists, including Walter Lippmann and Drew Pearson, as well as Washington Post owner Katharine Graham. According to biographers Ronald Steel and Oliver Pilat, plus Graham’s own 1997 memoir, these personal ties undermined a lot of objectivity in the press.
Indeed, numerous Washington insiders — reporters, officials, cronies — did not reveal their knowledge of Johnson’s ugly side until 1980, when oral biographer Merle Miller coaxed them. Later biographers, including Robert A. Caro, Robert Dallek, and Randall B. Woods, have added to the revelations.
As well, it was not widely known for years that Johnson had a recording system in the Oval Office. This system, like the more infamous one of Richard Nixon, captured many very regrettable comments, but it would not be definitively described until a 1999 book by historian William Doyle. ( Transcripts of the recordings were edited and released through historian Michael R. Beschloss beginning in the late 1990s.)
Finally, one reaction to Johnson’s coarse language was a tendency to sanitize the public record. British journalist Henry Brandon has recalled how the Washington Post rendered “bullshit” as “bull.”
So, exactly how repulsive was Johnson? He was horrid enough that the way he said things was almost as bad as what he said. Anyone who came into contact with him was at risk of encountering a spectacle of burping, farting, nose- picking and crotch-scratching. Congressman Richard Bolling, who witnessed some of this, told Merle Miller: “I wouldn’t say Johnson was vulgar — he was barnyard.” Worse, Johnson had no sense of personal space and treated conversation as a creepy hands-on affair. Miller learned from Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee that, “You really felt as if a St. Bernard had licked your face for an hour, had pawed you all over.”
For women, t he ordeal was even worse, and Bradlee claimed that Johnson groped Katharine Graham and was “bumping” up against t he breasts of Washington Post writer Meg Greenfield. (In her memoir, Graham says nothing of this and is suspiciously quiet about almost all of Johnson’s peculiarities. She does admit he kissed her on the cheek at least once.)
A truly unlucky few even got to see Johnson relieve himself. Reporter Sam Schaffer toured Johnson’s Texan ranch and was stunned when Johnson urinated right in front of him, in the open. Arthur Goldschmidt, a friend and United Nations official, was in the Oval Office with Johnson when the latter suddenly headed for the washroom, “took a crap, then shaved and showered, all the while continuing his conversation as though what he was doing was the most normal thing in the world.”
As for what Johnson was actually saying during all the above, he was known for folksy aphorisms that were crude, sometimes racist, and often weird, including “it was raining as hard as a cat pissing on a flat rock,” “as straight as an Indian shits,” and the importance of fighting an opponent “till he’s shitty as a bear.” These became more disturbing in his retirement years, when UPI reporter Bill Theis was told by him that subsequent White House economic policies were “the worst thing that’s happened to this country since pantyhose ruined finger-fucking.” ( That quote apparently was passed around as insider gossip until it got to Miller via Richard Bolling.)
The pantyhose bit was part of a troubling pattern. Biographer Woods learned that Johnson would tell close friends that his own wife, the delightfully named Lady Bird, was “the best piece of ass I ever had” ( but he still cheated on her). Recorded Oval Office telephone conversations include a 1964 exchange with staffer Ralph Dungan concerning female appointees to government positions. Johnson kept asking Dungan about their looks. Former staffer Yolanda Boozer told Miller that Johnson would comment if female White House employees gained any weight, provoking anxious dieting.
Regardless of gender, Johnson’s treatment of subordinates could be appalling. In one of her very rare confirmations of Johnson’s behaviour, Katharine Graham says she saw Johnson apoplectically yelling at aide Jack Valenti over some mistake. She describes the tirade as “callous and inhuman.” A senior adviser, James H. Rowe Jr., reportedly quit after witnessing a similar incident. Johnson’s own vice president, Hubert Humphrey, informed Miller that Johnson’s need to control people caused him to say of certain individuals that, “I’ve got his pecker in my pocket.”
And then there was the Nword. Although Johnson styled himself as a civil rights crusader and did make progress on race relations, he still presided over a United States torn by racial violence. His public and private statements showed that he never realized he himself may have been part of the problem. For example, Robert A. Caro says he referred to the manual labour of his youth as “n----r work.”
A recorded 1964 telephone conversation with the hapless Jack Valenti touched on Johnson’s electoral chances in Texas for an upcoming presidential race: “I think I can take every Mexican in the state and every n----r in the state.” Several weeks before that presidential vote, Johnson spoke before a New Orleans crowd about how Southern politicians constantly twisted all issues towards race. That was a valid point, but then the speech became strange: “All they ( the voters) ever hear at election time is n---- r, n---- r, n---- r!” Woods discovered that somebody sanitized the official record of the speech, substituting the word “Negro,” but witnesses confirmed what was really said. Robert Dallek learned of a 1967 meeting in the Oval Office with Texan state official Larry Temple, concerning possible black candidates for the Supreme Court. Johnson stressed he would consider only high-profile people: “When I appoint a n----r to the bench, I want everyone to know he’s a n----r.”
Unsurprisingly, when black rioting erupted in Los Angeles in 1965, Johnson was bewildered, and he confided to aide Joseph Califano his fear that “Negroes will end up pissing in the aisles of the Senate.”
In the end, however, it was the uncontrollable Vietnam War that destroyed Johnson’s administration and wrecked his legacy. William Doyle unearthed a fitting quote from a moment in mid- 1965, when Johnson was moodily strolling on the grounds of the White House, cursing: “I don’t know what the fuck to do about Vietnam.”
Top that, Trump.
‘I WOULDN’T SAY JOHNSON WAS VULGAR — HE WAS BARNYARD.’