U.S. Presidents Weren’t Always Like This One
For those too young to remember, The Smothers Brothers had a popular television comedy show in the 1960s, noteworthy among other things as the first bit of mainstream media that openly poked fun at the U.S. president. Here’s a letter that Lyndon Johnson wrote when they went off the air in 1969:
“It is part of the price of leadership of this great and free nation to be the target of clever satirists. You have given the gift of laughter to our people. May we never grow so somber or self-important that we fail to appreciate the humor in our lives.”
It’s hard to read this letter and not be utterly horrified at what’s happened to the U.S. as a nation.
Craig,
Ah memory is a wonderfully malleable resource !
As I recall, the abuse leveled against LBJ was pretty significant, and although he was undoubtedly a great man in many ways, he didn’t take criticism all that well and responded quite viciously, even violently, on occasion.
But time and distance or great healers.
Sometimes it might prove more valuable to take an objective look at our own behavior, rather than obsession against others.
It is a great quote but seems more likely to be written by a speech writer than LBJ himself.
It was once said that “LBJ never likes to be number two..” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJIb73SPzkE
@ Marco Polo and breath on the Wind
you both spoke to the reality of LBJ and you are correct
but as Marco points out it is good healing sometimes to give some one like him some credit for at least stepping out side his usual persona and showing some Humility and Grace…
good quote even if it was a speech writer who did it.
LBJ in my book gets more passing grades with each passing year. he set in motion serious and long long over due reforms in American Society and Civil rights and many of his Great society programs did create a Foundation for a better society …he tried and did get some things done.
It is also a fact he inherited the Vietnam War from his two predecessors and the Dulles brothers and was left in a real swamp or quagmire and those Kennedy whiz kid leftovers gave him terrible Advice that made it worse. He was duped by them and it consumed him etc.
He gets a Gold Star in my book. As I see it. Maybe the tragedy of the war caused him to have such a great Epiphany in the right direction on Civil Rights and Great Society as a way to balance the darkness of the war and the pain and death etc.
Time does Heal