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. . . see: "1960s" see: "PEOPLE" see: "POLITICS" see: "PRESIDENTS" see: "WAR (VIETNAM)" ^ There is a wonderful anecdote about the election of 1960: the evening of the election, Johnson called up Kennedy and said, 'I see that I'm winning Texas, you're losing Ohio, and we're doing all right together in Pennsylvania.' --Robert Dallek (b. 1934) American historian. In Brian Lamb _Booknotes: Stories From American History_ [2001]. My favorite story is about [Lyndon] Johnson going to visit Harry Truman in the waning days of Johnson's presidency. He met with Truman in Independence, Missouri, and said to him, 'Harry, you and Bess are living in this old house here in Independence. You're getting on in years. You may become ill. You ought to have an army medical corpsman living here at the house with you.' Truman was supposed to have replied, 'Really, Lyndon! Can I have that?' Johnson supposedly said, 'Of course, Harry. My God, man, you're an ex-presiden of the United States. I'll arrange it. About six months after Johnson got out of the White House, a reporter caught up with him one day at the ranch and said, 'Mr President, is it true that you've got an army medical corpsman living here on the ranch with you?' Johnson said, 'Of course it's true, Harry Truman has one.' --Robert Dallek (b. 1934) American historian. In Brian Lamb _Booknotes: Stories From American History_ [2001]. As increasing numbers of Americans died in the fighting [Vietnam War] and Johnson couldn't appear in public without risk of protests, he became emotionally distraught. By 1967, Georgia senator Richard Russell, a Johnson mentor, couldn't bear to see Johnson alone at the White House, because the President would cry uncontrollably. --Robert Dallek (b. 1934) American historian. In Robert A. Wilson _Character Above All; Ten Presidents _ [1999]. - There was a dark side to Johnson. He was unscrupulous. In Texas politics, where he acted as a fund-raiser for FDR, he was closely linked to his contractor ally, Brown & Root, for which he had negotiated enormous government contracts to build the Corpus Christi Naval Air Station. The company illegally financed Johnson's unsuccessful 1941 Senate campaign, and from July 1942 IRS agents began to investigate both them and LBJ himself. They found overwhelming evidence not only of fraud and breaches of the Hatch Act in the use of campaign money, but of lawbreaking in many other aspects of Brown & Root's business, including tax evasion of over $1 million. Both LBJ and Herman Brown, head of the firm who had begun life as a two-dollar- a-day rod carrier for a surveyor, could have gone to jail for many years. The investigation was derailed as a result of the direct intervention of FDR himself, January 13, 1944, and the matter ended with a simple fine: no indictment, no trial, and no publicity. After this, LBJ was involved in various Texan political intrigues of a more or less unlawful nature and in building up a personal fortune (most of it in the name of his wife, the long-suffering 'Lady Bird' Johnson) in radio-TV stations and land. There was also the case of Robert G. ('Bobby') Baker, a gangling South Carolinan who had served Johnson as secretary and factotum in the years when he was Senate leader. Baker was known, on account of his power and influence, as 'the hundred and first Senator,' and LBJ said of him, fondly: 'I have two daughters. If I had a son, this would be the boy ... [He is] my strong right arm, the last man I see at night, the first one I see in the morning.' In the autumn of 1963, a private suit against Baker in a federal court, alleging that he had improperly used his influence in the Senate to obtain defense contracts for his own vending-machine firm, provoked a spate of similar accusations against his probity, and in a number of them LBJ was involved. The accusations were so serious that, just before his assassination, Kennedy was considering dropping LBJ from his 1964 ticket, even though he feared that to do so would imperil his chances of carrying Texas and Georgia. At Republican urging, the Senate agreed to investigate the case. But by that time LBJ was president and the full weight of his office was brought to bear to avoid the need for testimony either from Johnson himself or from his aide Walter Jenkins, who possessed a good deal of guilty knowledge. The Senate committee, on which Democrats out-numbered Republicans six to three, voted solidly on party lines to protect the President. --Paul Johnson (b. 1928) British historian. _A History of the American People_, pp. 870-71 [1997] - In this age when there can be no losers in peace and no victors in war — we must recognise the obligation to match national strength with national restraint — we must be prepared at one and the same time for both the confirmation of power and the limitation of power. --Lyndon B. Johnson (1908—1973) American Democratic statesman, President [1963—1969]. (First address to Congress as President [27 November 1963].) All I have I would have given gladly not to be standing here today. --Lyndon B. Johnson (1908—1973) American Democratic statesman, President [1963—1969]. (First address to Congress as President [27 November 1963].) All the way with LBJ. --Democratic campaign slogan [1964]. If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: 'President Can't Swim.' --Lyndon B. Johnson (1908—1973) American Democratic statesman, President [1963—1969]. Quoted on the back cover of William B. Whitman _The Quotable Politician_ [2003]. Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today? --Anti-Vietnam War slogan. - - "Hoover's Institution" By Laurence H. Silberman _The Wall Street Journal_ [20 July 2005] [. . . ] I became deputy attorney general in early 1974, after the "Saturday night massacre." Having seen printed rumors of the "secret and confidential files" of J. Edgar Hoover (who had died in 1972), I asked Clarence Kelly, the very straight and honorable director of the bureau, whether they existed. He assured me that they did not. If they ever did they must have been destroyed. I was shocked then, when on Jan. 19, 1975, as acting attorney general, I read a front page story in the Washington Post confirming the existence of the files. The story pointed out that the files contained embarrassing material collected on congressmen. When I confronted Kelly, he was initially mystified. He then realized the Post must be referring to files in his outer office, in plain sight, which he had inherited but never examined. Sure enough, they were the notorious secret and confidential files of J. Edgar Hoover. The House Judiciary Committee demanded I testify about those files, so I was obliged to read them. Accompanied by only one FBI official, I read virtually all these files in three weekends. It was the single worst experience of my long governmental service. Hoover had indeed tasked his agents with reporting privately to him any bits of dirt on figures such as Martin Luther King, or their families. Hoover sometimes used that information for subtle blackmail to ensure his and the bureau's power. I intend to take to my grave nasty bits of information on various political figures — some still active. As bad as the dirt collection business was, perhaps even worse was the evidence that he had allowed — even offered — the bureau to be used by presidents for nakedly political purposes. I have always thought that the most heinous act in which a democratic government can engage is to use its law enforcement machinery for political ends. We attempted, without going into specifics, to explain to the committee the nature of Hoover's secret files. I intend now to be more specific because I see no reason why such matters should not be public. Indeed, from my subsequent vantage point as ambassador to Yugoslavia, I was rather surprised that the Church Committee, which had access to the files, largely ignored the FBI's misdeeds and concentrated instead on rather less objectionable CIA activities. We told the committee that the bureau had sought, at the direction of a political figure, to gather unfavorable information on his opponent during an election campaign. Rep. Herman Badillo of New York pressed me to admit that it was an investigation of Allard Lowenstein, an antiwar candidate running against Rep. John Rooney, the powerful chairman of an appropriations panel with jurisdiction over the FBI. I repeatedly denied that and finally said it involved the presidential campaign of 1964. Shortly thereafter, Don Edwards, the chairman, terminated the hearing. But reporters dug out more facts. Only a few weeks before the 1964 election, a powerful presidential assistant, Walter Jenkins, was arrested in a men's room in Washington. Evidently, the president was concerned that Barry Goldwater would use that against him in the election. Another assistant, Bill Moyers, was tasked to direct Hoover to do an investigation of Goldwater's staff to find similar evidence of homosexual activity. Mr. Moyers' memo to the FBI was in one of the files. When the press reported this, I received a call in my office from Mr. Moyers. Several of my assistants were with me. He was outraged; he claimed that this was another example of the Bureau salting its files with phony CIA memos. I was taken aback. I offered to conduct an investigation, which if his contention was correct, would lead me to publicly exonerate him. There was a pause on the line and then he said, "I was very young. How will I explain this to my children?" And then he rang off. I thought to myself that a number of the Watergate figures, some of whom the department was prosecuting, were very young, too. Other presidents, according to those files, misused the bureau, although never Truman and Eisenhower. But Johnson clearly was the most demanding. This discovery was particularly painful for me. Although I was a life-long Republican, I had not only voted for LBJ, I had signed an ad supporting him, which got me ejected from the Hawaii Young Republicans. In 1968 the FBI, at the president's direction, actually surveilled Spiro Agnew, the Republican vice-presidential candidate. To be sure, as subsequent events revealed, Agnew might well have been under surveillance when, as governor of Maryland, he was taking bribes; but in 1968 it was for the purpose of determining whether he was in contact with South Vietnamese leaders. It was not for law- enforcement purposes. Incidentally, the FBI never determined that he was in contact with the South Vietnamese. It was not only Republicans that Johnson targeted with the FBI. He must have been obsessed with the Kennedy political threat because he used the bureau to determine whether officials in his administration were too close to Robert Kennedy after Kennedy left the administration. Ironically, one of his White House assistants, whom he inherited from JFK and was a particular subject of this sort of surveillance, is now married to LBJ's biographer. I refer to Richard Goodwin, the husband of Doris Kearns Goodwin. Some of Johnson's suspicions of the Kennedys were rather amusing. He became convinced that the Washington Star was secretly owned by the Kennedy family and that is why he received less favorable coverage from the Star than from the Post. He insisted that Hoover unearth those connections. Hoover plaintively tried to explain that the Star was owned by the Kauffmann family and that they were Republicans. But surely the most bizarre episode that I discovered (and can reveal) involves the investigation and trial of Bobby Baker, who had been LBJ's top Senate aide. To say that the president was apprehensive about this episode would be a dramatic understatement. The investigation and trial took place when Bobby Kennedy was attorney general and Jack Miller the assistant attorney general for the Criminal Division. During the investigation of Baker's Senate activities, Miller asked the FBI to wire a potential witness. To his astonishment Hoover responded with the ridiculous assertion that it would be improper. Of course, Hoover promptly reported this to LBJ as he had many activities of the Kennedy Justice Department. However, Miller was not to be deterred. With Kennedy's approval he called a special assistant to Treasury Secretary Henry Fowler to gain help from Treasury agents. The assistant arranged the help and Baker was convicted. Much later, toward the end of the Johnson administration, Hoover discovered Miller's end-around and duly reported it to LBJ, who, furious, demanded that Fowler fire the assistant. Fowler refused. That assistant was Robert Jordan, my Harvard Law School classmate, subsequently general counsel of the Army and later my partner at Steptoe & Johnson. Hoover's shenanigans may well be the genesis of Watergate. I noted in the files that he had an early private meeting with the new President Nixon. I surmised that he must have let Nixon know something of what he had done for prior presidents; it would have been too dangerous not to. I further suspect that Nixon, whose ethical standards were quite relative, would have concluded he should have the same services that were available to his predecessors. But he didn't trust Hoover totally, so he set up his own political intelligence gathering network outside the FBI — the plumbers. During Watergate, Nixon would occasionally mutter that prior presidents were culpable of secret political intelligence investigations. He even suggested that the Justice Department should substantiate that claim. We ignored him, but I am sure he would have seized on the Post's revelations of the secret files — if they had appeared earlier. [. . . ] - President Johnson was advised by the Joint Chiefs to strike guerrilla sanctuaries in the North. He hesitated, in no small part because of a bit of a cautionary word on fighting in Asia that he once received from a surprising source. As the President tells it, when he visited the late General Douglas MacArthur at Walter Reed Hospital for the last time, the two got to talking about the Far East. Said MacArthur: "Son, don't ever get yourself bogged down in a land war in Asia." --"Foreign Relations: A Look Down That Long Road," _Time_ [19 February 1965]  . . see: "AUTHORS" see: "PEOPLE" see: "WRITING" I am not ... saying that Dr. Johnson was a man without originality, compared with the ordinary run of men's minds, but he was not a man of original thought or genius, in the sense in which Montaigne or Lord Bacon was. He opened no new vein of precious ore, nor did he light upon any single pebbles of uncommon size and unrivalled lustre. We seldom meet with any thing to 'give us pause'; he does not set us thinking for the first time. --William Hazlitt (1778—1830) English essayist. _Lectures on the English Comic Writers_ [1819] But the great Dr. Johnson was one in a century, and I count myself honored to have tasted the wine of his speech, even though put to my mouth through the goodness of his friend. For that Englishman is not to be read with the eyes alone, but read out, as with the Word, with a good voice, and a rolling of the tongue, so that the rich taste of magnificent English may come to the ears and go to the head, like the perfumes of the Magi, or like the best of beer, home brewed and long in the cask. --Richard Llewellyn [Richard Dafydd Vivian Llewellyn Lloyd] (1906—1983) Welsh novelist and playwright. _How Green Was My Valley_ [1939] I can read every word that Dr. Johnson wrote with delight, for he had good sense, charm, and wit. No one could have written better if he had not wilfully set himself to write in the grand style. He knew good English when he saw it. --W. Somerset Maugham (1874—1965) English novelist, playwright, and short-story writer. _The Summing Up_, ch. XII [1938] I at once and for ever recognized in him a man entirely sincere, and infallibly wise in the view and estimate he gave of the common questions, business, and ways of the world. I valued his sentences not primarily because they were symmetrical, but because they were just, and clear. ... No other writer could have secured me, as he did, against all chance of being misled by my own sanguine and metaphysical temperament. He taught me carefully to measure life, and distrust fortune; and he secured me, by his admantine common-sense, from being caught in the cobwebs of German metaphysics, or sloughed in the English drainage of them. --John Ruskin (1819—1900) English art and social critic. _Praeterita_ [1885-1887] - The pioneering lexicographer Samuel Johnson declared in his 1755 dictionary that the "bon" was French for "good" (which it is), and therefore "bonfire" obviously meant "good fire" (which it doesn't). What makes Dr. Johnson's error especially surprising is that when "bonfire" had first appeared in English in the 15th century, everyone understood that the "bon" meant "bone," and that a "bonfire" was originally a fire made of bones, usually animal bones that had accumulated over the course of a year. --The Word Detective . . see: "HUMOR" see: "SMILES" Post September 11, suddenly the world feels bi-polar again, and one of the things being directed at us along with irrationality, hatred of women, religiosity, and fanaticism, is humourlessness. Humour is the obverse of common sense. As Clive James said, "Humour is common sense dancing." And without humour there can be no common sense. Humourless people aren't just the people that don't laugh at jokes; I mean they can't be trusted with anything. I don't know how they get across the road without getting knocked over, it seems to me such a basic human quality, so it's important to assert comedy and laughter in the face of its opposite. --Martin Amis (b. 1949) British novelist and son of Sir Kingsley Amis. Quoted in "The Hindu" [6 October 2002]. The marvellous thing about a joke with a double meaning is that it can only mean one thing. --Ronnie Barker (1929—2005) English television comedian, writer, and actor. Quoted in "The Listener", vol. 99 [1978]. A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections. --George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans] (1819—1880) English novelist. _Daniel Deronda_, bk. 2, ch. 15 [1876] Anyone who has at any time had occasion to enquire from the literature of aesthetics and psychology what light can be thrown on the nature of jokes and on the the position they occupy will probably have to admit that jokes have not received nearly as much philosophical consideration in view of the part they play in our mental health. --Sigmund Freud (1856—1939) Austrian psychiatrist. _Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious [1905] The world has joked incessantly for over fifty centuries, And every joke that's possible has long ago been made. --W. S. Gilbert (1836—1911) English writer of comic and satirical verse. _His Excellency_, act 2 [1894] If all else fails, the character of a man can be recognized by nothing so surely as by a jest which he takes badly. --Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742—1799) German scientist and drama critic. _Aphorisms_ [1765—1799], aphorism 46 _Omissis jocis_ (Joking aside.) --Pliny the Younger or Caius Plinius Caecilius Secundus (62—c.115) Roman senator and author of a famous collection of letters. Ep. 1, 21 There are only a handful of possible jokes. The chief members of this joke band may be said to be: The fall of dignity. Mistaken identity. Almost every joke on the screen belongs, roughly, to one or the other of these clans. --Mack Sennett (1880—1960) Canadian-born innovator of slapstick comedy in film. Quoted in Richard Koszarski _Hollywood Directors, 1914-1940_ [1976]. - Another well-known example of spontaneous intuitive insights are jokes. In the split second where you understand a joke you experience a moment of "enlightenment." It is well known that this moment must come spontaneously, that it cannot be achieved by "explaining" the joke, i.e. by intellectual analysis. Only with a sudden intuitive insight into the nature of the joke do we experience the liberating laughter the joke is meant to produce. The similarity between a spiritual insight and the understanding of a joke must be well known to enlightened men and women, since they almost invariably show a great sense of humor. Zen, especially, is full of funny stories and anecdotes, and in the Tao Te Ching we read, "If it were not laughed at, it would not be sufficient to be Tao." --Fritjof Capra _The Tao of Physics_ [1975] ;void(0)) JONES, CHUCK . . see: "BUGS BUNNY" see: "CARTOON CHARACTERS" see: "PEOPLE" for other related links If Walt Disney was the first animator who taught me how to fly in my dreams, Chuck Jones was the first animator who made me laugh at them. --Steven Spielberg (b. 1946) American film director and producer. Foreward to Chuck Jones _Chuck Amuck: The Life and Times of an Animated Cartoonist_ [1994].  JOY . . see: "HAPPINESS" for related links Joy, n. An emotion variously excited, but in its highest degree arising from the contemplation of grief in another. --Ambrose Bierce (1842—1914) American newspaperman, wit, and satirist. _Wasp_ (San Francisco) [9 January 1886], as quoted in Fred R. Shapiro (ed.) _The Yale Book of Quotations_ [2006]. I am convinced that we have a degree of delight, and that no small one, in the real misfortunes and pains of others. --Edmund Burke (1729—1797) Irish-born Whig politician and man of letters. _A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful_, pt i [1756] Oh, frabjous day! Callooh. Callay! He chortled in his joy. --Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832—1898) English writer and logician. _Thorough the Looking-Glass_ [1872] One joy scatters a hundred griefs. --Chinese proverb Variety is the mother of enjoyment. --Benjamin Disraeli (1804—1881) British Tory statesman, novelist, and Prime Minister [1868, 1874—1880]. _Vivian Grey_, bk. V, ch. iv [1827] How happy are the pessimists! What joy is theirs when they have proved there is no joy. --Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830—1916) Austrian writer. Quoted in Maturin M. Ballou _Edge-Tools of Speech_, p. 251 [1886]. There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us. --Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803—1882) American philosopher and poet. _The Conduct of Life_ [1860] We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them. --Kahlil Gibran (1883—1931) Lebanese poet. _Sand and Foam_ [1926] Enjoy what you can, endure what you must. --attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749—1832) German poet, novelist, and playwright. A propensity to hope and joy is real riches; one to fear and sorrow, real poverty. --David Hume (1711—1776) Scottish philosopher. "The Sceptic" (essay) [c. 1750] in _Essays Moral, Political, and Literary_, vol 1 [2 vols., 1875]. The trick is not how much pain you feel — but how much joy you feel. Any idiot can feel pain. Life is full of excuses to feel pain, excuses not to live, excuses, excuses, excuses. --Erica Jong (b. 1942) American novelist. _How To Save Your Own Life_ [1977] We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world. --Helen Keller (1880—1968) American author and educator who was blind and deaf. _Atlantic Monthly_ (May 1890) as quoted in Bill Swainson _Encarta Book of Quotations_ [2000]. A man enjoys the happiness he feels, a woman the happiness she gives. --Pierre Choderlos de Laclos (1741—1803) French soldier and writer. _Les Liaisons dangereuses_ [1782] Joy, and Temperance, and Repose Slam the door on the doctor's nose. --Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807—1882) American poet. "The Best Medicines" in _The Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems_ [3rd ed., 1846]. Enjoy yourself, It's later than you think. --Herb Magidson (1906—1986) American songwriter. "Enjoy Yourself" [1950 song] Sleep, riches, and health, to be truly enjoyed, must be interrupted. --Jean Paul Richter (1763—1825) German novelist. _Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces_ , ch. VIII. Shared pain is lessened; shared joy is increased; thus do we refute entropy. --Spider Robinson (b. 1948) American-born Canadian science fiction author. _The Callahan Chronicals_, pt. 6 "Earth and Beyond" [1997] Abstaining so as really to enjoy, is the epicurism, the very perfection, of reason. --Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712—1778) French philosopher and novelist. Attributed in _A New Dictionary of Quotations From the Greek, Latin ..._ [1859]. Anyone can sympathize with another's sorrow, but to sympathize with another's joy is the attribute of an angel. --attributed to Arthur Schopenhauer (1788—1860) German philosopher. A thing seriously pursued affords true enjoyment. --Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 B.C.— 65 A.D.) Roman philosopher and poet. _Epistles_, XXIII, 3, 4 - How much better it is to weep at joy than to joy at weeping. --William Shakespeare (1564—1616) English dramatist. _Much Ado About Nothing_, I, i [1598—1599] Silence is the perfectest herald of joy: I were but little happy, if I could say how much. --William Shakespeare (1564—1616) English dramatist. _Much Ado About Nothing_, II, i [1598—1599] - Actually there are only two philosophies of life: one is first the feast and then the headache; the other is first the fast and then the feast. Deferred joys purchased by sacrifice are always the sweetest. --Fulton John Sheen (1895—1979) Roman Catholic bishop; the first popular preacher to appear on television. _Life of Christ_ [1958] There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want, and after that to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second. --Logan Pearsall Smith (1865—1946) American-born man of letters. _Afterthoughts_ [1931] Gaiety is the outstanding feature of the Soviet Union. --Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (1879—1953), Soviet Communist leader and head of the USSR from the death of V. I. Lenin (1924) until his own death. (Attributed 1935 comment.) Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with. --Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835—1910) American humorist, novelist, journalist, and river pilot. _Following the Equator_ [1897] "Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar" Joy and grief are never far apart. In the same street the shutters of one house are closed, while the curtains of the next are brushed by shadows of the dance. A wedding- party returns from church, and a funeral winds to its door. The smiles and the sadness of life are the tragi-comedy of Shakespeare. Gladness and sighs brighten and dim the mirror he beholds. --Robert Aris Willmott (1809—1863) English editor and author. "Pleasures of Literature" in _The Eclectic Magazine_ [February 1852]. - The tide recedes, but leaves behind bright seashells on the sand. The sun goes down, but gentle warmth still lingers on the land. The music stops, yet echoes on in sweet, soulful refrains. For every joy that passes, something beautiful remains. --anon. ----- blithe (adjective) [bLIdh] Joyous, spiritedly if not giddily happy; happy to the point of ignoring reality. cavort [kuh-VORT], intransitive verb: 1. To bound or prance about. 2. To have lively or boisterous fun; to behave in a high-spirited, festive manner. end page | IDAHO - IDIOTS | IDLENESS - ILLEGAL ALIENS | ILLNESS - IMMATURITY | IMMIGRATION & IMMORALITY | IMMORTALITY - IMPOSTORS | IMPRESSIONABLE - INDECISION | INDEPENDENCE - INDIANA | INDIFFERENCE - INDIVIDUALITY | INDOCTRINATION - INFORMATION | INGRATITUDE - INNOVATION | INNUENDO - INSPIRATION | INSULTS - INTEGRITY | INTELLECTUALS - INTENTIONS | INTERESTED(ING) - INTUITION | INVENTIONS - ITALY | IRAQ | ISLAM | JAIL - JOGGING | JOHNSON (LYNDON) - JOY | JOURNALISM | JUDGE (TO) - JUSTICE | | H | I - J | K - L | M | N - O | P - Q | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The Reviews | |
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