Word: johnson
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Hersh opens the book with a description of Robert Kennedy, his brother's keeper, in the first hours after the President's assassination, ordering someone to scour the White House for incriminating files and secret tape recordings before they fall into the hands of Lyndon Johnson. What does he want to keep secret? In Hersh's book, it's Jack's long-rumored first marriage, the Mob contacts that helped him steal the 1960 election, and his history of health problems, including years of venereal disease. Then there was his real role in the murder of South Vietnamese leader...
Kennedy's compulsive womanizing is of consequence not only for what it says about his character but also because it could have made him vulnerable to blackmail. Hersh suggests that it did, but never produces convincing proof. Why did Kennedy name Johnson as his running mate, despite Robert Kennedy's distaste for Johnson? Many historians have concluded that it was pure political calculation: Johnson could deliver Texas. Hersh thinks it was blackmail. He says that during a closed-door meeting with Kennedy, Johnson may have threatened to disclose J.F.K.'s dirty laundry, though Hersh doesn't know which laundry...
Raskin's claim is seconded by Clark Clifford, the longtime Washington power broker, who tells Hersh he served as Kennedy's go-between with Symington. Later, says Clifford, Kennedy told him he was forced to accept Johnson. But blackmail is a badly stretched conclusion for an author who has so little hard evidence to go on--and who paints Johnson in other parts of the book as ignorant of Kennedy's hidden undertakings...
...Mascis, bass player Mike Johnson and drummer George Berz benefit from a little musical diversity with trumpet and flute accompaniment, but on stage the three are alone with their amps (and, from their glazed expressions, one gathers that they're presumably alone somewhere inside their minds as well). On classics like "Repulsion" and "No Bones" the band needs only provide the right chords and mumble a few lyrics, and the crowd fills in the rest...
Discussion on the internet seems to emphasize that Dinosaur Jr. is much more comfortable playing together post-Hand it Over. There seems to be a grain of truth in this observation; Mascis and Johnson smile almost apologetically at the audience while delivering the depressive selfcenteredness featured in "Alone" and other new material. It is a little laughable to imagine Mascis telling a girl "I still believe in sometime" or "I still need your sunshine," and the band fully recognizes this overdramatism. On jamtv.com, Berz remarks, "When I first got the tape of 'Alone,' I remember hanging out with my girlfriend...