Word: lbj
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...LBJ Apartments, 150 Erie St. (community room, parking lot entrance...
...unusual for the press to take an interest in presidential families. Jackie O. and the Kennedy kids, LBJ's daughters, the Nixon wedding and Billy Carter all were played prominently in the national news. Their lives, romances and struggles are of national interest...
...This is the question that transforms Richard Goodwin's account of the 1960s, Remembering America, from an eloquent narrative into a bizarre romp around the psychoanalyst's couch. After beginning with a fascinating account of the Charles Van Doren quiz show scandals, Goodwin winds up with elaborate discussions of LBJ's bowel movements. The result is both controversial and trivial, leaving Goodwin to contemplate rising book sales and a sinking reputation...
GOODWIN does seem to have a point about some of the alleged Johnson "eccentricities." In a chapter called, "The Master At Work," Goodwin describes LBJ's infamous habit of conducting meetings while on the toilet. Goodwin tells how Johnson forced him to attend one of these bathroom meetings. "I remained standing, of course," Goodwin relates, "Johnson had the only seat in the room." Later Goodwin details Johnson's rantings about the Kennedys and "Harvards" and his absurd orders to fire one official or another for perceived acts of disloyalty. At one point, Johnson demanded that one of his top foreign...
...keys sticking in their keyboard. Goodwin's problem with slacks is perhaps symptomatic of a larger malady, something that I once heard Shirley MacLaine during a taping of the Mike Douglas Show call para-pneumoreactionary paralysis. I also have lingering suspicions that Goodwin's obsessive desire to paint LBJ as crazy hints at some problems closer to home. Lurching about accusing the president of being a cuckoo bird, Goodwin is not exactly a cheerful model of sanity. Maybe Johnson's toilet escapades were just imaginative ploys designed to relieve a president of an annoying junior assistant...