{"id":20522,"date":"2015-01-07T05:45:59","date_gmt":"2015-01-07T10:45:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=20522"},"modified":"2015-01-06T18:40:27","modified_gmt":"2015-01-06T23:40:27","slug":"confusing-lbj-with-robert-kennedy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2015\/01\/confusing-lbj-with-robert-kennedy\/","title":{"rendered":"Confusing LBJ with Robert Kennedy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

We\u2019ve blogged about<\/a> how the movie Selma <\/em>villainizes Lyndon Johnson, even though he was the president who pushed through the Civil Rights laws that Martin Luther King was marching for.\u00a0 The movie shows LBJ ordering the FBI to spy on Dr. King to collect dirt on him.\u00a0 But, as (liberal) columnist Richard Cohen points out, it was Attorney General Robert Kennedy who gave that order during his brother\u2019s administration!<\/p>\n

From Richard Cohen, \u2018Selma\u2019 distorts the truth about LBJ \u2013 The Washington Post<\/a>:<\/p>\n

In its need for some dramatic tension, \u201cSelma\u201d asserts that King had to persuade and pressure a recalcitrant Johnson to introduce the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The movie also depicts Johnson authorizing FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to smear King and \u2014 as King himself suspected \u2014 try to drive him to suicide. It is a profoundly ugly moment.<\/p>\n

\n

But a bevy of historians say it never happened. It was Robert F. Kennedy, the former attorney general, who authorized the FBI\u2019s bugging of King\u2019s hotel rooms. Yet, for understandable reasons, Kennedy appears nowhere in the film. By 1965, he was no longer the AG and, anyway, he remains a liberal icon. But LBJ \u2014 Southern, obscene and, especially when compared to the lithe Kennedy, gross of speech and physique \u2014 was made the heavy.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor understandable reasons\u201d?\u00a0 Isn\u2019t it interesting how liberals give the Kennedys a pass for their many illiberal policies, while demonizing LBJ, who gave us Medicare, the War on Poverty, Headstart, the Civil Rights Act, and a host of other liberal accomplishments.\u00a0 To be sure, liberals cannot forgive LBJ\u2019s escalation of the Vietnam War (another gift of the Kennedys).\u00a0 But I think it illustrates a major change in American liberalism.<\/p>\n

The Old Left championed the lower classes.\u00a0 It was comprised of factory workers, unions, farmers, and poor white Southerners.<\/p>\n

The New Left, emerging out of the anti-Vietnam War movement on college campuses, consisted largely of the intellectual class, in effect an aristocracy that looks down on \u201cRednecks,\u201d the uneducated, and the vulgar masses (including Lyndon Johnson).<\/p>\n

This is still largely the case today, though a populist wing seems to be emerging, which I think would be healthy.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p><\/div>\n<\/blockquote><\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u2019ve blogged about how the movie Selma villainizes Lyndon Johnson, even though he was the president who pushed through the Civil Rights laws that Martin Luther King was marching for.\u00a0 The movie shows LBJ ordering the FBI to spy on Dr. King to collect dirt on him.\u00a0 But, as (liberal) columnist Richard Cohen points out, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,36],"tags":[1291,2490,1565,3534,3535,3528],"class_list":["post-20522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies","category-politics","tag-liberalism","tag-lyndon-baines-johnson","tag-new-left","tag-old-left","tag-robert-kennedy","tag-selma"],"yoast_head":"\nConfusing LBJ with Robert Kennedy<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"We've blogged about how the movie Selma villainizes Lyndon Johnson, even though he was 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