Posted on 01/06/2015 9:41:34 AM PST by Brad from Tennessee
Before I came to dislike the movie Selma, I was deeply moved by it. Twice it brought me to tears. A crane shot of Martin Luther King Jr. leading thousands of demonstrators over the Edmund Pettus Bridge was one such moment, and so was the vicious attack on John Lewis bravely, steadfastly walking into the beating he knew was coming. Today, Lewis is a member of Congress. Forever, hell be an American hero.
Too bad, though, that the movie had to go Hollywood on Lyndon Baines Johnson, who, as if from the grave, has bellowed his protest. In its need for some dramatic tension, Selma 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 as King himself suspected try to drive him to suicide. It is a profoundly ugly moment.
But a bevy of historians say it never happened. It was Robert F. Kennedy, the former attorney general, who authorized the FBIs bugging of Kings 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 Southern, obscene and, especially when compared to the lithe Kennedy, gross of speech and physique was made the heavy. He should get a posthumous SAG card. . . .
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Why did LBJ refuse to run for a second term? Think about it. LBJ was ruthless. The hippies frightened him out of running? Hardly. Something big kept him from running again.
LOL! Perfect! Actually it should say “I was deliberately murdered”.
I remember LBJ well. He was a lowlife dirt bag.
IMHO, Johnson was complicit in JFK’s assassination.
History texts are so messed up with modern interpretations. I would hope that novels, movies, TV etc that pass themselves off as based on history do their best to get it right.
So lets put you in the place of the average black guy in Selma in 1965. You aren’t allowed to vote, or even register to vote. You just take it?
Isn't this the liberal approach? I'll tell you some lies and codify it as a movie and you can find out for yourself what the truth really is. Of course it will be too late to matter.
Yes, the celebration of the start of Western collapse.
Yes he is.
I was going to say that the truth isn’t all that great, either.
LBJ was no hero. He started the final act of the destruction of the black family and he laid the groundwork for generations of welfare dependents and he also laid the groundwork for the legalization of abortion - which long ago had killed more black people than Hitler had killed Jews.
Dramatists and historians use different tools. The goals and methods are different. The criteria are different. If you want history then read a history book or watch a documentary.
Now let's not get too hasty. You've left out the peanut farmer idiot entirely. And let's not forget that we have slick willy to thank for the prostitution of the social securities disabilities benefit and the subterfuge of the actual cost of welfare.
Really, picking a worst president is quite a challenge - although you can be certain he will be a democrap.
Actually, driving his car into the water shows he could at least work with Ted Kennedy.
No one takes Shakespeare’s “History” plays as serious history. Alexandre Dumas’ butchery of history was well known. Nobody ever claimed he was writing history, either. As for the use of cultural anachronism, it may seem artsy to pretentious morons, but to most people it’s just annoying.
So people walking peacefully across a bridge to obtain the right to vote (among other things) was the start of Western collapse? Or was it the Alabama State Police beating the crap out these same people? Which was it? Do enlighten me.
As a matter of fact I do.
;]
I think LBJ declined to run again because the Peaceniks shifted the blame to him for continuing the war in Vietnam. So at that point he had lost the left as well as the right, and was pretty much unelectable. Presumably he did his own polling and decided it was hopeless.
You cant possibly ever depict Johnson as evil enough. The first truly demonic American president.
Fixed that for ya. :)
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