Selma and LBJ

One of the saddest parts of the backlash to Selma was the number of articles that focused on defending President Lyndon B Johnson, as if he needed defending.

I am mainly thinking of Joseph A. Califano Jr. and Maureen Dowd in this, but I think there were a few others. It's nonsense.

The movie shows Johnson hesitating to push through legislation on voting rights because they had just gotten segregation and he wanted to work on poverty; he didn't think he could get voting rights through. Once the climate had changed with the television coverage of Bloody Sunday, and some of the other news that was coming through, Johnson moved forward and it passed.

The movie never indicates that Johnson was against voting rights - it's pretty clear that he wants it passed - but he is being a politician. That was Johnson's thing. Do you know what the third book in Robert A Caro's series on Johnson is called? Master Of The Senate. It's not sarcastic. The combination of Johnson's political savvy and skill and his commitment to progressive causes was really important. I remember a history teacher talking about Johnson waving Kennedy's bones at Congress, exploiting the circumstances of Kennedy's death, but he used it to accomplish good things. He was also willing to alienate the South, which was a big deal.

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference was not against fighting poverty. King was turning his attention to that before his death, and in spite of his death the Poor People's Campaign still happened. It is largely regarded as unsuccessful, but a lot of the goals were accomplished. Johnson prioritizing poverty does not make him a villain.

Director Ava DuVernay, in commenting on it, said she considered Johnson to be a hero. Now, he is a hero who thinks about maintaining order at the same time that he thinks about justice, but that has been true of every president and remains true today. That is one very valid reason why some people that we can imagine making excellent presidents might legitimately prefer to not be president.

He is also a president that kept J. Edgar Hoover employed. I had never thought about that before, but it occurred to me watching the movie that Hoover would have been very hard to remove. Luckily, we had a good friend over for dinner last night, and we were talking about this. She had a quote for me on that"

"It's probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in."

Point taken. Johnson didn't fire Hoover, but no one else did. He needed to die to get out of office, and that was serving under six presidents.

The other thing we talked about was Johnson's ambition. I tended to think of him as not ambitious enough, because if he had just been all out idealistic, we are going to go for what's right even if we fail, that could have meant not just pushing through more legislation without waiting for politically opportune moments, but also could have meant getting out of Vietnam instead of not wanting to be the first president to lose a war.

Cathy looked at it differently. His ambition was to have a strong legacy. (She got that from Doris Kearns Goodwin.) If you want to be remembered as a winner, then maybe you don't want to push legislation that is destined to fail, or withdraw troops.

The movie gives a hint of that when Johnson is meeting with George Wallace. Johnson is not only thinking about how he will be remembered (which Wallace does not care about), but Johnson is determined not to be lumped in with Wallace.

Selma has some unflattering portraits in there. In addition to Wallace and Hoover, there are Sheriff Jim Clark and Colonel Al Lingo. That covers some great performances in there from some actors I really like, but you do not come away liking these historical figures. That's not what is happening with Johnson. He is shown as flawed, but so is King.

I think part of the problem may be miscasting. Tom Wilkinson is a good actor, and he does okay, but his craggy face doesn't look very much like Johnson. If he had some of that Southern good ole' boy charm it probably wouldn't matter, but having neither the look nor the charm is a drawback. It's not a bad performance, but casting an Englishman is not always the right way to go.

I think the bigger problem, though, is a resistance to letting people of color be the heroes of their own movements. Some of it may be an adherence to the Great Man Theory, which I think is bunk anyway, and which Selma counters. There are many organizers shown, and many people who had been working with voter registration and education. To try and cast the march as Johnson's idea is an insult to them, and Johnson does not need it. The people who have a problem with that need to de-center.

We have seen many movies about Civil Rights, and Native Americans, and other cultures where somehow the protagonist has to be a white person. Mississippi Burning, Dances With Wolves, even Avatar going off-world has to fall into that trap. If you aren't comfortable watching people of other genders and races take center stage that is all the more reason you need to watch that type of content.

That breaks into a discussion for another day though. The message of today is that I am really fond of LBJ, and the movie Selma is not a problem for that.