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June 30, 2005
LBJMDB/RR: The Gendered World of LBJ
Thanks to an anonymous donor (Mitch Gerber), the Lyndon Baines Johnson Memorial Downstairs Bathroom has acquired a copy of Looking Back at LBJ, a collection of academic essays on our 36th president. The book includes an enjoyable essay with a lousy title -- "President Lyndon Johnson and the Gendered World of National Politics" -- that focuses on how LBJ treated women. We learn that he dictated the hairstyles of his staff members, encouraged them to lose weight, and declined to appoint one woman to a high-level position because she wasn’t "good looking." Charming stuff. We also find out that LBJ considered offering the very recently widowed Jackie Kennedy the ambassadorship to Mexico. Here is LBJ’s assessment of how the former First Lady would be received: "She’d just walk out on that balcony and look down on them and they’d pee all over themselves every day."
In honor of this gift, the Lyndon Baines Johnson Memorial Downstairs Bathroom is hereby rechristened the Lyndon Baines Johnson Memorial Downstairs Bathroom/Reading Room.
Posted by teb at June 30, 2005 08:39 AM