A former assistant to President Lyndon B. Johnson penned a scathing review of the critically-acclaimed civil rights drama “Selma” for the film’s unsympathetic portrait of his former boss.
Joseph A. Califano Jr., Johnson’s top assistant for domestic affairs, slammed the biopic of Martin Luther King Jr. in an op-ed for the Washington Post on Friday, arguing that the historic civl rights march portrayed in the film was actually “LBJ’s idea.”
“Selma was LBJ’s idea, he considered the Voting Rights Act his greatest legislative achievement, he viewed King as an essential partner in getting it enacted — and he didn’t use the FBI to disparage him,” Califano wrote.
“The movie should be ruled out this Christmas and during the ensuing awards season,” he concluded.
For a more accurate interpretation of Johnson’s role, Califano linked readers to the LBJ Presidential Library’s website, to copies of his own reports to the White House. He lamented that the filmmakers did not make use of his reports.
“All this material was publicly available to the producers, the writer of the screenplay and the director of this film. Why didn’t they use it? Did they feel no obligation to check the facts? Did they consider themselves free to fill the screen with falsehoods, immune from any responsibility to the dead, just because they thought it made for a better story?” he wrote.
