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.
Anyone who was alive at the time knew what was going on. It’s safe to assume the FBI wasn’t acting without LBJ’s approval.
Those in denial are doomed to repeat their history, over and over again, while the rest of us move on into the future.
Why do I have a hard time believing that? A really hard time.
I don’t think that’s true that the FBI acted with LBJ’s approval. Remember that Hoover and his FBI were a power unto themselves that need no ones authority and Hoover hated, detested and despised Dr King. Remember that both Kennedy and LBJ were friends of Dr King and the civil rights movement but didn’t like it when King’s protest marches pushed things too much and too fast.
You must be pretty young.
J. Edgar Hoover was the director of the FBI from 1934 until his death in 1972. He did pretty much whatever the hell he wanted to no mater who was President (many of whom feared him and his detailed files on everyone and everything) and he HATED JBJ (almost as much as he hated JFK) and did everything in the FBI’s power (which was considerable) to destroy MLK whom he considered “the most dangerous man in America.”
He was a very, very dangerous (and unstable) man wielding immense, essentially unchecked power in a very tumultuous time.
The FBI frequently did things on it’s own without the knowledge or consent of the White-house no matter who was President.
FDR didn’t trust him.
Truman fought with him endlessly.
Eisenhower cow-towed to him publicly (and railed about him privately.)
JFK tried (unsuccessfully) to rein him in via his brother RFK the Attorney General, and they both died for it.
JBJ didn’t trust him as far as he could throw him and worked around him whenever possible.
Nixon placated him while secretly working against him via the CIA, then he died in 1972.