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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices
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To: Mongo2116 who wrote (1002404)2/26/2017 2:08:58 PM
From: longnshort  Read Replies (1) of 1573689
 
The WHCA went to great lengths to make its din­ners more at­tract­ive to Ike dur­ing his two terms. The or­gan­iz­a­tion moved the din­ner to week­days to leave him free week­ends to go to his Gettys­burg farm, and moved it from its tra­di­tion­al March date one year so it would co­in­cide with his Oc­to­ber birth­day; at­tendees sang old Army dit­ties one year; and the group used one din­ner to de­but a new cam­paign song writ­ten for him by Irving Ber­lin. In 1960, the WHCA can­celed the din­ner be­cause he wouldn’t be at­tend­ing.

In Decem­ber 1964, Pres­id­ent Lyn­don John­son’s staff gave him a note telling him the WHCA would can­cel its 1965 din­ner if he didn’t at­tend. LBJ put a big check mark on “No.” He scrawled on the note, “I went to all [the press din­ners] last year. I want to go to none this year.” For em­phas­is, he un­der­lined “none” four times. Spec­u­la­tion at the time was that he was self-con­scious about at­tempts to match the wit­ti­cisms of Pres­id­ent John F. Kennedy. “When LBJ … at­tempts a flight of hu­mor,” wrote one crit­ic at the time, “no one can be cer­tain wheth­er it is go­ing to get air­borne or end in a crash land­ing.” When John­son re­jec­ted the 1965 in­vit­a­tion, a cor­res­pond­ent wrote, “The big press din­ners ob­vi­ously bore him. He was no­ticed fall­ing asleep at last year’s White House cor­res­pond­ents’ din­ner.”

Just as the 1965 din­ner was can­celed be­cause of the pres­id­ent’s re­fus­al to at­tend, the din­ners in both 1951 and 1952 were can­celed be­cause of what Pres­id­ent Tru­man called “the un­cer­tainty of the world situ­ation” and the Korean War. The WHCA is­sued a state­ment say­ing, “Tak­ing in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the pres­id­ent’s ap­peals for ad­di­tion­al sac­ri­fice on the part of all Amer­ic­ans, of­fices of the as­so­ci­ation de­cided un­an­im­ously that a ban­quet would be in­ap­pro­pri­ate at this time.”
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