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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mongo2116 who wrote (1002404)2/26/2017 2:06:25 PM
From: longnshort  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 1573694
 
was Cater a pussy ? Ike ? Sev­en years later, Carter was al­most as scath­ing about the re­port­ers. Pub­licly, press sec­ret­ary Jody Pow­ell said the pres­id­ent was tired and not feel­ing well. In Carter’s di­ary, he offered a dif­fer­ent reas­on. “Jody’s beg­ging me to speak to the White House Cor­res­pond­ents’ ban­quet. My pref­er­ence is not to do so,” wrote Carter on April 25, 1978. “They are com­pletely ir­re­spons­ible and un­ne­ces­sar­ily ab­us­ive. I see no reas­on for us to ac­com­mod­ate them every time they want me to provide en­ter­tain­ment for a half hour.”Four days later, Carter again wrote about the din­ner, not­ing that there had been news­pa­per cri­ti­cism of his de­cision. He was un­deterred. “I was de­term­ined not to go. They al­most ex­ert black­mail on me to at­tend, but I am not go­ing to do it in the fu­ture. I don’t see how the White House press could be any more neg­at­ive un­der any cir­cum­stances and I’d rather show a sign of strength.”

Pres­id­ent Dwight Eis­en­hower had dis­played no sim­il­ar hos­til­ity to the press. His fre­quent no-shows more re­flec­ted his dis­in­terest in Wash­ing­ton so­cial events, par­tic­u­larly on week­ends. He wrote about it in his di­ary on Jan. 18, 1954. Mem­bers of the press, he wrote, “are far from be­ing as im­port­ant as they them­selves con­sider, but, on the oth­er hand, they have a suf­fi­cient im­port­ance … to in­sure that much gov­ern­ment time is con­sumed in court­ing fa­vor with them.” He ad­ded in par­en­thes­is, “For ex­ample, I am right now sched­uled to go to a cock­tail party—something I have not at­ten­ded in twenty years—for the Wash­ing­ton press corps. … I am to drop in for the pur­pose, I sup­pose, of show­ing that I am not too high-hat to do so.” A friend in the press corps wrote that rather than don­ning a tuxedo and spend­ing a night with re­port­ers, Ike’s pre­ferred night would be just him “and Mrs. Eis­en­hower eat­ing on trays be­fore the tele­vi­sion screen, for they are both fans.”



To: Mongo2116 who wrote (1002404)2/26/2017 2:08:58 PM
From: longnshort  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 1573694
 
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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