"He will eat your shoulder right off...."
ADDED: Here's the Rolling Stone article he's talking about, from June 3, 1976, "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '76/Third-rate romance, low-rent rendezvous — hanging with Ted Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, and a bottle of Wild Turkey." Excerpt:
There was not much anger in his voice when he started talking, but halfway through the speech it was too obvious for anybody in the room to ignore. But there was no way to cut him short, and he knew it. It was the anger in his voice that first caught my attention, I think, but what sent me back out to the trunk to get my tape recorder instead of another drink was the spectacle of a Southern politician telling a crowd of Southern judges and lawyers that "I'm not qualified to talk to you about law, because in addition to being a peanut farmer, I'm an engineer and nuclear physicist, not a lawyer....… But I read a lot and I listen a lot. One of the sources for my understanding about the proper application of criminal justice and the system of equities is from Reinhold Niebuhr. The other source of my understanding about what's right and wrong in this society is from a friend of mine, a poet named Bob Dylan. Listening to his records about 'The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll' and 'Like a Rolling Stone' and 'The Times They Are A-Changin',' I've learned to appreciate the dynamism of change in a modern society."AND: Doesn't this description (not of Carter) sound like Trump:
At first I wasn't sure I was hearing him right and I looked over at Jimmy King. "What the hell did I just hear?" I asked.
King smiled and looked at Paul Kirk, who leaned across the table and whispered, "He said his top two advisers are Bob Dylan and Reinhold Niebuhr."
His hair was bright orange, his cheeks were rouged, his forehead was caked with Mantan.... No! I thought. This can't be true! Not now! Not so soon! Here was this monster, this shameful electrified corpse – and raving and flapping his hands at the camera like he'd just been elected president.
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48 comments:
I knew a woman in DC who had worked in the Carter WH. She said that "ah shucks, ah'm jes' a Jesus lovin' peanut farmer" persona that fooled many of us in '76 was complete bs.
Jimmah was battle hardened by Southern Baptist Church winner takes all Politics. His faith was that he was the only man entitled to take power by God. And he has never changed his mind about that.
Meaner than Mondale?
I remember hearing so much buzz about Carter back in '76 and wondering if he could really be all that. The first time I saw him on TV I was instantly repelled. He was such an obvious phony I couldn't believe anyone was dumb enough to believe in him.
Now I know better.
Will Rogers and Gonzo never met Barack Obama.
The Carter loves Dylan thing was satirized by Garry Trudeau (back when he would attack Democrats).
http://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/1977/02/16
Carter should thank God everyday for Obama. No one will notice how lousy he was thanks to Obama. Back in 76 he struck me as an asshole and nothing in the last 40 years has lead me to believe he has improved.
He never met Hillary.
Hubert Humphrey. That was almost TLDR but then up popped Humphrey. Minnesota politicians are always making the rest of the country seem normal.
That must have been one damn rabid rabbit to go up against ole Jimmy.
Are there any sixers of Billy Beer in the Carter library?
Can't watch the video due to poor data coverage. Who are the other two?
At the time Carter's boycott of the 1980 olympics struck me as one of the meanest things any president has done since the Palmer Red Raids.
Bob Ellison,
"Meaner than Mondale?"
Really? I know very little about the man personally - but when I watch that debate clip of Reagan, asked whether age was a liability, promising not to exploit for political purposes his opponent's youth and inexperience, I'm struck by Mondale's smile. He seemed genuinely delighted by that wonderful zinger at his expense. It's just one datum, of course, but I thought it said something about him.
"His faith was that he was the only man entitled to take power by God." Right. I guess for Baptists pride is not a deadly sin.
Thompson was a horrible public figure. He was a Marxist apologist for the most despicable regimes in the world. At the same time he was characterizing the US as a fascist authoritarian one.
Think of the damage he did.
Swell, he could write. For what purpose?
Doesn't this description (not of Carter) sound like Trump
No.
There's never been a shortage of USDA certified prime Weirdos running for the highest office in the land.
The differences between now & the past are that 1) we have so many more sources of information now that we have this thing called the interwebz & 2) we have a press that is openly ideological on both the left & the right that will be only too happy to spill the beans about the personal failings of the opposition's candidate.
For example, I don't think a JFK could even pass the primaries now without his personal life sinking him. I mean, there's screwing chicks for fun & then there's making it your life's work. JFK was into the latter.
Mockturtle: Mohammed Ali and Sonny Barger. Which may say more about Thompson than Carter, actually. I lived in Georgia during a lot of that time and later, when Carter went with his presidential run I tried to make people understand what they were voting for ... alas, didn't help.
"He will eat your shoulder right off...."
There was so much more meat in the way people used to talk.
PC ruined something, god know long it took the perception nursery to develop.
Mockturtle, in response to you question - Muhammed Ali and Sonny Barger, head of Oakland's Hell's Angels, were the other two meanies.
His "Hell's Angles" was good - they total 666 degrees.
I remember a conservative writer, who had written an autobiography, telling the story about how Jimmah Cahtuh had told him that Cahtuh had read his book. Cahtuh took pains to tell him that he had bought the book for $1 at a garage sale. Can't remember who the writer was, but it was an office-holder, maybe Reagan, maybe George HW Bush, maybe someone else.
I thought it said volumes about Cahtuh - it seemed like he was being intentionally nasty. It's helpful to remember that Cahtuh had to undergo hemorrhoid surgery while president. Somehow, I think those things are related.
Ann Coulter
Carter is so often maligned for his stupidity, it tends to be forgotten that he is also self-righteous, vengeful, sneaky, and backstabbing.
well as usual, hunter was agitated about the wrong thing,
http://us.macmillan.com/excerpt?isbn=9780805098983
Carter fell afoul of the 'black legend' about the shah, which you can see was seriously exaggerated, I note jesse leaf, a one time analyst who spun the snowden tale of the age to the likes of sy hersh,
Mockturtle, in response to you question - Muhammed Ali and Sonny Barger, head of Oakland's Hell's Angels, were the other two meanies.
Thanks, gadfly! Somehow Muhammad Ali surprises me. More than Carter, certainly.
Thanks, Megaera, too! Just saw your post!
For the sake of nostalgia I speed read it. Thompson wasn't as good a writer as I remembered. Too many digressions about what a wild and crazy guy he was. Or maybe hyperbole doesn't work on guys like Humphrey and Carter. Extravagant praise or criticism just doesn't fit. ......I don't see Carter being all that deep into Bob Dylan. The Allman Brothers, maybe. Dolly Parton definitely. It's possible that Carter threw that Dylan line out to play Thompson and the Rolling Stone crowd. Carter was shrewder and Thompson more naive than Thompson realized....The ability to write an amusing sentence and the ability to fathom politicians are probably inversely related........Thompson supported Carter. Milton and Andrew Marvell were for Cromwell. Neruda wrote sonnets for Stalin. You would think that after all this time a writer's endorsement would be the kiss of death.
"He will eat your shoulder right off...."
Flakka, perhaps?
@Young Hegelian For example, I don't think a JFK could even pass the primaries now without his personal life sinking him. I mean, there's screwing chicks for fun & then there's making it your life's work. JFK was into the latter.
And his family's corruption put even the Clintons' to shame.
"@Young Hegelian For example, I don't think a JFK could even pass the primaries now without his personal life sinking him. I mean, there's screwing chicks for fun & then there's making it your life's work. JFK was into the latter.// And his family's corruption put even the Clintons' to shame."
@YH & MT: OK, JFK would have had a harder time today. But Bill is credibly accused of rape, the Clinton Foundation takes political corruption to a new level, and the email exposure shows at least equal disregard for the law. Makes no difference, as far as I can tell. It's one thing to be able to expose misdeeds, it's another to make them matter. The culture has been sufficiently degraded for the lefty misdeeds not to matter. Putting a dog on the roof of your car, of course, can still be fatal to cons.
well thats entirely possible, a governor from a state, last noticed in 1957, was suddenly designated as a wunderkind, credentials didn't matter then, if howard dean had by some odd fluke beaten kerry, the hagiography would have kept his twitch under wraps,
Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter... if there's one thing the history of American politics teaches us, it's that it's the religious left, not the religious right, you actually need to be afraid of.
Blogger YoungHegelian said...
For example, I don't think a JFK could even pass the primaries now without his personal life sinking him.
Teddy was a drunk and a womanizer, and not a charming womanizer. The good people of Massachusetts kept sending him back to the senate.
But there's more! Not only did his negligence (at least) kill Mary Jo Kopechne, he was a college plagiarist. He joined the army during the Korean War, probably to piss off his father. Father pulled strings, got his enlistment time reduced, and had Teddy assigned to the US Embassy in Paris.
A Democrat "Lion of the Senate." Along with Robert Byrd.
It was Thompson's Leap of Faith article in Rolling Stone that convinced stoners to think Carter was ok. Hunter evidently had a change of heart or choice of drugs.
the two minute hate, must be continuous,
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/08/jean-edward-smiths-burning-bush.php
@Terry/Sebastian,
Yes, the good people of Massachusetts seem to have a high tolerance for scumbaggery in their politicians, & in more cases than the Kennedys.
The Clintons, however, are still not exceptions. While HRC may be victorious in her run for the presidency, don't be surprised if she's impeached within two years. And even the powerful Clintons had to struggle against a 70 year old Jewish socialist, & now, a mite-peculiar NYC real-estate mogul with no political experience. In the old days, these opponents would have lost long before. This is all because of the reasons I stated.
The politicians who lack the moxie & power of the Clinton family get squashed by the process way before. For example, John Edwards, whose too blatant relationship with his mistress Rielle Hunter was a large factor in why he was rejected by the Iowa caucuses, a loss from which he never recovered.
that came later, recall that mickey kaus couldn't get anyone to cite his name in a major outlet, he still ended up second after obama, in that round,
then there was his attempted collaboration with andropov and chernenko, that paul kengor uncovered, as pointed out in the earlier link, the rationale for moving against the shah, was not unlike that employed against quaddafi, an overly exaggerated potential threat
Walter Russell Mead had a piece about Al Gore a while back, noting that he was from a political Patrician family in Tennessee. The whole standing up on a soapbox and speaking to the whole plantation/Southern Baptist congregation made some sense.
'Climate Change' has taken on many characteristics of a religion in the Democrat Party, and given the global reach of American politics and capital markets, we witnessed the whole political afterlife/undead roadshow: A greasy mess of slide-projecting hyperbole eventually sold-off to Saudi money.
Your shoulder looks pretty tasty America...might want to keep it covered a bit (please...not just in tattoos as a personal statement of The Self).
The best quote about HST I ever heard was "He started out being a journalist who pretended he was a drug addict but ended up being a drug addict who pretended he was a journalist." According to a recent documentary I saw about him what triggered his suicide was the re-election of G.W. Bush in 2004.
I saw recently that Carter got into it with the current WH, because he sent friends to Israel to tell them to chill, BO would be gone soon and whomever is there next would be far more Israel friendly. Carter DGAF about the POTUS temper tantrum.
"Thanks, gadfly! Somehow Muhammad Ali surprises me. More than Carter, certainly."
How do you even know it's true? Just because Hunter Thompson says so? What gives his remarks any credence? I have a feeling Thompson had a personal animus toward each of the men he mentioned. (While writing the HELLS ANGELS book, Thompson ran afoul of their hospitality in some way and was roughed up by them. Hence, his claim of Sonny Barger as one of the three "meanest" men he'd ever met.)
Now, I have no claim to know what any of these men were like: Barger can be presumed to have been a ruthless person to have headed up a Hells Angels chapter; and Carter can be presumed to have been as calculating and ambitious as virtually all who run for and become President; and any man who could become the preeminent boxing champion that Ali did had to have been more complicated and driven than the persona he projected.
However, one must take anything said by Thompson--whose writing I have enjoyed--as just an expression of the random and shifting resentments, anger, and hostility churning within him at any given moment.
Ron said...
I saw recently that Carter got into it with the current WH, because he sent friends to Israel to tell them to chill, BO would be gone soon and whomever is there next would be far more Israel friendly. Carter DGAF about the POTUS temper tantrum.
8/22/16, 6:29 AM
That's cute, Ron. Where did you see that? Actually, where did you get the idea that Carter GAF about Israel's welfare?
Karan Sharma said...
Thanks dear for this post.
Shall we speno hearty tirce?
Thompson was a horrible public figure. He was a Marxist apologist for the most despicable regimes in the world. At the same time he was characterizing the US as a fascist authoritarian one.
Yep. And he blew his brains out in front of his grandson. Real classy.
"random and shifting resentments, anger, and hostility churning within him at any given moment."
Looked more like Scotch.
Martin O'Malley , back when he was mayor of Baltimore, redefined how police reported crimes. Voila! Fewer crimes! It got him elected Maryland Governor, but the break-ins, muggings, drug sales and ghetto life continued unchanged in Baltimore.
(Up until the current Mayor turned the town completely over to drug gangs during the recent riots. Now if you break into a store that pays a gang protection, you're liable to end up dead real quickly. So fewer break-ins by amateurs, but more protection rackets and more crime by gang-approved criminals. Net gain in crime!)
That this vile O'Malley has a position of prestige in politics, instead of being seen as the race-hustling corrupt grifter he has always been, speaks volumes about the decline of politics in America.
Jimmy and Rosalind would play a game. They would go to bed, each with an ice cube container filled with water and bet who could turn the water into ice sooner with just a stare. Jimmy usually won which Is cited as one reason he very seldom got lucky (although others swear that was his intent.
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