THE RAUNCHY SIDE OF U.S. POLITICS
The National Post reminded us with a page on Lyndon Johnson on Jan. 27 of just how foul mouthed and oozing of sexual shenanigans the White House was decades before Donald Trump brought his coarse preening, lies and daily cheating to the American presidency.
It also perked out of my memory one of the nicest power couples that Mary and I ever met in our travels. This occasionally took us to the International Press Institute annual conference packed with world names in politics and the media who spoke and performed, and then yarned into the wee hours as booze chased caution and slander suits.
Lucianne Goldberg, the author and literary agent, stood out, just as she did in every arena from the Upper West Side of Manhattan to the bear pits of Washington to the casting couches of Hollywood. And her husband, Sidney, head of the NANA syndicate, was an agreeable host at the parties that formed around the couple after the sessions of IPI, the gathering of editors and national leaders crusading for freedom of the press and of expression. (The noted conservative critic, Jonah, is a son.)
If Nelson Mandela didn't come to us in Capetown, Bishop Tutu did, and Mandela saw us in Kyoto. If it wasn't the president of the host country to welcome us, it was the opposition leader who probably jailed the president by the time the next IPI conference was held in another troubled country.
And Lucianne knew every former VP and Secretary of State on the speakers' circuit.
To place her for those who remember her name but can't remember why, Lucianne persuaded her friend Linda Tripp to record her many conversations with Monica Lewinsky and to make sure the infamous dress survived from the legendary encounter with Bill Clinton. She was a central figure in that scandal,
just one of the notorious anecdotes in which Lucianne played, since she wandered through presidential campaigns for years after interning at the White House. So when she dropped the name of a famous politician over a drink, she usually gift wrapped it with salacious details.
When she gossiped about authors and movie stars, she did so with the assurance of someone who had sold her novel about high-priced call girls, Madam Cleo's Girls, to Hollywood for just under $500,00. And she did it twice. (If anyone has a copy, please email me because my autographed one has frayed after Mary loaned it to so many friends.
I remember many conversations with Lucianne over the sexual side of politics, not that my names matched hers.
There was mine about the provincial cabinet minister who died while having hot sex at the King Edward. The body was moved, by one of those aides who do those kind of chores, back to his suite at the Park Plaza so the widow back in the riding could report the next day how her husband had died peacefully in his sleep. (I have never read about this incident.)
There was a reporter with a national rep working for me who was so drunk when he was trying to get back to his desk in the press gallery in the Parliament Buildings that he went in through a first-floor window. Since it was the middle of the night, it meant he landed inside on a couch on which reclined a politician and his aide, and they weren't sleeping.
There was a premier who cavorted at a far north lake with young Japanese acrobatic twins, which was the mildest of the gossip told me by an opposition leader. Indeed he starred in many stories.
Mild stuff compared to Lucianne's notebook of scandal. She knew, of course, all about the famous encounters of JFK, like in a broom closet in Macey's, but then Kennedy was quoted as saying if he didn't have intercourse every day, he got a migraine.
So I asked her about LBJ who always has fascinated me. How could such a coarse man - he was said to often scratch any part of his anatomy, including his balls, no matter where he was - get such major legislation as the Great Society through the Congress?
Lucianne said she was only 18 and riding up alone in an elevator with LBJ on one of those muggy afternoons. (Before air conditioning, Washington was considered a tropical posting for British diplomats.)
She was wearing a flimsy blouse because of the heat. The President of the United States reached out and pinched both of her breasts because as POITUS explained briefly, "I really like to see titties stand up."
The 36th president didn't run again because of the unpopular Vietnam war, not because of the uncouth behaviour that revolted many around him. Things are changing in such areas, they hasten to assure us, but are they really when there are too many voters (and some Canadian voices raised approvingly too) who are willing to tolerate far more than LBJ's antics in the 60s just as long as they seem to get what they want from a leader who has cheated in everything from marriage and business to politics and decency.