LBJ Defenders Object to Selma’s Portrayal, Twitter Objects to LBJ Defenders
“The makers of the new movie Selma apparently just couldn’t resist taking dramatic, trumped-up license with a true story that didn’t need any embellishment to work as a big-screen historical drama,” declared former Johnson domestic affairs chief Joseph A. Califano Jr. in a Washington Post op-ed this weekend.
“As a result,” he continued, “the film falsely portrays President Lyndon B. Johnson as being at odds with Martin Luther King Jr. and even using the FBI to discredit him, as only reluctantly behind the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and as opposed to the Selma march itself.”
“In fact, Selma was LBJ’s idea. He considered the Voting Rights Act his greatest legislative achievement, [and] he viewed King as an essential partner in getting it enacted.”
The claim that LBJ conceived of the Selma protests got some Twitter LULZ Sunday morning after Ta-Nehisi Coates noticed it:
"In fact, abolition was Lincoln's idea!"
— Ta-Nehisi Coates (@tanehisicoates) December 28, 2014
@tanehisicoates "In fact, the Ferguson protests were Jay Nixon's idea"
— Tainted Bill (@taintedbill) December 28, 2014
Really disappointed that the James Brown biopic didn't give LBJ credit for coming up with chorus for "Prisoner of Love" and the cape thing.
— LOLGOP (@LOLGOP) December 28, 2014
Top Ten LBJ ideas: 1. Selma 2. Stonewall riot 3. May 1968. 4. Socialism with a Human Face. 5. March on the Pentagon 6. Lou Reed 7. Punk Rock
— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) December 28, 2014
"In fact twitter, was my idea!"
— Ta-Nehisi Coates (@tanehisicoates) December 28, 2014
Califano’s not the only one objecting to the film’s LBJ portrayal.
“The political courage President Johnson exhibited in adeptly pushing through passage of the Voting Rights Act 50 years ago is worth celebrating in the same manner as the Lincoln filmmakers championed President Lincoln’s passage of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution,” argued LBJ historian Mark K. Updegrove, head of Austin’s L.B.J. Presidential Library and Museum, in a Politico Magazine piece last week.
Why does all this matter? Per Updegrove:
“At a time when racial tension is once again high, from Ferguson to Brooklyn, it does no good to bastardize one of the most hallowed chapters in the Civil Rights Movement by suggesting that the President himself stood in the way of progress. …LBJ’s bold position on voting rights stands as an example of what is possible when America’s leadership is at its best. And it has the added benefit of being true.”
Selma opened in limited release on Christmas and goes wide in early January, when, given its still-contentious topic, its LBJ portrayal will probably be the least of its controversies.
[Image via LBJ Library photo by Yoichi R. Okamoto]
