Lyndon Johnson Funny Quotes

Then, with great relish, Lyndon Johnson spun a Texas tale. It was his pièce de résistance, the crescendo of an expansive, four-hour performance. “When I got [Kennedy] in the Oval Office,” Johnson began, “and told him it would be ‘inadvisable’ for him to be on the ticket as the Vice President-nominee, his face changed, and he started to swallow. He looked sick. His adam’s apple bounded up and down like a yo-yo.” For effect, the president gulped, audibly, at the reporters. He mimicked Bobby’s “funny voice” and proceeded to tell, in lavish detail and with evident delight, his version of the meeting. Finally, LBJ ran down a list of possible running mates and explained the ways each would hurt his chances. “In other words,” recalled Folliard, “he would do better in the November election if he had no running mate. This left Wicker, Kiker and me baffled—and that is just what the man evidently wanted us to be.” Within days Johnson’s story was the talk of Washington. His portrait of RFK as a “stunned semi-idiot” left columnist Joseph Alsop and other Washington insiders feeling rather stunned themselves. It was not long before the gossip found its way to Bobby Kennedy, who stormed back to the White House and accused the president of mistruths and a violation of trust. I knew the meeting was taped, he said, but I never expected this. Wasn’t our talk a matter of confidence? Aren’t we honorable men? LBJ was unrepentant: I’ve revealed nothing, he assured Kennedy, gesturing wanly at an empty page in his appointment book. He promised to check his notes for any conversations that might have slipped his mind. Bobby stalked out, seething, and caught a plane to Hyannis Port. “He tells so many lies,” Kennedy said of Johnson the next week, echoing the words of George Reedy, “that he convinces himself after a while he’s telling the truth. He just doesn’t recognize truth or falsehood.

The massive success of the personalized recommendation algorithm relies on a few tricks, but the underlying principle is quite intuitive: If you like a certain kind of content, you’ll probably like other content similar to it. For instance, I recently liked a video of a man singing “Barbie World” by Nicki Minaj to the grave of President Lyndon B. Johnson. The algorithm correctly inferred that I enjoyed the song and sent me more funny “Barbie World” videos, which improved my experience on the app. It also probably pushed those videos to people who fit the same demographic profile as me, since they’re also likely to respond positively. When these songs accompany a meme or dance that people want to re-create, a trend is born. At its core, this process is the same as those on Vine and Musical.ly, just spread through a more sophisticated recommendation system. The videos are now especially compelling because they make it seem as if everyone were hopping onto a trend (a perception exacerbated by your biased recommendation feed). Because we’re social creatures, your recommendation page will pressure you to watch or participate in these trends, so you can feel caught up on the latest cultural references.