1968 - Mark Kurlansky [30]
Different reporters were leaked slightly different versions of the encounter. In the Time magazine version she said, “No wonder the kids rebel and take pot—and in case you don’t understand the lingo that’s marijuana.”
After a moment of silence, Mrs. Richard J. Hughes, wife of the Democratic governor of New Jersey, said, “I feel morally obligated. May I speak in defense of the war?” She said her first husband had been killed in World War II and that she had eight sons, one an air force veteran. “None wants to go to Vietnam, but all will go, they and their friends.” She added that none of her sons smoked marijuana, and the guests, somewhat relieved, applauded while Kitt stared at her with arms folded.
Mrs. Johnson, noticeably pale, some said on the verge of tears, stood up and walked to the podium, somewhat in the way a good hostess would hurry to a trouble spot at a cocktail party to smooth it over, and politely suggested, “Because there is a war on—and I pray that there will be a just and honest peace—that still doesn’t give us a free ticket not to try to work for better things such as against crime in the streets, better education, and better health for our people. Crime in the streets is one thing that we can solve. I am sorry I can’t speak as well or as passionately on conditions of slums as you, because I have not lived there.”
Kitt, the daughter of South Carolina sharecroppers, who as a teenager supported her family from a Harlem sweatshop, explained, “I have to say what is in my heart. I have lived in the gutters.”
Mrs. Johnson, with candor and remarkable grace, replied, “I am sorry. I cannot understand the things that you do. I have not lived with the background you have.”
And there it was, America in microcosm—the well-intentioned white liberals unable to comprehend black anger. Everyone wanted to comment on the widely reported incident, many applauding Kitt’s courage, many appalled by her rudeness. Martin Luther King said that although the singer was the First Lady’s guest, it was “a very proper gesture” because it “described the feelings of many persons” and that the “ears” of the Johnsons are “somewhat isolated from expressions of what people really feel.”
Gene Roberts was removed from his beloved civil rights beat at The New York Times in the beginning of 1968 and reassigned to Saigon. Compared to civil rights, the Vietnam story seemed quiet. “I thought I had left the action.” In Washington he got a round of briefings from the U.S. government. At the CIA briefing he asked if a recent battle had been a victory. The CIA official said, “There are six good reasons to consider this a victory.” He went through the six reasons. Roberts then asked, “Is there any reason to consider it a defeat?”
“There are eight good reasons to consider it a defeat,” the official replied, and he listed them.
At the White House, Roberts was briefed by a top-ranking member of the administration whose identity he promised not to expose. “Forget the war,” he was told. “The war is over. Now we have to win the peace. The thing to keep your eye on is”—and he said this as though revealing a secret code—“IR8 rice.”
“What?”
“IR8 rice!” The U.S. government had done large-scale experiments and found that IR8 rice had two high-yield crops a year. This, he assured Roberts, was the big story in Vietnam at the moment.
Roberts arrived in Saigon shortly after the Western New Year and started asking about IR8 rice. No one had heard of it. Finally, he learned that a rice festival was being held in the most secure province of South Vietnam. In fact, it was an IR8 rice festival. Crude bleachers were set up in the small rural village. In a corner, several farmers were squatting on their haunches,