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But Johnson was also an intense networker, and he succeeded in cultivating or otherwise entangling several prominent journalists, including Walter Lippman and Drew Pearson, as well as Washington Post owner Katherine Graham. According to biographers Ronald Steel and Oliver Pilat, plus Graham’s own 1997 memoir, these personal ties undermined a lot of objectivity in the press.

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Indeed, numerous Washington insiders — reporters, officials, cronies — did not reveal their knowledge of Johnson’s ugly side until 1980, when oral biographer Merle Miller coaxed them. Later biographers, including Robert A. Caro, Robert Dallek, and Randall B. Woods, have added to the revelations.

As well, it was not widely known for years that Johnson had a recording system in the Oval Office. This system, like the more infamous one of Richard Nixon, captured many very regrettable comments, but it would not be definitively described until a 1999 book by historian William Doyle. (Transcripts of the recordings were edited and released through historian Michael R. Beschloss beginning in the late 1990s.)

Finally, one reaction to Johnson’s coarse language was a tendency to sanitize the public record. British journalist Henry Brandon has recalled how The Washington Post rendered “bullshit” as “bull.”

I would not say Johnson was vulgar, he was barnyard

So, exactly how repulsive was Johnson? He was horrid enough that the way he said things was almost as bad as what he said. Anyone who came into contact with him was at risk of encountering a spectacle of burping, farting, nose-picking and crotch-scratching. Congressman Richard Bolling, who witnessed some of this, told Merle Miller: “I wouldn’t say Johnson was vulgar — he was barnyard.” Worse, Johnson had no sense of personal space and treated conversation as a creepy hands-on affair. Miller learned from Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee that, “You really felt as if a St. Bernard had licked your face for an hour, had pawed you all over.”