When President Harry Truman picked up his “Washington Post” early on December 6, 1950, to read a review of his daughter Margaret Truman’s singing performance, he was livid. Though conceding that Miss Truman was “extremely attractive,” Paul Hume, the “Post’s” music critic, stated bluntly that “Miss Truman cannot sing very well” and “has not improved” over the years. The president wrote the following letter to the 34-year old Hume, whom he compared to the columnist Westbrook Pegler (“a rat,” in Truman’s view).
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
Mr Hume:
I’ve just read your lousy review of Margaret’s concert. I’ve come to the conclusion that you are an “eight ulcer man on four ulcer pay.”
It seems to me that you are a frustrated old man who wishes he could have been successful. When you write such poppy-cock as was in the back section of the paper you work for it shows conclusively that you’re off the beam and at least four of your ulcers are at work.
Some day I hope to meet you. When that happens you’ll need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps a supporter below!
Pegler, a gutter snipe, is a gentleman alongside you. I hope you’ll accept that statement as a worse insult than a reflection on your ancestry.
H.S.T.
Z: SOUND FAMILIAR? I had to laugh because it’s SO TRUMP! He said nothing like this when he defended Ivanka’s business….Did the media go NUTS over Harry? Oh, wait….he was a Democrat. (Just kidding, I have no idea what the media thought or said about Harry’s letter!)
geeez2014
GeeeZ .... 
HAHA! It does sound like Trump. Was this a personal letter sent to Hume or published in the newspaper, I wonder. In either case, neither would have the circulation or reach numbers of DJT’s twitter. He’d probably have to drop the poppy-cock and ulcer insults due to character count.
Re-read Truman’s letter. That poor Pegler fellow must have scratched his head when he saw that and said, “Wha’D’I do?!”
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Truman was an honest, straightforward, no-nonsense country boy who was in far over his head no matter what he tried, but never gave up in frustration or fear. He was supposed to be nothing more than a place-filler veep for FDR, but suddenly found himself in the big picture struggling amongst political titans during cataclysmic global crises. He won because he was a good, patriotic, guileless man .
Eisenhower was an ordinary man whom fate thrust into extraordinary circumstances. He responded by doing the best job he knew how that he thought would benefit the most people. He tended to see the big picture clearly, and generally didn’t like what he saw.
Kennedy was an aristocrat who grew up comfortable with wealth and power. But he tried to experience the common man’s world, which allowed a trickle of common sense to penetrate his elitist veneer. He never wanted to be President or even senator, and did so only to please his father. He saw the big picture, but didn’t particularly want to be in it.
Johnson was a devious megalomaniac who was most content when people feared him. He was a manipulator, a schemer, and a bully who behaved like a man with a huge appetite, a sour stomach, and an overactive libido. He wanted the big picture to be hanging in his personal office.
Nixon was a brilliant but paranoid self-loather, a sort of well-educated Joe Btfsplk whose timing was abysmal. Much of what he was impeached and castigated for would today be given a pass by the mass media for Democrats, but he simply came across as someone you wouldn’t buy a used car from. He saw the big picture and wanted to photoshop it.
Ford was that guy who takes one for the team. He saw the big picture, but preferred to watch NFL films, reruns of the Abbot And Costello TV show, and One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.
Carter was an accidental office holder whose own mother questioned the wisdom of giving him birth. He saw the big picture distortedly through cloudy and misshapen lenses, never fully grasping the nature of geopolitical events, politics, economics, or religion. In the American Dictionary of Slang, if you look up the word twerp, you’ll find his photograph in the space.
Bush I was a loyal, hard-working government employee, the Rodney Dangerfield of Republican presidents, who tried to do the right thing but kept focusing on the wrong section of the big picture. After he built a great international coalition and his team won a spectacular victory over Saddam Hussein, he managed to steal defeat from the jaws of victory and lose his re-election bid.
Clinton was a narcissist who wanted both adulation and success to go with what he considered the entertaining and carnal perks of the job. But he was also a realist who recognized that if the country succeeded, his chances for fame and fortune would increase in ratio. He was not quite able to see the big picture because he was always standing in the shadow of his own collection of hungers.
Bush II was a genuine patriot, a loyal friend, and a terrible manager. As President, he was very much like Monty Python’s King Arthur in Holy Grail. He saw the big picture but had great difficulty deciding when and where to hang it. He tried his best but was not properly equipped for the job.
Soetoro was a classic narcissist who craves attention and fame. But he is also a solipsist who has no use for other people except when they give him their approval and adulation. He is culturally and psychologically unable to see the big picture in American terms and wouldn’t be interested if he could unless it enhanced his popularity somehow and featured him prominently at its center, preferably with a golden halo and shimmering backlight as he stares off nobly into a glorious tomorrow.
Trump is a Gordian Knot slicer, a Pattonesque problem solver who craves spectacle, conflict, power, and attention. He needs a camera on him at all times to ensure that he IS the big picture. He also needs a large, strong, ominous Special Forces vet to come into his bathroom every morning and say, “Remember, thou art only human” and a trio of ectoplasmic witches to appear in his bedroom every night and say, “The Philistines never sleep.”
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Trump is pretty mild compared to that.
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The letter was made public.
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Linked at Infidel Bloggers Alliance.
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Now that was a tweet for the ages.
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Marvelous rundown bocopro! Man! The left’s object is always to identify the target and destroy it because the non-left is not wrong but evil. The Truman missile is a great comparative.
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Baysider, I love that…I came up with it on my own but Krauthammer coined it, apparently…to the Left, Democrats are RIGHT and Republicans aren’t WRONG, they’re EVIL.
CUBE! YOU MADE ME THINK ‘WHAT TWEET?’ THEN i LAUGHED OUT LOUD! EXCELLENT COMMENT 🙂
AOW..thanks for the h/t
Kid, you know, Trump can be more mild than that,you’re right! Honestly, this made me feel better about Trump’s ‘crap’ (sorry, but….)!!!!! 🙂
Jerry, right!!!
Bocopro…I tried to find something I completely disagreed with but can’t. YOU NAILED IT.
I have a question for you: DO YOU THINK TRUMP IS ALSO A CLOSET SELF-LOATHER. We hear how hard he tried his whole life to live up to “Daddy’s” expectations and I think he’s still doing that. Not sure that’s a healthy thing for a leader; What do you think? Is it just self adulation or is he afraid to give up that adulation from himself or others because then he’d see there are plenty of cracks in HIS veneer, too?
Such good comments…let’s keep it up; thanks, everybody
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No, not a self-loather. Forced to pin him down in one-word comments, I’d go with “jaded,” “bored,” “unsated.”
What I suspect about him, what I’ve read from him since he first announced, is a sense of destiny and a fear of ever getting into that position of “I wonder if I could’ve done it if I tried.”
DJT is one of those who just pop up in the right place at the right time and clearly see what the weathervane on the barn roof is doing while everybody else is busy swatting flies off the potato salad.
What I think we’ll wind up experiencing, unless he gets tired of the snottiness from the left and just gives up, is a man who has greatness thrust upon him and uses it effectively, kinda like Alexander or Lincoln or TR.
Difficult guy to actually predict, tho, and it’s not hard to imagine him growing weary of the constant sniping and undercutting and just abdicating to Pence after lighting a few major bonfires and purges. I have some matches he can use and a list of departmental carbuncles just screaming for excision. But I trust that he’s a big boy and already knows where the accelerants are kept and who needs an escort out the back door.
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Such comments can end up being deadly. The Carpenters come to mind. Remember when some columnist wrote after one of their early performances about Richard Carpenter’s “chubby little sister?” She ended up dying from anorexia due to that senseless remark. Hopefully, Margaret Truman was a stronger person and it didn’t affect her.
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BOCO; “BORED”??? that would have been THE LAST ADJECTIVE I’d have used…interesting…Jaded, possibly…UNSATED: ABSOLUTELY NO DOUBT. Good call
What you said here pasted below is the only reason I actually voted for him instead of not having voted at all:
“What I think we’ll wind up experiencing, unless he gets tired of the snottiness from the left and just gives up, is a man who has greatness thrust upon him and uses it effectively, kinda like Alexander or Lincoln or TR.:” May this be true…please God.
Mal, I think Margaret went on to some good things…..I have to say I’m of a personality who would NEVER have been the president’s daughter and SUNG (and I CAN sing, if you don’t mind my saying so…an INK SPOT told me I can sing, to mention one of my most treasured moments in my singing career!)….And I remember when Chelsea Clinton danced in her school ballet….I was impressed that, as a little girl, she’d even DO that in public knowing the amount of public pressure she’d have…. I can sing for a LOT of people and rather enjoy it, but to sing when you know the press is going to go after you? NO WAY! Matter of fact, young singers come to me often for the jitters and I tell them “Don’t forget, that audience wants to like you….” It’s usually a dinner club full of their own friends and familY! NOt the MEDIA!
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I remember Margaret Truman, who was already a has-been singer by the time I found out about her circa mid-50s. She was an unfortunately plain woman and in my opinion only mediocre as a professional singer.
Later in life she became a fairly successful writer of mysteries and intrigues, mostly centered upon D.C. or at least American politics. She didn’t like being the daughter of the sitting president, comparing it to life in a national monument.
She used her father’s influence to launch at least 2 different careers, one in singing and another in talk radio, but as I recall never really abused it. She was, IMO, a much better writer than a performer. I kinda think her writing career was legit and not entirely based on her father’s influence.
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I’m kinda speechless after all the really well spoken, insightful comments above. All I can add is that in my opinion President Trump was being a good Daddy and I support that.
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JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT WAS SAFE TO GO ON TWITTER, HILLARY CLINTON REARS HER HEAD ONCE MORE.
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The faces of DemRats today, tomorrow and forever….
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Sheila Jacksone Lee, pelosi and shumer at least should be in that last one.
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IMP, It doesn’t seem the bneast is willing to walk away. Planning another run?
God Help Us. (by taking her/it)
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She can primary against Obama again,
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@Kid..they’re in the Senate restroom changing their diapers. And warming up their nightly formula.
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IMP, I beg to differ. Someone is doing it for them.
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Ed, I would not be surprised to see moochele run.
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Even Betsy DeVos can’t go to a school now without being shouted down “SHAME SHAME!” Every Republican will be attacked. They even say she doesn’t care about schools and hasn’t worked with them, but they’ve funded schools with great results, she’s been on Boards to help kids and even supports poorer kids getting better chances.
Teachers are worried about THEIR UNIONS.
I’m hearing a leftwinger now who you might be hearing now on Tucker’s show who’s saying that “She’s going to do things against the evidence.”
This is THE biggest grips of the Left toward every Trump appointee….Without facts to show that’s WRONG, how can WE WIN?
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Z, Devos IS evil. She’s going to make it so parents have a choice of where to send their kids to school. God, how evil !
Yea, this is liberalism (Hopefully in it’s death throes) like vampires being drug out into the sunlight.
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Kid, I bet Obamnazi runs again.
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Me Too Ed. They are that fulll of themselves. Plus they will be Aching to maintain their ‘legacy’. and then you have the greed factor.
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If Nordstrom cancelled my daughter’s line of clothes, I would make noise, too. Especially if I were elected President of The United States in a really hot election. You see, there are no coincidences in politics or business. You can take that to the bank.
Nordstrom’s made a political decision.
So, I will stop shopping at Nordstrom’s, and will return all merchandise from that store. It really takes a liberal to screw up a great brand like Nordstrom’s.
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Bob, yea, what don’t entiies who are products not understand that when they make a political statement, they lose 50% of their customers. ? Honestly. So simple.
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Kid…”what don’t entiies who are products not understand that when they make a political statement, they lose 50% of their customers. ? Honestly. So simple” Wouldn’t ya THINK?
It’s like at Christmastime when stores demand their employees don’t say MERRY CHRISTMAS…and even tree lots call their trees HOLIDAY trees. When MORE than 50% of their customers are celebrating what?………oh, ya, CHRISTMAS !:-) What the…??
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Even if Nordstroms decision was not politically motivated, they should have realized it would appear so.
Are they not marketers?
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I stand the rule that if the Nordstroms issue were to occur during a Democratic Administration, would I criticize the ethical conundrum? Yes, I would. Thus here I do as well. It’s unseemly for POTIS or his surrogates to speak out on this…as well as probably illegal for the surrogates.
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Heard this a.m. that over 80% of T.J. Maxx employees voted Bernie & then Hillary. I shop there a lot, bargain area, & no surprise when I see ‘The Help’.
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Ed, no doubt they KNEW it looked politically motivated, if it wasn’t….
CI, I like to live that way, too. On the matter of Nordstrom’s doing this to Ivanka, I’d be thinking “Would I be this annoyed if it was a lefty pres’s daughter?” I think I would. I’d think “This woman had this company before, the politics shouldn’t enter into it…”
How could I not?
On what Conway said, I was watching her live when she said it and it was a very sweet add-on at the end of a discussion of the Ivanka problem..”I’M going to shop on line today for her stuff because I like it….Buy Ivanka!” (I paraphrase). As she said it I got swept into the sweet loyalty, then immediately thought “oh, NO…they’re going to screw her OVER for that”
And sure enough. And, probably, it was a terrible anomaly for the usually exquisitely articulate and thoughtful Conway.
ONE THING even slightly questionable from a Trump surrogate and YOU ARE DIRT.
I think a lot of this is “IF YOU ARE RICH YOU MUST SUFFER” and I don’t agree…if you’re rich, go for it………..I don’t look at rich cabinet members, for example, as BAD because they’re rich, which so many on the left are doing….it’s dangerous to America to think that way; This country used to reward for excellence.
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http://us.pressfrom.com/news/politics/-24641-the-melania-controversy-is-nothing-new-eleanor-roosevelt-pitched-hot-dog-buns/
INTERESTING
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