[ad_1]
PLAIN PLAINS (Georgia), April 17 (AP) — Jimmy Carter, a devout Southern Baptist running for president, has attracted months of media attention. Then the 1976 Democratic nominee mentioned sex and sin when explaining his religious beliefs to Playboy magazine.
Carter was not misquoted. But he must have been misunderstood, as his thoughts in wide-ranging interviews were reduced in the popular imagination to statements about “lust” and “adultery.”
Read also | China “advises” the Philippines to “clearly oppose” Taiwan’s independence.
Nearly half a century later, Carter, 98, is receiving hospice at the same home in southern Georgia where he was interviewed by a Playboy reporter, and interviewer Robert Scheer still believes Carter was treated unfairly. He recalled that the former president was a “real” and “serious” figure whose intentions were stifled by the intensity of the campaign’s final stretch.
“Jimmy Carter was a thinking man,” Schell, 87, told The Associated Press. “But it’s lost here. I’ve never seen a story like this. It’s all over the world…it’s never gone.”
Read also | Nepali New Year 2023: Thimi is painted red to usher in the Lunar New Year.
Political disasters ensued. Rosalyn Carter was suddenly asked if she trusted her husband. The fallout, in Carter’s words, “almost cost me the vote.”
Over several months, Carter spent more than five hours in Playboy—”more time with you than Time, Newsweek, and all the others combined And more,” the nominee told Scheer and Playboy editor Barry Golson.
The resulting question and answer spanned 12,000 words, and Scheer added thousands more in the accompanying story. Carter discussed military and foreign policy, racism and civil rights, political news and his reputation as a “vague” candidate.
“They’re not interested in sensational stuff,” Schell said of Playboy.
Hugh Hefner’s iconic publication is estimated to have more than 20 million readers a month with its illustrated magazines of nude women. But the magazine also documented American culture, with its signature Playboy Interviews featuring such powerful figures as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., John Lennon, Malcolm X and famed journalist Walter Cronkite.
Scheer says Carter is unafraid of nuance, proving he’s one of them.
The nominees’ most memorable comments were made at the end of their final session. Standing outside Carter’s front door, Golson pressed Carter, asking if his piety would make him a “stiff, unrelenting president” who could not represent all Americans.
The Baptist deacon responded to human imperfection, pride, and God’s forgiveness with an 823-word monologue. He said he believed in “the absolute and total separation of church and state,” explaining that his beliefs were rooted in humility, not judgment of others.
Citing Matthew 5:27-28, Carter explained that Jesus Christ considered offensive thoughts to be tantamount to adultery, and by that standard he was not qualified to judge a man who “cohabits” and “fucks up a lot of women” because he “sees many women were moved to lust,” and thus “committed adultery many times in their hearts.”
Scheer called it a “sensible statement” that reflected Carter’s Baptist heritage: “He said, look, I’m not going to be a fanatic. … I’m not this perfect guy.
Playboy realizes that Carter provides explosive material — and not just sex. Citing President Lyndon Johnson’s handling of Vietnam, Carter listed the last Democratic president alongside disgraced Republican Richard Nixon as “lying, deceiving and misrepresenting the truth.”
The magazine decided to send the full text of the Q&A to some 1,000 media outlets in late September, earlier than the usual October publication date of the November edition.
Scheer explained that this was done to allow time for impartial reporting rather than dropping bombshells in the days leading up to the election.
Regardless, headline writers, satirists and late-night TV swooped in to label it Carter’s “The Desire of My Heart” interview. “Saturday Night Live,” then a fledgling NBC sketch comedy show, did well. A political cartoonist depicted Carter’s longing for the Statue of Liberty.
In 1993, he lamented to NPR that a Playboy interview had become “the headline story of the entire 1976 campaign.”
“I was explaining the Sermon on the Mount,” Carter mused in his 2015 memoir.
As a candidate, Carter’s faith endeared him to many white evangelicals and cultural conservatives. That makes him a difficult foil for Republicans who want to keep Democrats at odds with much of the country. On the other hand, many young voters and urban liberals — a predominantly Democratic constituency — “want to know if he’s this South Square,” Scheer noted.
“Hamilton Jordan (Carter’s campaign manager) has been calling Carter’s beliefs the weirdo factor,” said media historian Amber Rosner, a University of Tennessee professor who has written extensively about Carter. “Talking to dudes is their way of proving he’s not some sort of prudish.”
Scheer, who was with Carter as part of his roving press corps, said Playboy’s early text releases sparked a frenzy.
“Reporters were scrambling to ask me, Bob, what’s this?” he recalled.
The travel press initially focused on Carter’s criticism of Johnson, who died in 1973. It’s an interesting detail because Carter is traveling to Texas to campaign with Johnson’s widow.
Carter initially told reporters that he was taken out of context. Scheer “ran back to the plane to get the tape,” effectively catching the nominee breaking his promise to never make “misleading statements.”
Mrs. Bird Johnson skipped Carter’s event in Texas, Scheer said. Carter apologized to her over the phone.
As Scheer and Golson prepared to leave, Carter’s comments on the adultery surged, and he insisted the exchange was an informal, casual joke.
“He’s still wearing a microphone!” Schell told The Associated Press.
The way the story evolved “ends up making Carter look like a weirdo,” Rosner said.
Rosalynn Carter responded lightly: “Jimmy talks too much, but at least people know he’s honest and doesn’t mind answering questions.” And, no, she never worried about his loyalty.
“My only concern was the lust of the press,” she wrote in 1984, recounting how her discipline eventually broke down when reporters asked her if she had ever committed adultery.
“If I had,” she replied, “I wouldn’t tell you.” (AP)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
share now
[ad_2]
Source link
