Carter was the chief executive most detested by Secret Service agents
I did a lot of reading over the holidays. One of the books was this one: First Family Detail, by Ronald Kessler. I won’t link to it because my link would go to the UK Amazon page (okay, I could get around that, but it’s effort and I’m lazy).
“Carter was just very short and rude most of the time,” an agent recalls. “With agents, he’d just pretend like you were not around. You’d say hello, and he’d just look at you, like you weren’t there, like you were bothering him.” Carter actually told Secret Service agents and uniformed officers he did not want them to greet him on his way to the Oval Office. It was apparently too much bother for him to have to say hello back to another human being.
Nor did Carter have much use for the military. Even though he was a Naval Academy graduate, Carter “talked down to the military, just talked like they didn’t know what they were talking about,” a former agent says. “Carter didn’t want military aides to wear uniforms,” former agent Cliff Baranowski recalls. Not surprisingly, of all the presidents in recent memory, Carter was the chief executive most detested by Secret Service agents.
Agent John Piasecky was on Carter’s detail for three and a half years. That included seven months of driving him in the presidential limousine. Aside from giving directions, Carter never spoke to him, he says. Carter tried to project an image of himself as man of the people by carrying his own luggage when traveling. But that was another charade. When he was a candidate in 1976, Carter would carry his own bags when the press was around but would ask the Secret Service to carry them the rest of the time. As president, Carter — code-named Deacon — orchestrated more ruses involving his luggage.
“When he was traveling, he would get on the helicopter and fly to Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base,” says former Secret Service agent Baranowski. “He would roll up his sleeves and carry his bag over his shoulder, but it was empty. He wanted people to think he was carrying his own bag.”
“Carter made a big show about taking a hang-up carryon out of the trunk of the limo when he’d go someplace, and there was nothing in it,” says another agent who was on his detail. “It was empty. It was just all show.”
It’s a series of anecdotes, if you’re into that. Hillary’s chapter was fun, though. And hoo boy was Bill a horndog!
January 7, 2025 — 4:45 pm
Comments: 14
Well, here we are again…
Happy New Year, everyone! As I type, Justin Trudeau has stepped down and the election of Donald Trump has been certified. I watched them both live. They were boring. A massive snowball fight has erupted in DC on the anniversary of the fedsurrection.
It is a time of signs and wonders.
I’m sorry to have done so much Jack Chick to you. I needed something easy to queue up in advance. It’s the first time in the eighteen years(!) of this blog that I’ve taken a solid chunk of time away. Off work, too. I feel positively reset.
We’ve had a lovely two weeks and hope you did too, Jack Chick not withstanding. I shall now go and read the posts from everyone I didn’t scare away.
p.s. I know! I know! Jimmy Carter at last!
January 6, 2025 — 6:41 pm
Comments: 6
Last one
This one is unremarkable, except everyone in it was black. There was a black Adam and Eve and a black angel and I had all kinds of hopes, but no – it was the same old Anglo Jesus.
That’s it!
January 3, 2025 — 6:00 pm
Comments: 5
Tee-hee!
One of many on the topic of homosexuality. They’re all about what you’d expect, but I thought the art for this one was funny. It’s got Chick’s copyright on it, but no way is this his work.
January 2, 2025 — 6:00 pm
Comments: 8
Name this band
Gates, Schwab, Soros and the Swedish Doom Goblin. Lookit Chick getting all 21st Century! The illustrator is the dude who likes to draw cats. He does a pretty good job with these four, not so great with the little girl who had to listen to her daddy explain Revelations to her.
Chick himself (I think) did a very passable Al Gore in a pamphlet on global warming that is honestly based.
Happy new year!
January 1, 2025 — 6:00 pm
Comments: 2
I think this dude just likes to draw cats
This is Chick’s most recent. It’s a sweet, pointless story about a cat named Jenny, then it switches to a totally different illustrator for the last eight pages (old Jack Chick art, I think) and a YOU DON’T WANT TO GO TO HELL, DO YOU? message.
December 31, 2024 — 5:00 pm
Comments: 1
Lady, what have you got on your head?!
Party Girl. I think from the context this is supposed to be Mardi Gras. This one is noteworthy for the especially awful art.
December 30, 2024 — 6:00 pm
Comments: 7
Brrrr…
This Was Your Life was by far the most circulated Chick tract of all. They were everywhere. This one was personal; it led to the terrifying certainty that some day, everyone who ever lived would watch me poop.
The original Chick artwork was appalling. This was a later edition intended to reach English-speaking Asian immigrants (their description).
December 27, 2024 — 6:00 pm
Comments: 7
It’s a novel theory
If you don’t get the implications of “slower and easier to catch” his position is that people killed and ate the dinosaurs, in what looks like Medieval times. This is a fun one.
December 26, 2024 — 6:00 pm
Comments: 4
Mary looks properly horrified
I’ve come to think of this artist as Shading Guy. He did this one and many other bible stories ones. He’s a definite cut above the usual Chick artist.
Merry Christmas!
December 25, 2024 — 5:00 pm
Comments: 5