The media - including of all people Maureen Dowd - is complaining to some extent because Selma portrays Lyndon Johnson as an obstacle to the civil rights movement. The truth is that all of the commentators, both pro-MLK and pro-LBJ, are wrong. Martin Luther King Jr. was a phony, easily one of the most over-rated persons in American history, possibly in world history.
The reason the film attacks Lyndon Johnson is because he was a critic of Martin Luther King, Jr. He called MLK a hypocritical preacher, no doubt a reference to FBI tape recordings wherein MLK was tape-recorded sleeping with women who were not his wife.
He told a reporter, "*******it, if you could only hear what that hypocritical preacher does sexually."
Jacqueline Kennedy said that Martin Luther King Jr. was tape-recorded planning a sort of sex party with men and women during the so-called march on Washington D.C. One of MLK's closest associates, Ralph Abernathy, said that MLK used church donations to have sex parties, hired white prostitutes, and then beat the white prostitutes.
Lest anyone forget, it is still illegal in the United States to solicit prostitution.
What would have happened if a white preacher had behaved in this manner in his private life? He would have been reviled, ridiculed, and isolated. Forget Martin Luther King, Jr. Lyndon Johnson did more for civil rights than MLK ever did.
