Earl L. Butz, Secretary Felled by Remark, Dies at 98

[Judi Lynn]

Source: N.Y. Times/Associated Press

Earl L. Butz, Secretary Felled by Remark, Dies at 98

Published: February 3, 2008

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (AP) — Former Agriculture Secretary Earl L. Butz, who was forced from office in 1976 after making a racial joke and was once a dean at Purdue University, died Saturday. He was 98.

Mr. Butz had been in poor health recently and died during a family visit at his son’s home in Washington, said Randy Woodson, dean of the College of Agriculture at Purdue.

Mr. Butz, a farm economist and free-market advocate, had a relaxed and earthy style that won him acclaim as an after-dinner speaker but caused problems in his public life. Controversy began swirling around him after President Nixon appointed him secretary of agriculture in 1971. He figured in public disputes on issues like foreign grain sales and high meat prices.

Mr. Butz was forced to resign in October 1976 after telling a joke that was derogatory to blacks. The slur was overheard by John W. Dean III, the White House counsel to Nixon who was jailed in the Watergate scandal, and Mr. Dean’s report on it was published in Rolling Stone magazine.




Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/03/washington/03butz.html?_r=1&ref=us&oref=slogin

[Skittles]

1. he didn't look like a petty little conservative racist asswipe, did he?

:rofl:

[Ian David]

6. He looked like Dr. Strangelove

[Manifestor_of_Light]

2. I remember that scandal.

He was telling it to somebody who was in the Cabinet, and they were on a government jet (Air Force One?) and Pat Boone, of all people, was present.

The joke had three parts and the only part that was printable was that black people liked loose shoes.

[Name removed]

3. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Judi Lynn]

4. Little known information about BUTZ available in a new documentary:

Friday, October 19, 2007
King Corn: Or How Earl Butz Changed the Way Americans Eat

~snip~
What eventually emerges from this lighthearted buddy film, however, is a tragic lesson in how a few well-placed individuals--in this case the former secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Earl Butz, working with a supportive president, Richard Nixon, and profit-hungry corporate interests--can alter the life and health of an entire nation in lasting ways. It was Butz, himself raised on a family farm, who flipped the federal system of farm supports on its ear with the specific intention of flooding the country with cheap food.

In this film, you will actually see Butz, now frail and confined to a nursing home, defending decisions that turned Americans into lab rats for corporate agri-business. Butz sees cheap food as a driver of American wealth, but we are now witnessing the true costs of his master plan: a national epidemic of obesity, sky-rocketing health care bills, a generation that most likely will be the first with a shorter life expectancy than its parents'.

After moving to the small Iowa town of Greene, our film-making duo, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, quickly discover a landscape awash in corn. That's because the federal system Butz devised no longer pays farmers to refrain from overproducing--a system that kept crop prices high in the past--but now actually subsidizes the growing of huge surpluses.

The resulting tsunami of cheap corn becomes an essential ingredient in every fast food joint, in virtually every processed food product on grocery shelves, in the feed of industrially produced poultry, pork and cattle. Laboratory analysis of a human hair snippet shows that the carbon in the body of an average American is, in fact, mainly corn-based. As food author Michael Pollan confirms in the film, nearly everything in the typical American diet revolves around cheap corn.

"We are not growing quality here," declares one Iowa corn farmer. "We're growing crap!"

More:
http://theslowcook.blogspot.com/2007/10/king-korn-or-how-earl-butz-changed-way.html

http://www.ethicurean.com.nyud.net:8090/wp-content/uploads/2007/image/kingcorn_guys.jpg

http://images.businessweek.com.nyud.net:8090/ss/07/04/0411_corn/image/bush-eating-corn.jpg

[SquireJons]

5. What wrong with corn?

And what's wrong with food surpluses?

The real issue is management, not food. Does anyone really think it's a good idea to pay farmers to not grow food while millions of people go hungry every day?

The only real issue with all of this corn, from my understanding, is that the slaughter industry is feeding corn to cattle, and cows don't eat corn, they eat grass. So then they have to shoot up the cows with steroids to keep them alive. Apparently there are disease issues related to this method of raising cattle. I don't remember all of the details, but I was recently discussing this very issue with a friend of mine.

[Javaman]

16. Read up on the Agra-corp, Monsanto, Cargil, ADM....

Then watch the documentary, "the future of food", read the books, "Omnivores dilemma", and "food Inc."

After that, then come back and tell me what is wrong with corn?

[existentialist]

7. One of the other things I remember Butz having said:

"If we can just get 100,000 (?) more out"

That is, if they could just drive more farmers out of farming then the farm economy would be just fine.

[Solly Mack]

8. He's certainly "earthy" now

[Paladin]

9. JFK, RFK And Martin Luther King All Die Young.....

...and this evil old fuck makes it to 98. There's justice for you.....

[Judi Lynn]

10. It's enough to make a person even more cynical, if possible. n/t

[ursi]

11. sorry about the dupe, I got your message loud and clear! Peace!

[tabasco]

12. Total shithead.

I believe he's the douche that claimed trees are bad for the environment.

Good riddance.

[mac56]

13. Actually I think that was Ronald Reagan.

Pretty sure.

[SpiralHawk]

14. Butz is the A-hole republicon who told farmers: "Get big or get out."

You can thank him and the other a-hole fatcat republicon cronies for trashing the foundation of the nation, small farms, and giving us corporate industrial ag -- and the consequent destruction of the family and the environment. How perfectly republicon,

[Binka]

15. Dirt Nap Time Butz-Head n/t