journalism. Events, Football Only a few minutes later, there was the ear-splitting noise of a gun going off indoors. At the beginning of August 1957, Johnson, who was then Senate majority leader, asked Phil to help him win passage of what became the Civil Rights Act of 1957. "We have worked out this solution: we'll live in the sort of house, have the sort of furniture, eat the sort of food, go to the sort of places, that young people making salaries like mine can afford.". Like many members of his class and generation, his postwar view was shaped by his work in wartime intelligence; a classic Cold War liberal, he was uncomfortable with McCarthy, but quite friendly with the personnel and policies of the CIA. . So, although he remained fairly liberal on domestic issues, he was not so on foreign policy. . If there was one journalist she admired more than any other, it was her friend James Reston, and it was Reston who, despite his many virtues, had famously said, I will not have the New York Times muckraking the President of the United States. But in the end she made her decision. He left no note of any kind. On Feb. 1, Phil came home briefly. Later, she developed an infatuation with the work of Thomas Mann and seems to have made endless demands on the authors time and patience. . As I began to lead the way down the steps, a bus-size babushkathe usherfixed me with a hard look and said, Nelzya. Impossible. I think this definition of roles deepened as time went on and I became increasingly unsure of myself. Needless to say, for years I regaled all who would listen with my Katharine Graham story. Events: A heads up about City Paper events, from panels to parties. In the summer of 1963, Phil seemed to be getting betterhe was undergoing treatment at a psychiatric center in Marylandand there was even hope of resuming a normal life at home. Grahams father had had trouble coming up with the funds to send him to Harvard Law, but managed to do so. These days, the Post is usually thought of as the second-best paper in the country, after the Timesor, if not the second-best, then at least tied for that honor with the Wall Street Journal and, stretching some, the Los Angeles Times. Phil's activities in regard to Little Rock were the first sign for me that something was wrong with him, that his powerful talents could be used in such an idealistic but confusing and irrational way. Ronald Reagan made sure to accept invitations to Mrs. Grahams house after his election in 1980, and in so doing he horrified his most ideological liegementhe ones who (unlike such old pros as Dole) really do believe in a liberal-media conspiracy. It was incredibly exciting. It happens to be a beautiful Destiny and I shall be there while it is beautiful and while it is not. This was in 1988, and I had recently been assigned to the Washington Posts bureau in Moscow. According to Otis, who told me all of this only much later, Phil was disheveled and spinning out ideas, some of which were unintelligible. It worked, but at the same time it hurt the paper. He began actively recruiting young people with potential, as well as more established reporters and editors. In the late nineteen-fifties, Phil Grahams health and behavior also presented increasingly difficult problemsproblems that might have been solved with medication, if he had not refused it. When I opened the door to a downstairs bathroom, I found him. For years, Katharine witnessed her husbands violent mood swingshis periods of heavy drinking, his bizarre behavior, his prolonged depressions. I think he felt he'd done such harm the last time around that he just couldn't deal with it, couldn't fix everything. Phil was clearly upset, too. By this time, Robin had returned to Paris. . On an early trip, he requested a secretary, and the bureau chief dispatched Robin Webb, a young Australian trying to make it as a journalist. He held onto his balance for only another month before his first major depression set in. In later years, he wanted to mold the career of his friend Senator Lyndon Johnson. Nobody knew what to do. Lets go, lets publish. And by doing that she opened the way to Watergate and to the Posts position as a rival of the Times. Bradlee was incensed, and said so in terms both loud and profane. AKA Philip Leslie Graham. With Grahams support, Bradlee was soon firing the lazy and the mediocre, the racist and the dull, and he then set about raiding topflight papers around the country for their best talent. It similarly (if with less success) pursued Iran-Contra and Bill Clintons ethical droppings. But hurry, she said. This had become enough of an issue in my mind that, despite my misgivings, I came down on the side of the Newsweek purchase, it so clearly being something Phil would have done on his own. Grahams insecurity as a woman, as a publisher, and as a parent has clear and painful origins. This arrangement was never an issue. Graham instructed Bradlee to recount what he had seen and heard, and after he had done so the publisher and the three officials worked out a deal: as long as all the city pools were shut down for the time being and would be integrated the following year, the paper would print nothing more of what had happened. Mann was once asked if Agnes was German. A heavy drinker who reportedly had manic-depressive tendencies, Graham, in some respects, was his own worst enemy, stridently abusive to his wife, both privately and publicly. Following the lead of my successful colleague the Latin-American correspondent, I tried to schedule every minute of the two days allotted me. If there are any smart literary agents around these days, one of them will copyright the title The Breaking of the President, the piece said, for it is becoming more obvious with every passing day that the men and the movement that broke Lyndon B. Johnsons authority in 1968 are out to break Richard M. Nixon in 1969.. Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. Dr. Phil McGraw and Robin McGraw during TNT's "Christmas in Washington 2004" - Show and Audience at National Building Museum in Washington, DC, D.C.,. In 1962, Phil Graham met Robin Webb, a young Australian woman who had been working in Newsweeks Paris bureau, and he began appearing with her at Newsweek bureaus all over the world. Facebook gives people the power to. The most imposing woman in journalism delivers an unexpectedly confessional autobiography. But although I was thoroughly fascinated and charmed by Phil, I was also slightly resentful, when I thought about it, at feeling such complete dependence on another person. Around the table in Phil's office sat Secretary of the Interior Julius "Cap" Krug, Undersecretary Oscar Chapman, President Truman's special adviser Clark Clifford, and two or three others. At one point, he wanted to fire the highly respected editorial writer Alan Barth, who had dared to defend the right of Earl Browder, the former secretary-general of the Communist Party in America, not to name names before a Senate subcommittee. She'd been told that Harvard was the best, so her dying wish was that he go there. Her gesture in retrospect seems to me undignified, considering the awful slamming we were taking from him, she writes. I bolted out of the room and ran around in a frenzy looking for him. Graham eventually met Australian journalist Robin Webb, and in 1962 they began an affair. Toward the end of her life, I was a success in her eyes, and perhaps that is what she loved. For the second, I went with the upbeat, down-market option: the circus. He stormed the podium and berated Signing On to The Post. He also vowed to do a number on the Post, and to go after the Graham familys broadcasting licenses. Join Facebook to connect with Robin H Webb and others you may know. At the beginning of 1954, an event occurred that led up to what I still think of as the defining moment for the company: the unexpected acquisition of the Times-Herald {the other morning paper in Washington}. COMSAT was a groundbreaking public/private organization, half government, half telephone company. Best Blood Sugar Supplements 2023: Top Blood Sugar Pills That Work, Best Ebony OnlyFans To Follow For Thick Ebony OnlyFans Videos (2023), Best Dating Sites For Older People: Mature Site To Find Love, Best CBD for Dog Anxiety: High-Quality oils to Calm Your Dog, Proudly powered by Newspack by Automattic. Phil was bright, issue-oriented, hard-working, witty, and, to me, amazingly good-looking. He was married to Katharine Graham, the daughter of Eugene Meyer, the previous owner of The Washington Post. Phil wrote a letter in return that Katharine rightly describes as pretty strange: One morning when you were despairing I tried to help you by words. I'm not sure what triggered Phil's relationship with Lyndon Baines Johnson, but it now seems predictable, even foreordained. Over the years, she would fire an endless line of Newsweek editors and Post executives, but in Bradlee she had found someone who from the start satisfied her in every respect: lan, strength, social class, and talent. The reporters returned to The Post to write the story, expecting, of course, that it would be on the front page. He ended up on his hands and knees, crawling around at the last minute to retrieve one of Lyndon's contact lenses. Katharine Graham revealed in her 1997 autobiography Personal History (which her biographer Deborah Davis reviewed for Washington City Paper) that she felt her husband received inadequate treatment at Chestnut Lodge, going so far as to say that his condition required electroshock therapy. . Bradlee had been Phils friend, not hers, but he pushed for the job of managing editor, pushed with his customary blend of charm and vulgarity (Id give my left one for the job, he told her at lunch one day), and she melted. And he was very interested in ensuring that women were working on the paper as well as reading it. He had come into a job for which he was ill-prepared. You cant go. Food News and U.P.I., were infuriating the White House with reporting that showed the contrast between the official statements of the generals and the dire situation in the field, the Post could not keep pace. My mother seemed to undermine so much of what I did, subtly belittling my choices and my activities in light of her greater, more important ones, she writes. When they were taken to see JFK, Phil spoke -- "shrewdly and eloquently," according to Joe -- pointing out all the obvious things that Johnson could add to the ticket and noting that not having Johnson on the ticket would certainly be trouble. Philip L. Graham. There was, of course, no way to press the point. But in the spring of 1971 the Supreme Court had not yet declared its strong support of press freedoms to the degree that it would in the Pentagon Papers case; moreover, the Post itself did not yet have the financial standing or the self-identity to go forward simply and with confidence. 2023 Cond Nast. Love is still strong between Dr. Phil McGraw and his wife Robin, who celebrates 43 years of married life in August 2019. He operated on the theory that it was important to do with our four children only those things he himself enjoyed -- no dull board games, but hunting, fishing, walking. The area was still a wilderness. District Line Daily: Our news, politics, arts, food, and sports coverage in one email every weekday. On Nov. 2, I flew up to Idlewild Airport with Phil to see him off to Europe, where he was going to talk to Larry Norstad. To win the paper, Phil employed the most feared lawyer in Washington, Edward Bennett Williams. The moment of happiness you gave me is more help than most people are given in a lifetime, Thank you for it. I see nothing wrong with the fact that people in power often deal with others on more than one level, she writes. He wept and wept and couldn't stop. She went ahead with the publication of the Pentagon Papers, and she backed her reporters and editors during Watergate, when the Post Companys survival was under threat and the paper was all alone in pursuing the story. Perhaps it was true. The Post pursued Watergate as a news story, not as an ideological crusade. It is hard to remember now just how far in front the Times was after the Second World War. View the profiles of people named Robin Graham. So much of his life flowed from the year as president of the Law Review. {But a fight was unnecessary. Insofar as she was capable of love, I think she loved my father and us, but she was highly complex, and at times deeply unhappy. In her own memoir, Agnes wrote of rebelling against the responsibilities of marriage; she behaved, she said, as if the whole world were in a conspiracy to flatten out my personality and cast me into a universal mold called woman.. Robin Webb (Robin Elaine Riddle) See Photos. We grew less able to keep up with what was happening in the world. For the first time I had found a man who was that right mix of intellectual, physical, and social charm, and warm and funny on top of that. Robin Webb. Having Phil back was a tremendous -- and tremendously complicated -- relief. I would not insist that Moscow was short on luxury in those days except to note that I did not so much find a hairdresser as create one. Facebook gives people the power to share. . Renewed Activity. Both Phil and Felix worked on Joe throughout our dinner, suggesting that the most important first step for the 1950s was the right to vote. I got it for her. The Post Company had gone public just two days before getting the papers, and publication could easily have affected its stock prices for the worse. essence festival 2022, grand rapids griffins internships, As an ideological crusade lead the way to press the point ensuring that women were on! 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