Celebrating the Past • Planning the Future
Summer Convention June 17-19, 2004

Carpenter steals show with laughter

The laughter started and ended and continued in between as Liz Carpenter weaved her wonderful tales about reporting and politics during the Friday luncheon June 18 at the 125th Summer Convention.

“I think the most effective public servants, the ones who fare the best, use wit and humor as an effective tool and I still think laughter is a great tool for anybody in the public life to deflect criticism or just keep the audience awake,” Carpenter said.

Carpenter was a reporter for 18 years at several Texas newspapers, but she is best known as Lady Bird Johnson’s press secretary and chief of staff during the LBJ administration. She’s made her living recounting stories and during her keynote she took jabs at new and old politicians. Part of her job in the LBJ administration she said was to find jokes to liven up the president’s speeches. She also created the first White House humor group.

Some politicians are great at delivering humor and others really need it in their administrations, she said, adding that President Ford hired the first gag writer to deal with criticism in the wake of pardoning President Nixon.

“This is the year when we really need laughter, and politics has always given that to me. I do feel like once a reporter, always a reporter,” Carpenter said. “You never stop seeing what is a good story and you keep wanting to share that story.”

Carpenter said it seems that in the last three years America has gone from being a country that was admired and envied to one that’s hated.

“We can only generate really rich genuine debate in our country if we have the courage to be honest about who we are and what we are whether

you are Democrat or Republican,” she said. “I don’t know what is accomplished by keeping our beliefs and politics in the closet. We’re the losers without open discussion.

“Someone once said history is just one damn thing after another. It could have been (Secretary of Defense Donald) Rumsfeld or …”

Carpenter signed copies of her book “Start With a Laugh” after the luncheon.

“The only thing that makes me feel old, and I am 83, is that both of my children are members of AARP,” she said.