Author Archives: Tin Man

Cecil Stoughton

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Cecil Stoughton, the photographer who took this iconic photograph of LBJ being sworn into the presidency on an airplane, died on Monday.

He hitched a ride with a state trooper and made it to Love Field before Air Force One took off. He learned afterward that police officers on the tarmac, seeing his car hurtling toward the plane and fearing another attack, nearly fired on him. Mr. Stoughton climbed into the plane, the only photographer on board. He switched the color film in his Hasselblad camera for a roll of black and white: the wire services could not handle color.

The swearing-in began, and Mr. Stoughton, standing on a couch at the back of the plane, pressed the shutter. Nothing happened. He jiggled his camera — jiggled it hard. It came to life.

He took about 20 shots of the ceremony. He was so close to Jacqueline Kennedy that her bloodstained skirt did not appear in the finished photo. Continuing to shoot, he captured a wrenching image of the Johnsons consoling her, her eyes downcast, dark hair obscuring half her face.

Gay Marriage: No Brick Wall

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Charles Kaiser writes today about why the same-sex marriage movement has not hit a brick wall, as the New York Times claimed this morning. The one point on which I disagree with him is New York. Although the Democrats have finally won a majority in the state senate, it’s not clear we’ll have a Democratic majority leader, because it’s only a one-vote majority and there are some rogue Democratic senators, like Ruben Díaz:

Mr. Díaz, a Pentecostal minister, has long been one of the most socially conservative voices in the Senate. He continued to say on Wednesday that he could not support as leader any lawmaker who would help make gay marriage become law, even if it were his own son, Assemblyman Ruben Díaz Jr.

“I would not support anybody, Malcolm Smith, my son Ruben Díaz Jr., anybody who supports that,” he said.

This makes me mad, but we’ll see what happens.