Earl Butz
Earl Lauer "Rusty"[1] Butz (July 3, 1909 – February 2, 2008) was a United States government official who served as the secretary of agriculture under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. His policies favored large-scale corporate farming and an end to New Deal programs.
Earl Butz
Background[edit]
Butz was born in Albion, Indiana, and brought up on a dairy farm in Noble County, Indiana. He was the eldest of five children and worked on his parents' 160-acre (65 ha) farm while growing up.[2] He attended a one-room country school through eighth grade and graduated from high school in a class of seven.[3]
Butz was an alumnus of Purdue University, where he was a member of Alpha Gamma Rho fraternity. He received a bachelor of science degree in agriculture in 1932, and then a doctorate in agricultural economics in 1937.[4] He was the uncle of American football player Dave Butz.[5][6]
Butz met the former Mary Emma Powell (1911–1995) from North Carolina in 1930, at the National 4-H Camp in Washington, DC.[4] They were married on December 22, 1937. They had two sons, William Powell and Thomas Earl Butz.[4]
Scandals and resignation[edit]
Pope joke[edit]
At the 1974 World Food Conference in Rome, Butz made fun of Pope Paul VI's opposition to "population control" by quipping, in a mock Italian accent: "He no playa the game, he no maka the rules."[11] A spokesman for Cardinal Cooke of the New York archdiocese demanded an apology, and the White House[11] requested that he apologize.[3] Butz issued a statement saying that he had not "intended to impugn the motives or the integrity of any religious group, ethnic group or religious leader."[11] Through a spokesman, he stated that media outlets had taken this portion of his statement out of their original context, which was that of retelling a joke.[12]
Racist joke[edit]
News outlets revealed a racist remark he made in front of entertainers Pat Boone and Sonny Bono and former White House counsel John Dean while aboard a commercial flight to California following the 1976 Republican National Convention. The October 18, 1976, issue of Time reported the comment while obscuring its vulgarity:[13]
Butz resigned his cabinet post on October 4, 1976.[14][15] Coincidentally, Butz' resignation was announced on Barbara Walters' first day as the first female co-anchor of the ABC Evening News.[16]
The reference in Time was to John Dean's article published in Rolling Stone issue #223.[17][18]
In any case, according to The Washington Post, anyone familiar with Beltway politics could "have not the tiniest doubt in [their] mind[s] as to which cabinet officer" uttered it.[3]
The Associated Press sent the uncensored quotation over the wire, but the Columbia Journalism Review identified only two city newspapers—the Toledo Blade (Toledo, Ohio) and the Madison Capital Times (Madison, Wisconsin)—that published the remark unchanged. Others bowdlerized the quote, in some cases replacing the female genital reference with "a tight [obscenity]" and the scatological reference with "a warm place to [vulgarism]" or "warm toilet seats". The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal said the original statement was available in the newspaper office; more than 200 stopped by to read it. The San Diego Evening Tribune offered to mail a copy of the whole quotation to anyone who requested it; more than 3,000 readers did.[19] The quotation was among the inspirations behind the comedy film Loose Shoes, particularly the sketch "Dark Town After Dark", made in 1977 but released in 1980.[20]