Actually, he quit smoking immediately after the heart attack, but started again on January 20, 1969, and promptly smoked himself into an early grave.

Yeah, I left out Coke Stevenson because I think Caro's one blind spot is how fully biased he is in favor of Stevenson in Means of Ascent, painting him as this honorable, reluctant statesman when in reality he was an arch-Conservative segregationist who had no problems with lynchings while he was Governor, and had…

Is it even the whole primary (i.e. you're also voting for Governor, Senator, etc.) or just the Presidential one? Because if it's just the Presidential one, lord that's some hot trash.

Well, also because the Primary system is grafted on top of the Convention system that became untenable after 1968, so it's like a mini-electoral college if every state had unique ways of figuring out who was the electors. But of course, party heads generally can't fix the system, because a lot of this (especially…

But is it better than American Dreamz?

Of course, the MVP of that movie is Donald Sutherland's Clark Clifford. I think he won a Golden Globe for it too.

I think the problem in Selma is that they give Johnson a terrible (and ahistorical) 'Man in the middle' arc with King and Wallace as the angels and devils on his shoulder, and remove his own agency. That's one thing Path to War gets right: Johnson has his legislative time table, King says "Fuck that" and marches, and…

Plus, it's like if GRRM, before he got to Game of Thrones, knocked out a whole other comprehensive fantasy series. The Power Broker's also an incredible work.

I did think the 15 minutes or so Path to War spent on the Voting Rights act got the Washington half of Selma so much better than Selma. When he calls Wallace up to the Oval Office, Gambon bullies the crap out of him to get what he wants before giving a powerful speech on "We Shall Overcome", wheras in Selma the scene…

Also, ardent segregationist who was the prime mover behind the National School Lunch program and whose hearings killed the MacArthur popularity boomlet after his firing. And so insistent on honor that his office never leaked anything, ever, to the point that it later came out that LBJ had spilled him the details of…

Nobody thought LBJ was the LBJ type in October 1963, either. People can surprise.

Well, it's David Simon, so probably nah.

Also, Waikiki Hockey! Featuring a young Conan O'Brien's first onscreen appearance as the drummer in the background.

I mean, he could read the audiobook of the last Caro book, right? They give Grammys for that.

Of course, if you looked at LBJ at any time between the New Deal and November 1963, you probably wouldn't have noticed that empathy. Kennedy was the big Liberal hero, and LBJ the Southern Conservative, captive of Texas big business.

Still want to put Cranston as LBJ in an actual theatrical movie though, if only for the possibility that one actor could EGOT all in the same role.

"All Or Nothing comes to HBO in a time when: one political party
is at war over its core values (and its impending nomination of a
candidate many see as deeply dangerous); where the very voting rights
protections shown being argued in the film have been overturned by the
Supreme Court; where there is the very real…

In another comparison between the series, Picard is pretty much OK with Worf taking his own life under Klingon values. Sisko, faced with Worf taking his brother's life under Klingon values, chews him the fuck out: https://www.youtube.com/wat…

Basically, Picard said, you can stay, but now you live under the Cardassians. Problem solved, Enterprise flies off into the sunset, next week: Time-Traveling Klingons! DS9, as is their wont, showed that things aren't hunky dory when the Enterprise flies off into the sunset and this was a terrible plan: hence, The…

He's the straight man. And he's also the person who comes in halfway through the movie, after the sliding scale of reality has gotten us immersed in the world, and reminds us "Wait! This is some crazy shit!" exactly as the climax is building. He's incredibly crucial to making the film work, but it restricted Winston…