LBJ Named His Penis “Jumbo” and Liked Showing it Off
If not for the Vietnam War, America’s 36th president, Lyndon Baines Johnson, (1908 – 1973) might have gone down in history as one of the country’s greatest. He spent decades in Congress, both in the House and Senate, whose Majority Leader he became in the 1950s. When fate elevated him from vice president to president following JFK’s assassination in 1963, he entered the Oval Office with an unequaled mastery of the legislative process.
He put that mastery to good use, pushing through landmark legislative accomplishments such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Both Medicare and Medicaid were also started during his LBJ administration. Had Vietnam not derailed his ambitious “Great Society” program, LBJ would probably rank alongside FDR as one of America’s most transformative presidents.
Another thing that might have derailed Johnson’s ambitions was his… Johnson. LBJ was always eager to let those around him know that he had an unusually large penis, and that would not have sat well in the #MeToo era. A competitive womanizer, whenever people mentioned JFK’s many affairs, LBJ would bang the table and brag that he had more women by accident than Kennedy ever had on purpose. Today, the sheer number of sexual assault allegations LBJ’s conduct invited would probably force a presidential resignation – at least if he was a Democrat president or a TV one.
From early on, Johnson was notorious for skeeving out people, especially in Capitol bathrooms. If a colleague entered as he was finishing off at the urinal, LBJ would often swing around, still holding his member, and whirl it around while hooting: “Woo-eee! Have you ever seen something as big as this?!” Johnson would then begin discussing pending legislation, while continuing to brandish and shake his Johnson.
Johnson had no humility when it came to his penis, which he called “Jumbo”. In an alpha male ritual of primacy assertion, LBJ obliged aides, both male and female, to take dictation standing in the door of his office bathroom, while he urinated or defecated. Even on the floors of the House or Senate, Johnson would extravagantly rummage away at his crotch, frequently reaching through his pocket to better position “Jumbo”, so its outline could show beneath his pants.
He never tired of working a penis size boast into conversations, as a clip from the LBJ Tapes, recording a phone call with his tailor illustrates: “Another thing, the crotch, down where your nuts hang – it’s always a little too tight. So when you make them up, gimme an inch that I can let out there, because they cut me“. He also had a special nozzle installed in his White House bathroom, positioned to shoot water directly at his penis while he showered. He refused to listen to arguments from White House staff that installing the special nozzle would require a great deal of plumbing work, and insisted on having his way. Being POTUS, he of course had his way, telling the staff: “If I can move 10,000 troops in a day, you can certainly fix the bathroom any way I want it“.