Highlights: Just so we're clear, in no reality was I ever going to follow up last week's disappointing Billy Carter issue with anything other than the Playboy that appeared exactly one year prior. That's right, this week I take a deep dive into the November 1976 issue, which featured what quite possibly is the most famous of all Playboy interviews, with the future president, Jimmy Carter. Fun fact: Playboy, like most magazines, mails out subscriber copies several weeks before the issue is available on newsstands. On rare occasions, when said issue made headlines in other media, Playboy would capitalize on this by slapping a sticker on the newsstand edition highlighting the content that was generating buzz as a way to juice sales. This issue features a big white sticker with blue and red type drawing attention to the Carter interview. Subscriber copies are more sedate.
As for the interview itself, well, it's a mixed bag. Carter discusses his Baptist faith at length. Again and again. But thisisn't necessarily his fault. The prevailing attitude at the time seems to be a deep fear that Carter woud implement some sort of fundamentaist Baptist-flavored Taliban on the U.S. were he elected, which Carter, exhibiting remarkable patience, calmly denies and offers his time as governor of Georgia as evidence that he is not prone to go mad with power and impose his own religious beliefs on others. In a companion article, a complaint is made that all Carter seems to talk about is his religion, to which it is correctly pointed out that religion is the only thing most national media actually asks Carter about. So there's that. The "interview" is also annoying to me in that it is a compilation of multiple interviews conducted over a period of months. Although I understand this can be standard practice, I don't feel it's entirely honest and context and mood can affect an interviewee's answers and by stretching things out so long gives the interview a skewed ability to cherry-pick answers to suit a particular agenda. So here, at the tail end of an extended months-long interview, Carter takes a throw-away question and goes off on a soul-baring monologue that is absolutely stunning in its raw honesty. This would never, ever happen today, and there are mixed opinions on whether it helped or hurt Carter in the election, but damned if it isn't a landmark conversation:Playboy: Do you feel you've reassured people with this interview, people who are uneasy about your religious beliefs, who wonder if you're going to make a rigid, unbending President? Carter: I don't know if you've been to Sunday school here yet; some of the press has attended. I teach there about every three or four weeks. It's getting to be a real problem because we con't have room to put everybody now when I teach. I don't know if we're going to have to issue passes or what. It almost destroys the worship aspect of it. But we had a good class last Sunday. It's a good way to learn what I believe and what the Baptists believe. One thing Baptists believe is in complete autonomy. I don't accept any domination of my life by the Baptist Church, none. Every Baptist church is individual and autonomous. We don't accept donations of our church from the Southern Baptist Convention. The reason the Baptist Church was formed in this country was because of our belief in absolute and total separation of church and state. These basic tenets make us almost unique. We don't believe in any heirarchy in church. We don't have bishops. Any officers chosen by the church are defined as servants, not bosses. They're supposed to do the dirty work, make sure the church is clean and painted and that sort of thing. So it's a very good, democratic structure. ... The thing that's drummed into us all the time is not to be proud, not to be better than anyone else, not to look down on people but to make ourselves acceptable in God's eyes through our own actions and recognize the simple truth that we're saved by grace. It's just a free gift through faith in Christ. This gives us a mechanism by which we can relate permanently to God. I'm not speaking for other people, but it gives me a sense of peace and equanimity and assurance. I try not to commit a deliberate sin. I recognize that I'm going to do it anyhow, because I'm human and I'm tempted. And Christ set some almost impossible standards for us. Christ said, "I tell you that anyone who looks on a woman with lust has in his heart already committed adultry." I've looked on a lot of women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times. This is something that God recognizes I will do--and I have done it--and God forgives me for it. But that doesn't mean that I condemn someone who not only looks on a woman with lust but who leaves his wife and shacks up with somebody out of wedlock. Christ says, Don't consider yourself better than someone else because one guy screws a whole bunch of women while the other guy is loyal to his wife. The guy who's loyal to his wife ought not to be condescending or proud because of the relative degree of sinfulness. One thing that Paul Tillich said was that religion is a search for the truth about man's existence and his relationship with God and his fellow man; and that once you stop searching and think you've got it made--at that pointyou lose your religion. Constant reassessment, searching in one's heart--it gives me a feeling of confidence. I don't inject these beliefs in my answers to your secular questions.It is a shame that for this thoughtful, philosophical answer Carter only received mockery for "Lust in his heart." Forty years removed, the contrast between Carter's statements and religious right couldn't be starker. I'm not going out on a limb by saying the Carter presidency was troubled. He didn't get along well with the Democratic congress and foreign relations bedeviled him, although he achieved a major victory by brokering peace between Egypt and Israel. In many ways he was too honest to be president, and his eschewing of typical political compromise and horsetrading seriously undercut his chances at a second term. That said, there's a convincing argument to be made that Jimmy Carter has been the greatest ex-president the U.S.A. has ever had. The mad has lived a life of service and even now, more than a year into hospice, he continues to inspire as a Good Person.
Other thoughts: Oh geeze, here's Larry L. King again. Look, I've read lots of Larry L. King--more than most living humans, I'll wager. You may have heard of his Playboy article from a few years prior: "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas." Yeah, that one. I wrote a book on it, you know. The actual brothel, not King's article. In this issue King's piece is called "The Great Willie Nelson Commando Hoo-Ha and Texas Brain Fry." King's got a thing for titles, amirite? This one's ostensibly about the third Fourth of July picnic Nelson ever put on, but the thing with King is that he seldom actually writes much about what he purports to be writing about. Instead, he normally dicks around and misses most of said event, so resorts to writing about dicking around and exaggerating the hell out of the details he doesn't make up from scratch. Is it entertaining? Sure, but after reading two or three of his pieces you start to see the pattern. Sadly, Nelson doesn't make an appearance here, although fellow Outlaw Country star Jerry Jeff Walker does, sort of:
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