Public Image and Cultural Controversies
President John F. Kennedy re-established the Presidential Medal of Freedom on February 22, 1963. Two weeks after Kennedy's assassination, President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded it to Meany and 30 others on December 6, 1963. In granting the award, President Johnson said of Meany, "Citizen and national leader, in serving the cause of labor, he has greatly served the cause of his Nation and of freedom throughout the world."
Meany was well known as a cigar smoker, and appeared twice on the cover of TIME magazine with a cigar in his mouth. Meany stated that he had never walked a picket line, explaining that his union never needed to form a picket line, because the employers made no attempt to replace the workers.
Read more about this topic: George Meany
Famous quotes containing the words public, image and/or cultural:
“We might make a public moan in the newspapers about the decay of conscience, but in private conversation, no matter what crimes a man may have committed or how cynically he may have debased his talent or his friends, variations on the answer Yes, but I did it for the money satisfy all but the most tiresome objections.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“An image of its state;
The wings half spread for flight,
The breast thrust out in pride
Whether to play, or to ride
Those winds that clamour of approaching night.”
—William Butler Yeats (18651939)
“Hard times accounted in large part for the fact that the exposition was a financial disappointment in its first year, but Sally Rand and her fan dancers accomplished what applied science had failed to do, and the exposition closed in 1934 with a net profit, which was donated to participating cultural institutions, excluding Sally Rand.”
—For the State of Illinois, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)