The Presidency: The Fat City Gap
"I have kept my cool. I haven't bugged out. I am still in Fat City." So, acting in his capacity as President of all the people, Lyndon Johnson pulled from his hippie pocket a speech that took sardonic note of "the generation gap." Addressed to 121 Presidential Scholars before a White House dinner, the speech drew freely from a slightly obsolescent hippie lexicon that Lynda Bird had compiled for McCall's.
And what, perchance, did he mean by "Fat City"? The straights of the press were so bewildered that the White House press office felt constrained to come forth with a gloss. "Fat City: A state of mind characterized by mild to extreme euphoria, usually induced by a combination of salubrious climate and fortunate personal circumstances."
The President might have cooled it with the phrase had he known that, to some hippies, Fat City is a synonym for Squaresville.
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