Not Easy Being Green
Robert Caro roasts the wannabe A.G. at his own fund-raiser.
LBJ biographer Robert Caro isn’t known for his after-dinner schtick, but he got laughs last week by poking fun at Mark Green’s taste for attention-seeking theatrics. At a Green-for-attorney-general fund-raiser at the Hilton, Caro recalled Green’s 1967 internship for Senator Jacob Javits. Green, then 22, circulated an anti–Vietnam War petition, which he planned to give to Johnson. Until a not-so-antiwar intern leaked it. “Mark’s mother got upset because the Chicago Tribune called him one of the ten most radical students of his generation,” Caro said as E. L. Doctorow, Tony Kushner, and Kathleen Turner chuckled. Johnson canceled his annual speech to interns “because of Mark,” Caro concluded. “Mark really has been getting people angry all his adult political career.”
—Greg Sargent