Earl "Rusty" Butz Gets Weirdly Racist (1976)
This Day in Esoteric Political History
Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia
4.6 • 982 Ratings
🗓️ 3 October 2021
⏱️ 14 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It’s October 3rd. This day in 1976, Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz hands in his resignation after a media firestorm over racist comments he made on an airplane in front of Pat Boone, Sonny Bono, and former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean.
Jody, NIki, and Kellie discuss Butz’s very baroque form of racism, and what to make of the argument that there’s no connection between what someone says in private and who they really are.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia. |
| 0:07.0 | My name is Jody Avergan. |
| 0:10.0 | This day, October 4th, 1976, listeners, let's spend some time on the very weird saga of Gerald |
| 0:20.1 | Ford's Secretary of Agriculture, Earl Butts. This day, October 4th, was the day that Butts resigned |
| 0:26.3 | his post after reports of some racist comments that he'd made while on an airline flight. |
| 0:31.5 | Back from the Republican National Convention earlier that year. |
| 0:34.3 | Those comments finally came to light, it became a scandal, he had to resign. |
| 0:38.7 | The comments were made in front of, now check out this list of people who were on this flight who overheard these |
| 0:44.0 | comments, Pat Boone, singer Pat Boone, Sonny Bono, TV Star singer Sonny Bono, and former |
| 0:50.0 | White House Council John Dean. This is not the start of one of those bad jokes. Pat Boone, |
| 0:54.4 | Sunny Bono and former White House Council, John Dean, walk into a bar, but this is what's on this airplane |
| 0:59.5 | is this collection of people and Butts makes this racist joke which then makes its way to the press |
| 1:05.8 | becomes a scandal and as we're saying he has to resign. There are so many |
| 1:10.7 | amazing details in this story. It is a quintessentially for better and mostly for |
| 1:16.0 | worse late 1970 story here to discuss as always are Nicole Hemmer of Columbia and |
| 1:21.9 | Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley. Hello there. |
| 1:24.3 | Hello Jody. Hey there. So I'm fascinated by this story. There's so many great |
| 1:28.6 | details but I will just say right off the bat I feel like my main |
| 1:31.6 | contributions of this episode is just going to say Earl Butts as many times as possible |
| 1:36.1 | You're really hitting it hard every time you say it. I would also like to point out |
| 1:45.0 | Did you catch that his nickname is rusty? No, he is Earl Rusty Butts. |
| 1:49.0 | My God, we could just end the episode right now, and I feel like we will provide it enough. |
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