When a sitting president’s daughter was publically criticized for her creative efforts, the president responded to the critic as follows: “Some day I hope to meet you. When that happens you’ll need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps a supporter below.”
At about the same time, a prominent journalist referred to the president as “a thin-lipped hater.” The president retorted by labelling the journalist “a rat” and a “guttersnipe.”
In case you haven’t identified the White House occupant by now, I will give you a clue: his name is President T-r-u-m-
The final letter(s) you will have to figure out for yourself from the following choices:
(1) p
(2) an
The correct answer is (2), and the then sitting president was Harry Truman. The first comment was in a letter addressed to the Washington Post‘s music critic Paul Hume, who had criticized Truman’s daughter, Margaret, a professional singer, for the quality of her singing. In the same letter – dated December 6, 1950 – Truman expressed his negative opinion of one of the era’s best-known newspaper columnists, Westbrook Pegler.
3:26 pm on February 10, 2017
