Put This On: President Lyndon Baines Johnson Orders Pants

Listen to Pres. Lyndon Baines Johnson Order Pants

Posted January 17, 2011 2:06pm by HVvids

Tags: Custom Pants, Haggar Pants, LBJ, President Lyndon B. Johnson, Put This On

In 1964, what President Lyndon Baines Johnson needed “more than anything” was a new pair of pants.

So what’s a president to do? If you’re LBJ, you get on the phone and directly ask the leader of the Haggar clothing company for some custom-made pants. Thankfully, given LBJ’s famed reputation of being a persuasive leader known for running the gamut of human emotion in a single conversation in order to achieve his goal, the White House call was recorded for posterity.

Put This On — “a web series about dressing like a grownup” — dug up the call and had it animated. The result follows: “In 1964, Lyndon Johnson needed pants, so he called the Haggar clothing company and asked for some. The call was recorded (like all White House calls at the time), and has since become the stuff of legend. Johnson’s anatomically specific directions to Mr. Haggar are some of the most intimate words we’ve ever heard from the mouth of a President. We at Put This On took the historic original audio and gave it to animator Tawd Dorenfeld, who created this majestic fantasia of bungholiana.”

You’ve really got to admire a man who claims to love these pants but then who changes everything about them when he asks for customization, burps, uses the word bunghole, refers to the crotch as “down where ya nuts hang,” and orders pants directly just before a funeral. Incredible.