Earl L. Butz, 98, an outspoken U.S. agriculture secretary forced from office in 1976 for making a racist joke who also was once a dean at Purdue University, died Saturday.
Butz died at his son’s home in Washington, D.C., said Randy Woodson, dean of Purdue’s College of Agriculture. He said Butz had been in poor health.
“It’s a big loss for Purdue and Indiana agriculture,” he said.
The free-market advocate had a relaxed and earthy style that won him acclaim as an after-dinner speaker but caused problems in his public life.
Controversy began swirling around Butz after President Nixon appointed him secretary of agriculture in 1971. The farm economist figured in public disputes ranging from foreign grain sales to high meat prices.
He was forced to resign in October 1976 after telling an obscene joke that was derogatory to blacks. The slur was overheard by John Dean, the former counsel to Nixon jailed in the Watergate scandal, and Dean’s report on it was published in Rolling Stone magazine.
Two years earlier, Butz apologized to the Vatican after criticizing the Roman Catholic Church’s stand on birth control by using a mock Italian accent while referring to the pope.
Allen J. Bloom, 72, a hard-bargaining, cigar-chomping promoter of pomp, panache and spectacle, died Jan. 18 of lymphoma at his home in Bethesda, Md. He began his career managing early rock ‘n’ rollers and later rebranded Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus as wholesome family entertainment.
Bloom brought circus marketing and promotion into the modern age. He was a top executive with Irvin Feld and Kenneth Feld Productions, owner of Ringling Bros. and other live-entertainment attractions, and lived high, in keeping with the stereotype of a promoter. He appreciated fine wines, good cigars and haute cuisine. He also was a devoted family man, and that’s how he sold the circus — as fun for the whole family.
Rodney Huey, a friend and longtime colleague, recalled a 1993 meeting to discuss cultivating a new generation of circus fans. Bloom proposed to offer a free ticket to every child born in the United States that year. The marketing gimmick was a multipronged success. Not only did kids get to experience the circus, but they also were accompanied by ticket- and souvenir-buying adults.
That was vintage Allen Bloom, noted his son and business partner, Randy Bloom: “A hard business result for a good-hearted reason.”
