And then there’s the interesting stuff.
Example No. 1: in files related to Thompson’s personal biography, your Gaggler found an official U.S. Senate “memorandum” on Thompson’s clothing sizes, apparently jotted down by a very dutiful staff member. Now there’s been some confusion lately over exactly how tall the former senator turned actor is. USA Today, for example, reports Thompson is 6 feet 6 inches, but columnist Robert Novak measured him in a recent column at 6 feet 7 inches. Sadly, his Senate files don’t clear up the mystery, but the undated memo does reveal that back during his Senate days, Thompson’s shoe size was a 13a. He wore a 48XL jacket and had a 40-inch waist. His arms were 36 inches long, and he wore pants with a 32- inch inseam. In other words, he’s a BIG guy and would be one of the biggest presidents ever. (Abraham Lincoln was just 6 feet 4 inches and, while his memo on clothing sizes hasn’t turned up, he appeared supermodel skinny in his official photographs.)
But your Gaggler’s favorite part of the Thompson files are his letters–boxes and boxes of them. The files include dozens of thank you notes Thompson wrote to fellow senators for gifts they gave him, like the “cream of wheat” he received from Conrad Burns and the Alaskan salmon Frank Murkowski bestowed upon him. In 2001, Thompson wrote fellow Sen. Wayne Allard to thank him for giving him a lambskin rug. It’s a typed letter, but at the bottom, Thompson added a handwritten note: “I’ll think of you when I wear it!” Thompson sent joking memos to fellow Sens. Joe Lieberman and Chuck Grassley, admonishing them for eating his stash of Goo Goo Clusters, a slab of chocolately goodness perhaps most famous for its commercials during the Grand Ole Opry. In 1995, Thompson’s staff sent a letter to Rep. Jack Kingston, who had forwarded Thompson a friend’s audition tape in hopes that he’d pass it on to his then-girlfriend, country star Lorrie Morgan. “As a general rule, the senator does not give tapes to Ms. Lorrie Morgan,” the letter says.
There are even notes from Thompson to journalists and vice versa, including letters from NBC’s Tim Russert, CBS’s Dan Rather and CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asking for interviews. But CNN’s Larry King was clearly the most persistent, sending Thompson three notes in spring 1997 begging for an interview about his campaign-finance investigation. “I realize you are preparing for very important hearings,” King wrote. “However, the country is anxious to know you better! Please join me soon!” (In fairness, your Gaggler must mention Thompson also archived a November 1997 letter from NEWSWEEK’s then-Washington bureau chief Ann McDaniel, inviting the senator to sit down with her and other reporters. He agreed two months later, but according to a Thompson’s staffer note on the letter, the magazine was too busy with the Monica Lewinsky scandal and canceled. Our bad!)
In November 1997, the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward wrote Thompson to apologize personally for a line in a story he wrote that said his campaign-finance hearings were “running out of steam without producing many tangible results.” Woodward wrote that the “construction of the sentence” implied that those were his thoughts, when in fact they were the words of a Justice Department official. “There, at times, has been mention of eating crow,” Woodward wrote. “I want to eat a full plate. (I only wish it were warmer.)”
In 2001, New York Times columnist William Safire wrote Thompson to ask what he had meant when he said “the ox is in the ditch” when it comes to postal reform. “Once again, you remind me that the rest of the country doesn’t necessarily use the same phrases as a country boy from Tennessee,” Thompson replied, confessing he’d actually never seen an ox in a ditch–or frankly, an ox. “As usual, I have no idea where this comes from. All I know is that when the ox is in the ditch, it is a very serious matter–very serious. A big ox, a small ditch, a big load and a hot day–well, you can see the problem.”
