BOWERS: I can't remember how this came about, but one morning when I drove to
the office with him at the Dai Ichi and back every day, and we no sooner got in
the car and started out and he turned to me and said, "Gossip is a terrible
thing." And I was rather surprised. He always initiated conversation. He was
rather deaf you know, and he talked all the time to sort of cover that. But I
said, how so? Or something of that sort. He said, "You know, it can destroy
you. Gossip can cause you great trouble." And he said, "You know, that
rumor in the Philippines." And I said, what rumor? He said, "You know, the
rumor." And then finally it dawned on me, the rumor of "Dugout Doug." He
said, "Because of that rumor, I, on Bataan and Corregidor had to expose myself
everytime a Japanese air raid. I had to show myself to the troops unarmed
facing that," and he said, "I could have been killed." ...MacArthur was
paranoid. He was so afraid of being spoken ill of. And if you didn't sing his
praises you were a mortal enemy. As Eisenhower said, bootlickers will be the
death of that man. They almost were.
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