in  in the depths of the great depression he left the museum of modern art for a brief venture into journalism and politics for a time he supported the extreme populist governor of louisiana huey long and father charles coughlin and traveled to berlin as a correspondent for coughlins radically populist and often anti-semitic newspaper social justice in the newspaper johnson expressed as the new york times later reported "more than passing admiration for hitler" johnson observed the nuremberg rallies in germany and sponsored by the german government covered the invasion of poland in  many years later he told his biographer franz shultze “you simply could not fail to be caught up in the excitement of it by the marching songs by the crescendo and climax of the whole thing as hitler came on at last to harangue the crowd” and told of being thrilled at the sight of “all those blond boys in black leather” marching past the führer in his  biography of johnson schultze wrote " in politics he proved to be a model of futility he was never much of a political threat to anyone still less an effective doer of either political good or political evil"