Apropos of his increasingly delusional behavior, outgoing Motion Picture Association of America president Jack Valenti quotes his former boss and mentor, Lyndon B. Johnson, on knowing when it’s time to leave.

“LBJ used to say, “Always leave at the height of the party, the top of your game,”‘ Valenti told The New York Times. “I think I’m at the top of my game.”

I hate to intrude on an 82-year-old man’s retirement fantasy but, hey Jack, LBJ went out at the bottom of his game. He was a one-term president who left the White House with his tail between his legs and a losing war in Vietnam.

Unless something dramatic occurs soon, Valenti will leave with his tail likewise curled under, and with his outraged critics kicking him in the behind.

Last month, Valenti – fighting his own losing war against movie piracy – got the MPAA’s member studios to halt the year-end practice of sending DVD and VHS copies of current movies to members of various awards groups. That included the approximately 6,000 people who vote on the Oscars.

Faced with a firestorm of protest, the MPAA backed off last week – a little. It agreed to allow studios to send coded VHS copies to Academy members, but to no one else.

As a result, those thousands of us nonmembers who used to receive the screeners – yep, critics, as well as film people belonging to the actors, writers and directors guilds and to the British Academy – are hopping mad.

The Los Angeles Film Critics Association is hopping the highest. The group says it will not give out awards this year unless it gets its screeners. The National Society of Film Critics voted to do the same but fell short of a majority. To its credit, the New York Film Critics Circle has stayed above the fray.

If the ban holds and Valenti leaves his job next year, it’s likely to be his Vietnam. That would be too bad. His ratings system, which has effectively censored the most talented and ambitious filmmakers over the last 30 years, is by far his greater sin.

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E-mail: jmathewsedit.nydailynews.com

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AP-NY-10-30-03 0937EST