:O Ronald Reagan is dead

RIP.

He was sort of the first president I really remember. He always seemed like a pleasant avuncular figure in my youthful apolitical days.

The GOP may get a sentimental boost from this for a few days, but even staunch conservatives are likely to come away from the whole thing with a reminder that GWB is no Reagan.

The GOP may get a sentimental boost from this for a few days, but even staunch conservatives are likely to come away from the whole thing with a reminder that GWB is no Reagan.

That's for damned sure.

as opposed to reagan. who has now gone and died on them.

It is early 1981, Brezhnev is still in power and the Cold War grinds on, though he is failing. The Iran hostage crisis has been recently resolved, the shadows of Vietnam still hang heavy. Things are what they are...

...and then Hinckley actually hits and kills Reagan, and George Bush (Sr.) becomes president.

If anything different happens from that point on, what might it be?

oh, I don't know about that. there's her kids too. and a majority of Senators just sent Bush a letter supporting stem-cell research.

barf.

There was nothing warm or fuzzy about the Reagan administration. This is the guy who demonized welfare mothers and inaugurated the redistribution of wealth from the poor and middle class to the wealthy. He attacked the core principles of democratic government, in both his domestic and foreign policies. He waged a proxy war against a democratically elected government in Nicaragua, via CIA-trained torturers and terrorists. He was the first president to let the Christian right into the White House.

He was a sonofabitch, and that's all he deserves to be remembered as.

(multi-x-post, obviously)

You should say good things about the dead.

He's dead. Good.

Reaganomics was still a better idea than communism.

RIP

Love is in the Air (1937)

Hollywood Hotel (1938)

Swing your Lady (1938)

Sergeant Murphy (1938)

Accidents will Happen (1938)

Cowboy from Brooklyn (1938)

Boy meets Girl (1938)

Girls on Probation (1938)

Brother Rat (1938)

Going Places (1939)

Secret Service of the Air (1939)

Dark Victory (1939)

Code of the Secret Service (1939)

Naughty but Nice (11939)

Hell's Kitchen (1939)

Angels wash their Faces (1939)

Smashing the Money Ring (1939)

Brother Rat and a Baby (1940)

An Angel from Texas (1940)

Murder in the Air (1940)

Knute Rockne - All American (1940)

Tugboat Annie Sails Again (1940)

Santa Fe Trail (1940)

The Bad Man (1941)

Million Dollar Baby (1941)

Nine Lives are not Enough (941)

International Squadron (1941)

King's Row (1942)

Juke Girl (1942)

Desperate Journey (1942)

This is the Army (1942)

Stallion Road (1947)

That Girl (1947)

The Voice of the Turtle (1947)

John Loves Mary (1949)

Night unto Night (1949)

The Girl from Jones Beach (1949)

It's a Great Feeling (1949)

The Hasty Heart (1950)

Louisa (1950)

Storm Warning (1951)

Bedtime for Bonzo (1951)

The Last Outpost (1951)

Hong Kong (1951)

She's Working Her Way through College (1952)

The Winning Team (1952)

Tropic Zone (1953)

Law and Order (1953)

Prisoner of War (1954)

Cattle Queen of Montana (1954)

Tennessee's Partner (1955)

Hellcats of the Navy (1957)

The Killers (1964)

First Republican to say they're going to 'win one for the Gipper' gets a visit from Alex mit nail-gun.

Yeah, but those weren't the choices in the United States at the time. Remember him fondly if you want, but just be aware of the propaganda.

My grandmother always referred to him as 'that broken-down cowboy actor'.

he was in some good movies. not many, but a few: king's row, the killers, dark victory....

the worst thing i heard on fox was "oh isn't it so profound that he died neat the anniversary of d-day, because one of his great moments was giving a d-day speech blah blah blah." here is a man who stayed in hollywood through the war and indeed seemed to often confuse the actual events of the war with the war movies he made and saw... for instance once alleging that he witnessed the liberation of the concentration camps (!).

haha "reagonomics vs. communism." because we all know about that famous pinko jimmy carter....

Did she give any notice as to when she will follow him?

Better red than dead.

How right J0hn is.

But how sad that Liberals like me end up acknowledging the tragedy of other human beings' death and life, when y'know damn well that they and their supporters are the first to laugh their evil skins off at other peeps' suffering.

-D.O.A.

Wait, what's supposed to be the tragedy here? He was 93! He lived a long fucking time! He got to be rich and famous and president! Why is anyone supposed to be crying for him?

I'm sorry, I just don't get the whole respect-for-the-dead thing. I respect the dead if I respect what they did in life. But if I think that in life they were an actively malevolent presence, what is it about their death that's supposed to make me sympathetic? Our common humanity? Whatever. If Ronald Reagan had had a little more respect for our common humanity in life, I'd think kinder of him in death. But that wasn't his strong suit now, was it?

Ronnie Reagan deserved every last moment of misery and pain he ever received - I only wish he had lived longer and in more misery.

Anyway, good riddance. I'm going to leave the TV off for the next week.

He was a nauseating figure on the world stage. That's all really.

I don't respect Reagan because he's dead. I just don't want to mirror the twats who supported him whilst alive by showing contempt for life.

Alzheimer's isn't funny. Evil motherfuckers suffering is.

(x-post)

So I take it back. Of course I hope he suffered.

Jeez, I'm not inhuman.

Maybe Boondocks, but that's doubtful (which papers are going to run a dead Prez-bashing Boondocks?)

(x-post)

(xpost, I think they mean Gary not Pierre, Barry).

(BTW i am drunk)

(x-x-post, david a sums up pretty much how i feel)

David A, it is important. The Cult of Reagan is alive and well (and waiting). Now that Ronnie's dead, will the Reagan University folks go ahead with their plans (no longer needing the permission of Nancy)?

Can someone Photoshop Reagan's head onto this:

http://www.nostalgiacentral.com/images_tv/comedy/greathero1.jpg

My first thought was, "Here comes all the Ronald Reagan Memorial Whatevers."

I guess I'm trying to make something objective from subjective cloth. I understand your point about importance "out there", or maybe even "in America", and even the implication that those of us who oppose the influence of Reagan's kind in our world ought never to drop our vigilance, but for me, I honestly felt nothing when I heard this news... and yet, in my lifetime I felt a lot when Lennon died, a hell of a lot when Cobain died, and was pretty much devastated when the towers fell. Hell, I think I felt more when Nixon died, which on further reflection might be very weird. But now I'm just nattering.

ronald reagan the man is not my concern, now or ever--nor is his "battle" with alzheimers. what angered me were his public actions--and now, what angers me is the way his public actions will (continue to) be distorted and rhapsodized over.

the liberal jew-run media!

(If you happen to see any large, carveable, easily-accessed mountains in Rushmore's vicinity, please cover them with giant sheets.)

but if the whitewashing of his administration continues apace, people will forget how mendacious it was, and his appreciation will become--or will become even more than it is today--uncontroversial. that will feel like a real loss to me.

is bnw poking fun at conspiracy theorists or being serious?

Yeah, Bob Novak was fondly recalling Ronnie's love of Jewish jokes a little while ago.

NB: does this mean Oliver North has to commit seppuku?

it was the first thing i looked at this morning when i woke up ... did anybody else see this and does anybody know how to search and find it? there doesn't seem to be a search-by-date function on either CNN or the BBC.

Hey, the guy had a likeable presence, at least to the 10 year old me. That's all I was saying. It probably helped that my parents' liked him too. If they had hated him, I probably would have hated him. When I remember him from my childhood, I think of a folksy, grandfatherly figure. Of course, as I got older I realized how much I disagreed with a lot of his policies. It may be unfair that he gets credit for presiding over the disintegration of communism in Europe, since it was probably just a case of being at the right place at the right time. However, at the very least, he didn't manage to bungle that particular moment of history. Whether reasonable or not, Presidents usually get the credit and/or blame for the things that happen on their watch.

that said, i CAN think of a few good things to say about his presidency -- his recognition that gorbachev was cut from a different mold than his predecessors; his occasional pragmatism and ability to compromise (though that may have had as much to do w/ having a congress full of democrats for much of his presidency); the fact that he kept the religious right at arm's length (although he also DID disturbingly empower them) -- while i can say NOTHING good about the individual who currently infests the oval office. that also speaks volumes.

I don't think he was likable. I think he just believed he was.

No one's celebrating 'cuz a Republican died - even if it was scum like Tom Delay or Joe Barton, I'd feel bad for his family and hold my tongue. I'm celebrating because someone who did a great deal of evil, who made the world a shittier place to live (or not, in many cases) died. Fucking yay. Maybe we can bump off Henry Kissinger next.

Yeah yeah yeah, it's all subjective, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, but anyone who can look at Reagan's record and not despise him and everything he stood and want to piss on his grave shocks me.

If you want to know how the US got to be like it is today, you can thank Ronald Reagan. He was the one who sold the working class of this country a bill of goods, fucked them in the ass, and leveled what were once democratic institutions (however dysfuctional they may have been). There was nothing cuddly, benevolent, or - haha! - avuncular about this sonofabitch. If you believe that for one single second, you've fallen for precisely the shit this evil slimebag shoveled. Unfortunately so did a good portion of the American public.

I suggest that you research the following topics:

Central American Death Squads

Union Busting

Federal Deficit

The War on Drugs

Iran-Contra

Deregulation - rise of the omnipotent and unchecked corporation

Homelessness (I guess that most on this thread are too young to know firsthand that, prior to the Reagan administration, homelessness - aside from the occasional stereotypical skid row bum - was virtually unheard of. And something not seen in any American city. 'Tis true. The direct result of so-called "Reaganomics" - the, you know, "better than Communism" policy. Thank your avuncular Ronnie for that. And thank him for conning you into into unquestioningly believing that this was and is a natural occurrence.)

Enough. I can't bear to think about this anymore.

Now back to your fond remembrances.

Nitsuh, COME ON...you can do better than that. Chauvinism ain't got shit to do with being unable to withhold intense feelings of antipathy.

On a personal level, I could never find anything remotely likable about the guy. Brandishing movie star charisma? Seems like a lame justification to relate to the guy in any case.

Where were you when we were pissing on Herbert Hoover's grave?

Does it come with a free 'Fuck Central America' boob tube?

"Ronald Reagan's love of country was infectious. [he was a plague upon our nation] Even when he was breaking Democrats hearts [he was mean], he did so with a smile [he enjoyed cruelty] and in the spirit of honest and open debate [at least there was none of this 'compassionate conservatism' crap]. Despite the disagreements, he lived by that noble ideal that at 5pm [he didn't exactly pull all-nighters] we weren't Democrats or Republicans, we were Americans and friends... [personality mattered more than ideas] Today in the face of new challenges [Bush sucks], his example reminds us [remember Reagan? he sucked too] that we must move forward with optimism and resolve [vote for me]. He was our oldest president [he was senile], but he made America young again [he was a simpleton]."

Oh, I'm only stealing from this

You should have picked more people . We still have the rest of the year to go.

I hate to admit but the first thing to come to mind was this:

Some friends of mine in Orange County, CA one New Year's Eve party put together a Reagen death pool. Everyone chipped in 3 dollars and selected a day of the year. Whoever gets closests to the day Reagen actually dies gets the pool.

This pool was put together EIGHT FUCKING YEARS AGO. Now, I want to know if I won this pool, dammit.

Seriously though, i do remember a lot of people crying back in 1988 that Reagan couldn't run again for president. Many people loved him that much. Once I grew up and actually started getting into politics, I have to wonder what they were thinking. Either case, by all account, Reagan was a nice man in person. He had a house in my neighborhood in L.A., so obviously, my family is probably still grieving right now.

Man, I wonder how many other ex world leaders will die on my next trip. I've killed Pol Pot and Nixon the same way...(by going on trips)

oh, grow the fuck up.

If you want to know how the US got to be like it is today, you can thank Ronald Reagan. He was the one who sold the working class of this country a bill of goods, fucked them in the ass, and leveled what were once democratic institutions (however dysfuctional they may have been). There was nothing cuddly, benevolent, or - haha! - avuncular about this sonofabitch. If you believe that for one single second, you've fallen for precisely the shit this evil slimebag shoveled. Unfortunately so did a good portion of the American public.

If only I were as enlightened as you.

I'll mourn his passing as a man. But I'll also work to make sure that so many of the odious things he stood for follow him into the mists of history.

Mmmm...what exactly did you expect, Nick? At least the opinions expressed on this forum in regard to the issue are somewhat representative of the larger population; sympathizers included. Many of us don't see it fit to eulogize the dead bastard. Death is sad, confusing, AND polarizing. I'm just trying to be sincere on my part. And I'm truly sorry to be saying this, but learn to deal. Had it been otherwise, this thread would've read like a long list of 'RIP's, and that concept of honor just doesn't apply here. If anything, it would have been really ludicrous in its hypocrisy. This ain't no rose parade, it's human nature.

"Goodby Ilx if this is the company I'm in."
COME THE FUCK ON!

I'll add my voice to Fr4ncis to say that we do not honor the dead president, nor the many, many others injured at the hands of his policies, with uncritical sycophancy. The greatest tribute we can give a chief executive is to take his legacy seriously -- whether for good or ill.

Right on, Rasheed. The sentiment is seconded.

'A sad hour in the life of America'- new CNN.com headline...oh dear
Great picture, though. Pretty much ILX paying their respects.
I'm more likely to be the girl to the far right, but in truth, I wouldn't even be there.
http://i.cnn.net/cnn/2004/ALLPOLITICS/06/06/reagan.main/top.1.reagan.ap.jpg

Yeah, that's my stance. I have other things to worry about now, as do we all.

(x-post)

How though, really? GWB wasn't part of the Reagan administration, he was still doing blow back then. Nancy Reagan hates GWB, and are any of Reagan's kids republicans? There will be a memorial and a rememberance at the convetion, but beyond that, it's not like they can show his face in campaign ads. There are almost no parallels b/w the world today and the world of the 1980's. They can crow about him all they like, but won't the fact that the family itself have nothing to do with them damper that a bit?

But before all that, I'd wager that most voters who are on the fence would find any effort to co-opt the legacy of the recent dead distasteful.

There will be speeches at the convention, but I don't see it going further than that. No comparison with Reagan is fortuitous for Bush.

Sorry I missed the TV flick. Anyone see it?

Good riddance indeed.

From http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/history/A0846897.html

In 2001, President George W. Bush called for accelerated development of the NMD system, and subsequently withdrew from he ABM treaty to permit the system's development and deployment. Apparently successful early tests of the U.S. system were later revealed to have occurred after the odds of success had been enhanced (1984, 1991); later tests were generally more successful, although flawed in certain respects. In 2002, President Bush ordered the deployment of a modest missile defense system by 2004, with interceptors based at sea and at Fort Greely, Alaska, and Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. In addition to NMD, the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization is also working to develop missile defenses for the battlefield as part of the Theater Missile Defense program.

What do you remember most about Reagan's presidency?

The resurgence of American pride 36%

His work toward ending the Cold War 31%

His surviving an assassination attempt 17%

The Iran-Contra affair 15%

How does he rank among other presidents?

One of the best 71%

Average 18%

One of the worst 12%

Total Votes: 254,967 Note on Poll Results

In the UK, the praise predictably comes... and yet doesn't it for any significant political figure, controversial or otherwise? I remember a surprisingly fond farewell to Enoch Powell, for instance in 1998. I will not make too many words now about RR, as my knowledge is limited about his Presidency, though I certainly know the basics and a lot of the great harm he did. It may be quite different when Margaret Thatcher dies, as she has been so much more present a figure since I've been following politics, and of course, she changed my country in ways I find abhorrent.

One piece I praise I must question:

Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy said the party's "deepest sympathies go out to Nancy Reagan and the American people".

"Irrespective of political viewpoints there is no doubt that Ronald Reagan transformed America's belief in itself and the institution of the presidency," Mr Kennedy said.

The institution of the Presidency? Didn't he distinctly devalue it? Playing the part of President basically as a *role* as in one of his hokey films...? And when one compares his frightening, corrupt abuse of foreign policy with Jimmy Carter's extraordinarily ethical foreign policy from 1977-81, you have to seriously say that he transformed the office of President *profoundly for the worse*. So much was a return to the Kissinger/Nixon days of corruption and coercion; look at the policy in several South American countries... There may have been successes, but they seem to have had less initiative to them than say, Nixon's trip to China in 1973. It is deeply absurd to give him and Margaret Thatcher all the credit for the end of the Soviet Union; this would have occurred anyway, if one actually looks at the situation in the late 1970s... and Gorbachev is clearly a more important figure in precipitating the speed of its dissolution. Likewise, economic growth would have picked up with Carter in the White House; like Callaghan from 1976-79, there were mistakes, but Callaghan did engineer a recovery from 1976-78 of very impressive proportions. The world trends, towards 82, 83 and 84 strongly suggest recovery for all Western economies. And indeed, while Carter would have presided over a recession 1980-81, it wouldn't have been at all as catastrophic as Reagan's (or Thatcher's in the UK) were. The USA would have been a steadier ship economically, without Reagan; of that I have no doubt.

His domestic policy appears disastrous in many key regards; massive deficits, a boom and bust emulated by Lawson's Conservatives in the UK... grossly divisive policies on social security, the public sector etc. Can anyone who knows more detail explain what he did in any sense to restrain the Religious Right, or social conservative forces, etc, as commented somewhere...?

He may have personally been a 'nicer' man than GWB, but he set the stage for him. His handlers were not perhaps as grossly incompetent and deluded as GWB's, but, it must be remarked that he waged a foreign policy that was just as corrupt and callous, if not more so even.

I don't think Reagan was 'nicer' than W by any means. Yes, Reagan was personally gentle most of the time (he could definitely be cold or vicious at times) in a way that W is not, but mostly because he merely sought to avoid the people he looked down upon - they harshed his California buzz. Bush dismisses such people in long and flowery terms that are designed to be slightly less harsh than his actual beliefs in order not to completely turn off people who are slightly less dismissive than he is. Reagan dismissed them curtly, perhaps politely, and went back to not thinking about them.

Why wouldn't they?

As, of course, the 'conservative media' has.

But can anyone see both sides honoring Clinton like this? Hell no.

I agree. Time = healer of wounds, etc. Plus compared to his successor he'll look like a friggin' saint.

x-post Dan I kiss you

I'll continue putting it in scare quotes (which those weren't anyway) until someone can give me a reason to treat the concept of the American mass media promoting a liberal agenda as anything more than right-wing dogma.

Maybe Clinton will be praised 30 years down the road - Nixon was. But we have no clue what the media or country will be like in 30 years. Rupert Murdoch might own every broadcast outlet in North America. The Reagan time frame is 15 years rather than 30, at any rate. In the next 5-10 years, the forseeable future, can anyone see Fox News and NY Post running praise pieces on Billy?

I think I've spilled the beans about Gorbachev coming to America *ages* before the official 'first visit' - as Agriculture Secretary he visited my mother's old company, ¢@rgi11, so was talking to representatives of the world's largest privately-owned company a good few years before he went for Glasnost. Somehow I can't see Ronnie making secret visits to the USSR.

Clinton is looking good lately - I think he's laying off the McDonald's.

uh, you mean like MSNBC? The one who employed Bob Novak, Wolf Blitzer and Pat Buchanan when he was at CNN?

This depends on political temperment? ;-)

But what's your point? That Kaplan somehow transcended his White House visits because he didn't keep two of those guys off of a show that features parring between a righty and a lefty? That Kaplan's influence was transparent because he kept CNN's best known reporter?

Yes, Kaplan has been at MSNBC all year. The ratings are still shit and it draws half of CNN's and a quarter of Fox's. If he's the answer to their problems--this, the guy who sent CNN's ratings down almost 25% before he got canned--then MSNBC is destined to be a sad excuse for a newsgathering network for the forseeable future. I wouldn't get too worried about it, though. There are a lot more guys like Kaplan out there than, say, Roger Ailes.

Bill Clinton, who was more popular than Reagan, or even George H.W. Bush, who beat both of them

I don't think that chart really proves that Bush I was more popular than Reagan or even Clinton. If anything it shows that approval ratings averaged over a Presidential term may not be a good indicator of popularity - it certainly didn't help Bush I come re-election time.

Eisbar made this comment up-above: ... his recognition that gorbachev was cut from a different mold than his predecessors; and that's actually bullshit. Reagan blew their first summit meeting in Iceland in 1985 (which was his first meeting with a Soviet leader as he had NONE during his first term). And if his legacy is "ending the Cold War without a shot fired" (McCain repeated this craptastic line on "Meet the Press" too, ugh), let's remember that it was basically because the U.S. was lucky enough to be able to outspend the Soviets without going bankrupt ourselves.

On the other hand, the one good thing I can actually say about Reagan is that he did apologize, and take responsibility for, for his mistakes, unlike our current "Commander-in-Chief." Reagan actually comforted the families of the Marines killed in Beirut, which is more than I've seen Dubya do. I actually felt a little sad at his passing yesterday, if only because Dubya's so fucking awful, he makes Reagan look like a good president.

Eisbar made this comment up-above: ... his recognition that gorbachev was cut from a different mold than his predecessors; and that's actually bullshit. Reagan blew their first summit meeting in Iceland in 1985 (which was his first meeting with a Soviet leader as he had NONE during his first term).

maybe the reykjavik summit didn't go very well. but w/n the reagan administration and in conservative foreign policy circles at the time, there were a lot of people who initially believed that gorbachev and his talk of perestroika was just talk, a leninist ruse designed to have the west drop its guard, abandon its arms build-up and star wars, etc. also remember that there was a lot of bad data being fed to the government at that time regarding the soviets' economic strength, etc. how and why reagan DIDN'T listen to those people in the end, why cooler heads prevailed (including thatcher [of all people!]), i dunno. i'm not a foreign policy expert, so i could be wrong. neither am i a supporter of the reagan administration's policies pre-gorbachev. but at least he (or whoever was making these decisions at that point) didn't squander the opportunity presented by gorbachev's ascendance.

and incidentally, i am NOT one of those who credits reagan w/ "ending the Cold War without a shot fired" -- as if gorbachev, havel, walesa, the eastern europeans themselves taking it to the street or (as in the case of the east germans) voting w/ their feet, etc. DIDN'T EXIST and HAD NO IMPACT. i DO have family in poland, you know.

I didn't claim that you said Reagan won the Cold War, I was just connecting your comment to that absurdity in a rather sloppy fashion, and I apologize. I am sort of disgusted that McCain bought into that fiction, though maybe he's just trying to pre-empt Fat Denny or something.

If you weren't watching Smarty, then shame on you Mr. All-Things-Philly.

that's cause anything from philadelphia is bound to lose and break yer heart :-)

One thing that always confuses/bothers me is when liberals start calling people like Reagan (or Bush) evil.

Just when it began to look as if Mr. Reagan would be the first president in two decades to fail to get any arms agreement with the Soviets, it was announced that he and Mr. Gorbachev would meet in Reykjavik, Iceland, on Oct. 11 and 12, 1986.

There, Mr. Reagan proposed the elimination of all ballistic missiles by 1996. Mr. Gorbachev, not to be outdone, proposed the elimination of all strategic nuclear weapons, a proposal that, to the consternation of his aides, Mr. Reagan accepted. Mr. Reagan had found in Mr. Gorbachev a Communist he could deal with, and the tenor of the United States-Soviet relationship in his second term differed markedly from his first years in office.

In February 1987, two days after the Tower commission issued its report on the Iran-contra affair, Mr. Gorbachev announced the Soviet Union's willingness to sign "without delay" an agreement to eliminate Soviet and American medium-range missiles in Europe within five years.

For Mr. Reagan, the Soviet proposal provided an opportunity for a foreign policy breakthrough when he appeared immobilized by the Iran-contra scandal. The intermediate-range nuclear force, or I.N.F., treaty was signed the next December.

Really? Not even That Hagen Girl?

The point I was hinting at, Milo, is that pretty much everyone who posts here with the possible exceptions of Dee, Stuart, and Don (note the careful use of the word "possible") recognize that the invocation of the liberal media is a rhetorical stance used by conservatives and repeating it over and over and over as if it was a new or interesting thing to say is really tiresome. You are not merely preaching to the choir, you are also pandering and condescending to it as well.

i mean, how much difference are you going to say there is between Reagan and Hitler (someone who's death would be roundly celebrated).

oh you're kidding

As I said, it's not about a Republican or conservative dying - it was sad when Barry Goldwater died, it will be too bad when McCain dies - it's about someone who had no qualms with fucking over the poor and being involved with the murder of innocent people dying. There's a great deal of difference between Reagan and Hitler, or Reagan and Stalin. But from a human rights standpoint, there's little difference between Reagan and Pinochet, or Franco or Suharto (and, arguably, he was the direct cause of more deaths than the first two).

actually my whole post was rather ridiculous. hitl...i mean Reagan did a lot of things i think were terrible (although i dont disagree entirely w/the economic stuff - in theory maybe).

i just wouldnt ever piss on someone's grave or be happy someone died. seems like a shitty thing to do. and besides shitting on someone's grve would be much funnier.

i think ignoring what they deserve the act of celebrating a politician who you vehemently disagree w/s death is similar on both sides (and yes a bit 'macho' as nabisco's thingy said) and it gives me the same feeling of disgust.

what is up with the medveds? they're some odd right-wing trash aficionadoes, eh?

They are now! But back in the seventies and for part of the eighties they essentially codified Bad Movie Culture Celebration, for better or worse. Ed Wood wouldn't have become anywhere near the known figure he was without their first putting out the 50 Worst Films of All Time book, then running a poll to vote on various worsts of all time via a ballot at the back of the book (in pre-Internet-popularization days, a singularly effective approach). The results were posted in The Golden Turkey Awards a couple of years later and Ed swept with worst director and worst movie awards, and the cult was well and truly on.

I read the writing in those books and others like them they put out, up through the Golden Turkey sequel, and while a fair amount of the humor is broad, to put it mildly (then again, Harry was still a teenager when the first book came out), I can't see anything in them that would show that they'd both go off the deep end. I should have guessed when Medved got the Sneak Previews job and started being suspiciously nice to a lot of trash that his taste was changing, but I didn't figure on everything else.

"Okay Michael, tonight I'll repress you."
"Oh Augustin!"

You haven't been missing much: tis been a toss up between the cable and terrestrial networks to see who can improve on Reagan's saint-like glow, like his eight years in office resembled another Camelot. Saddest thing was watching Maureen Reagan talk (on MSNBC, I think) about how the "Gipper brought nations together...".

What is this tendency for American media to elevate a President when he dies, regardless of the truth about his life? It's not like he didn't put his trousers on, one leg at a time (or in JFK's case, take them off).

Clearly, Reagan remains a very polarizing figure in US politics, so it's a bit odd that they are so strenuously downplaying the fact that many liberals (and even not-so-liberals) hated the man's guts. For instance you have people like Tip O'Neill who once said that Reagan was hands-down the worst President ever. Yet, that perspective is not getting any play.

It may not, until well after the state funeral, either. "I hated his policies" doesn't make a good sound bite. I can only wonder who the media are trying to keep sweet.

I am morbid

Because even though we didn't like him, he was a human, and it's only kind to say good things about a person when he dies. I mean, at least give him a week. Most of us have probably gone for months without even thinking about him - so I think we can go a week without badmouthing him now that he's dead.

That said, I'm not at all looking forward to the eulogizing and nostaligia about how great he supposedly was.

See Slate for a different tack, including Hitchens on "Reagan's Stupidity"

What Diablo said. I'm already tempted to shoot out my TV. Without newspapers though, I just might have to use ILX for my closest news source.

I am not celebrating, since I don't think it makes any real positive difference. Neither am I mourning.

Mikhail Gorbachev is the former president of the Soviet Union. This article was translated by Pavel Palazhchenko from the Russian.

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0423/carson.php

Here's my fuller riff on that idea--
http://babelogue.citypages.com:8080/pscholtes/

66 (Unflattering) Things About Ronald Reagan

David Corn, The Nation
June 6, 2004
Viewed on June 8, 2004

Editor's Note: This list of "66 Things to Think about When Flying in to Reagan National Airport" appeared in the Nation on March 2, 1998 after the renaming of Washington National Airport after Ronald Reagan. As Corn says, "the piece remains relevant today -- particularly as a cheat sheet for those who dare to point out the Reagan presidency was not all that glorious and was more nightmare in America than morning in America."

The firing of the air traffic controllers, winnable nuclear war, recallable nuclear missiles, trees that cause pollution, Elliott Abrams lying to Congress, ketchup as a vegetable, colluding with Guatemalan thugs, pardons for F.B.I. lawbreakers, voodoo economics, budget deficits, toasts to Ferdinand Marcos, public housing cutbacks, redbaiting the nuclear freeze movement, James Watt.

Getting cozy with Argentine fascist generals, tax credits for segregated schools, disinformation campaigns, "homeless by choice," Manuel Noriega, falling wages, the HUD scandal, air raids on Libya, "constructive engagement" with apartheid South Africa, United States Information Agency blacklists of liberal speakers, attacks on OSHA and workplace safety, the invasion of Grenada, assassination manuals, Nancy's astrologer.

Drug tests, lie detector tests, Fawn Hall, female appointees (8 percent), mining harbors, the S&L scandal, 239 dead U.S. troops in Beirut, Al Haig "in control," silence on AIDS, food-stamp reductions, Debategate, White House shredding, Jonas Savimbi, tax cuts for the rich, "mistakes were made."

Michael Deaver's conviction for influence peddling, Lyn Nofziger's conviction for influence peddling, Caspar Weinberger's five-count indictment, Ed Meese ("You don't have many suspects who are innocent of a crime"), Donald Regan (women don't "understand throw-weights"), education cuts, massacres in El Salvador.

"The bombing begins in five minutes," $640 Pentagon toilet seats, African-American judicial appointees (1.9 percent), Reader's Digest, C.I.A.-sponsored car-bombing in Lebanon (more than eighty civilians killed), 200 officials accused of wrongdoing, William Casey, Iran/contra. "Facts are stupid things," three-by-five cards, the MX missile, Bitburg, S.D.I., Robert Bork, naps, Teflon.

David Corn, Washington editor of the Nation, is author of 'The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception.'

I'm not as au fait with American politics as I probably should be, so could I ask for some clarification of some things said upthread?

Waged a proxy war against a *democratically* elected government in Nicaragua

I always thought that the Sandanistas took Nicaragua by force, and when they *finally* stood for democratic elections (in 1990, after Reagan was out of office)they were thoroughly trounced.

Redistribution of weath I thought that Reagan reduced the top marginal tax rate, 70%, down to a more reasonable rate of 28%, thereby giving those at the top more incentive to invest. No?

And how did he demonise single mothers? Hasn't the welfare system you had in your country at the time, which apeared to subsidise and encourage (with real $$) unmarried women to have more babies, result in a generation of fatherless children and a cycle of dependency which has wrecked many inner cities?

The Sandinistas took power by force (against the US-backed Somoza) but held elections in 1984, which they won, despite the best efforts of the Americans. They lost in 1990 to a moderate (and continued to lose election). The Sandinistas had their own serious problems, but were angels compared to the people backed by the US.

Redistribution of weath I thought that Reagan reduced the top marginal tax rate, 70%, down to a more reasonable rate of 28%, thereby giving those at the top more incentive to invest. No?
If by invest you mean "buy another Rolex," I suppose. The problem is assuming that 28% is "more reasonable," (did I, in fact, miss that their incentive to invest would pay off (it didn't) and ignoring what that cost the US. (Also, for a time, there was a tax bubble where a certain segment of the upper-middle class population paid more than that 28%)

To pay for the tax cuts and Reagan's military-Keynesian policies, you had services rollbacks on services for the population that didn't see their tax rate cut by more than half.

(the top marginal rate in the US is currently 39.6%)

And how did he demonise single mothers? Hasn't the welfare system you had in your country at the time, which apeared to subsidise and encourage (with real $$) unmarried women to have more babies, result in a generation of fatherless children and a cycle of dependency which has wrecked many inner cities?
At no point did American social welfare ever carry enough benefits to encourage women to have children, period.

Since I haven't been around the tv or inet much lately, I didn't hear of this until my boyfriend's show that night. His lead singer spent much of the first set cursing Reagan and generally rejoicing over his demise. In the second set he took one of many flying leaps off the stage but this time he broke his leg in four places. They had to operate and put in steel pins yesterday. When we went to see him in the hospital I told him his injuries were caused by the ghost of Ronnie Reagan getting revenge for all the shit-talking.

(NB: drumstick splints are never a good idea.

Like, honestly, there's a point where even I'm just going to jump on Kerry's dick just for not being the worst President of my lifetime.

What did you expect? Imagine all the stuff that hasn't been announced yet.

Date: Tue, 8 Jun 2004 14:50:48 -0700
From: Sandra ******** <********.org>
To: **************
Subject: random question: were you in my 2nd grade class?

Hi Franz,

I'm not sure I have the right Franz, but my co-worker convinced me I should write you in light of President Reagan's death. Please write back if this is you. I went to Burns Park Elementary School in 2nd grade. Our teacher, Mrs. Remnant, forced us to write Get Well cards to the president after he was shot. I remember a kid named Franz ***** who made him a drawing of the shooting and wrote "I hope you die" in big letters at the top, and then getting in trouble for it. Was that you? If so, just wanted to let you know that I never forgot that - still find it hilarious that there was an anarchist in my 2nd grade class. I was one of the quiet kids who always picked out "Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle" books for the teacher to read.

Sandra *********

P.S. In case you're wondering how I got this email, I googled your name and came up with a page that has your photo, http://www-**********, and looks like it could be you (from what I remember of your class photo).

reagan was shot, the day after I was born. he has always meant a great deal, to me.

I heard that there is a murmuring, of people who, maybe, want to replace A. jackson's head, w/ R. reagan's? is this true? if so, who would jerry the nipper give the bigger horns, to?

haha! maybe he should replace A. jackson or, even, J. F. kennedy!!

I think they should replace all of them, with G. cleveland. except the $1000.

During crises and other shared public experiences, the news media often stop worrying about their mission to tell the truth. Instead, they take on the role of national rabbi or shaman, fostering a collective sense of good feeling by recounting stories and myths we wish to hear. Since Ronald Reagan's death, the media have chosen mostly to do just that, sugar-coating his life and career rather than grappling with his difficult legacy. Herewith, then, some myths about Reagan now being bruited about and why they don't do justice to the man's complexity.

Myth No. 1: Reagan, the "Great Communicator," owed his success mainly to his facility with television and public relations. From his first forays into politics, observers hailed Reagan for his undeniable skill in front of the camera. His acting talent, though never much admired when he was actually an actor, allowed him to master the televised speech and the nightly news clip. A myth thus took hold that Reagan embodied the triumph of style over substance, image over reality.

The myth was suited to the period when television became central to politics. It flattered aides such as Michael Deaver and David Gergen, who received credit for masterminding his generally favorable coverage. Above all, it comforted Reagan's liberal opponents, who could reassure themselves that the public didn't really support his conservative policies and had simply been duped by Hollywood showmanship.

Reagan, however, promised—and largely delivered—substantive policies that a majority of the electorate (at least come election time) desired. He may not have fulfilled his pledge to radically shrink the overall size of government, as Tim Noah has noted, but he reasserted American military prowess, led a backlash against liberal permissiveness, and pruned social services that many middle-class voters had no wish to keep supporting. Even many people ill-served by Reaganomics supported him, not because they were fooled by clever image-making but because he both articulated their conservative values and enacted policies that moved the country rightward.

Myth No. 2: Reagan was a uniter, not a divider. Reagan's tenure is being depicted as a brief moment of national unity before the advent of today's strident partisanship. In fact, apart from Richard Nixon, it's hard to think of a more divisive president of the 20th century. As I've noted, Reagan was, during his first two years, one of the least-liked presidents of the postwar age. The festering economic doldrums, the worsening Cold War tensions, and doubts about his temperament conspired to make him less popular than Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, and even Carter were at comparable points in their terms. Nor was Reagan's second term free of strife. Starting in 1986, the Iran-Contra scandal revived widespread criticism of his leadership—including calls for his impeachment—and his poll ratings went into free fall.

To be sure, from 1984 to 1986, a surging economy, a revival of patriotism, and Reagan's skillful appeals to disillusioned Democrats enhanced his image and ensured his landslide re-election. Even then, however, the intense dislike that Reagan engendered rivaled the most feverish Clinton-hating or Bush-hating of later years. If his critics bear some blame for wallowing in the demonology, it was Reagan himself who polarized the country through his actions: aligning himself with the Christian Right; playing to racist sentiments by launching his 1980 campaign in Neshoba County, Miss.; nominating Robert Bork to the Supreme Court; appointing as attorney general the ethically challenged Edwin Meese; and so on. Indeed, by stoking feelings of resentment on both left and right, Reagan did probably more than anyone to sow the social discord that so deeply divides our fifty-fifty nation.

Myth No. 3: Reagan was an incorrigible optimist. Or, as we've been hearing, his sunny disposition made him impossible to dislike. This is more a half-truth than a whole lie. Certainly, Reagan charmed political antagonists like Tip O'Neill. His morning-in-America campaign tapped into a public sense of hope. And he could deploy humor brilliantly. But Reagan also possessed an ugly mean streak. It was evident back when, as California governor, he warned student protesters, "If there has to be a bloodbath, then let's get it over with." Anyone who has watched the replays of Reagan saying, "I paid for this microphone, Mr. Green," or "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall," can see the manifest ferocity that was as crucial to Reagan's persona as his self-effacing grin.

Reagan also mobilized his constituents with fear and resentment alongside his optimism. He fueled anxieties about a Soviet threat that he exaggerated, ginned up bitterness toward welfare queens whose stories he concocted, and played to scorn for liberals whom he called soft on crime. Most important, many of his signature presidential actions, such as firing the air-traffic controllers in 1981, won admiration precisely because of their "meanness"—or, if you prefer, their "toughness." Reagan would never have succeeded without this strain of mercilessness to balance his genial side.

Myth No. 4: Reagan restored faith in government and the presidency. This claim is as bizarre as it is common in the recent Reagan encomiums—bizarre because people still don't trust government (even after Sept. 11, which did boost public confidence in the state somewhat). Polls show that levels of trust did edge upward between 1980 and 1984—probably a result of the economic rebound—before falling again by 1988. But Reagan never restored confidence to the levels of the 1950s and 1960s, nor did he reverse the general decline, which in fact resumed after the uptick of his first term. Long after his departure from office, journalists and political scientists have continued to study the problems of depressed voter turnout and rampant political apathy. That candidates of both parties now routinely run against Washington further shows that it is an enduring cynicism toward government and politicians, not a renewed faith in them, that has been central to Reagan's legacy.

Myth No. 5: Reagan's get-tough policy with the Soviet Union brought about the end of the Cold War. Historians will be debating this one for some time, but the conventional wisdom—that Reagan, by building up the military and spouting feisty Cold War speeches, cowed the Soviet Union into submission—compresses all of Reagan's eight years into one brief moment. Reagan does deserve credit for bringing U.S.-Soviet hostilities to a close, but not for the simplistic reasons usually cited.

Though few Americans realized it, by the mid-1970s the Soviet system was collapsing. Its aggressive acts of that era, like its invasion of Afghanistan, turned out not to be harbingers of a renewed Red menace but the last gasps of a tottering power. Yet Reagan's coterie of hawkish advisers foresaw only an unending struggle. Accordingly, in his first term, they cheered Reagan's provocative rhetoric and counseled hard-line policies—notably his abandonment of high-level summits and arms-control talks—that escalated tensions. But in Reagan's second term, Secretary of State George Shultz gained the upper hand in the administration (especially after the housecleaning that followed the Iran-Contra scandal). Reagan's more hawkish advisers had disdained his dreamy rhetoric about peace and abolishing nuclear weapons, but Shultz took it seriously. And both Shultz and Reagan broke from the hawks to embrace Mikhail Gorbachev as a historic reformer. The speed with which they moved from the 1985 Geneva summit to the 1987 INF treaty vouched for the wisdom of Reagan's turnabout. Thus the irony: Summitry, not missile defense or bellicose speech-making, marked Reagan's real contribution to ending the Cold War.

These overlooked elements of Reagan's governance—the substantial conservatism of his policies, which thrilled some Americans while enraging others; the personal toughness and cynicism that complemented his warmth and optimism; his dramatic, if belated, about-face on dealing with the Soviet Union—share a unifying thread: a quiet pragmatism. The practical streak that lay beneath Reagan's ideological vigor is seldom noted in either his admirers' panegyrics or his detractors' philippics. For all the fantasies he confused with reality, for all the Hollywood dreams he inhabited even while governing, Reagan was capable of hard-headed realism. It's a pity so few commentators about his legacy can muster the same.

David Greenberg writes the "History Lesson" column and teaches history and political science at Yale. He is the author of Nixon's Shadow: The History of an Image.

Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2102060/

—Hunter S. Thompson, Rolling Stone, June 16, 1994

Few can work up Dr. Gonzo’s level of anti-Nixon vitriol in dispatching Ronald Reagan to the next realm. Nixon is remembered by the American people as Tricky Dick. Reagan has been enshrined as lovable Uncle Ronnie.

Indeed, none of us know for sure when Reagan came down with Alzheimer’s, but we have certainly experienced the collective amnesia of the American media in these last few days. A mawkish Tom Brokaw, an artificially somber Paula Zahn, a nattering Judy Woodruff gushing over the love affair Ronnie had with Nancy (a tinkling piano punctuating the CNN soundtrack), a babbling Wolf Blitzer (who made the idiotic remark that Reagan employed “perfect timing” in dying on D-Day) and a fatuous Jeff Greenfield stumbled over one another vying to slobber their accolades over the corpse of the fallen leader: Reagan was humble, he was funny, he had a twinkle in his eyes, he charmed his most fervent opponents, he leaped from tall buildings, and . . . yes . . . he single-handedly ended a four-decade-old Cold War. Reagan court biographer Lou Cannon, however, came up with the single most astounding statement in the Washington Post’s instant obit: “Mr. Reagan’s commitment to freedom was matched by an abhorrence of nuclear weapons.”

Some of us remember Reagan in very different terms. The single moment that most stands out in my mind was the early evening of March 23, 1983. Not a significant date for most. But that afternoon I was driving a dangerous highway back to the capital of San Salvador from the war-embattled eastern province of Morazan. I switched on the AM radio in my rented van and found the scratchy, static-laden frequency of the Voice of America. It was carrying a live broadcast of a much-heralded Reagan speech on national security — a speech in which he not only painted Central America as a dire, imminent threat to America and its people but also unveiled his sweeping Strategic Defensive Initiative, known popularly as Star Wars.

I had just come a few days earlier from a week in Guatemala, where a U.S.-supported and visibly deranged army general by the name of Efrain Rios Montt — who shared Reagan’s view that the locals were a threat to world peace — was carrying out a scorched-earth campaign against hundreds of rural Mayan

communities, killing thousands of indigenous and

scattering even more to the winds. The devastation

I saw was heartbreaking, almost biblical in the scope

of destruction.

I had also recently been in what Reagan called in that speech “Marxist” Nicaragua — the second poorest country in the hemisphere. Most of its 3 million people couldn’t scare up three squares, it had few roads, little infrastructure, and what was there rarely worked. Up along the Honduran border I saw subsistence Nicaraguan farming communities bury their young in rolling, rocky pastures as Reagan’s “contras” — the right-wing army led by officers of the former Somoza dictatorship that Reagan funded and compared to “our Founding Fathers” — took their toll. The ruling Sandinistas, given to revolutionary bravado, left much to be desired by democratic standards. But to posit, as Reagan did, that they threatened the security of the United States makes George W. Bush’s similar arguments about Saddam look, in comparison, downright compelling.

These scenes were rolling through my head as Reagan spoke that night. But I was mostly obsessed with what I saw right before me as I headed west on the Pan-American Highway: El Salvador. Here the Reagan administration was spending hundreds of millions of dollars per year (eventually a couple of billion) to bankroll what was without any question one of the most murderous regimes in the world. In the name of crushing a small leftist insurgency, the U.S. stood by as literally tens of thousands of civilians were arrested, tortured, and often mangled and mutilated, before being dumped in one or another killing field.

What was so astounding, so galling, as I listened to that speech wasn’t that Reagan was defending our support of what essentially was the wrong side. It was rather the obviously false, I would say delusional, premise of his argument. The unrest in Central America, he argued, was nothing but a direct product of Soviet (and Cuban and Nicaraguan) regional subversion. I’m not going to rehash that argument 20 years later other than to say it was a downright and simplistic lie.

But now Reagan was going a step further. After imposing a Cold War matrix on local regional conflicts, he was now proposing — via Star Wars — to project that Cold War into outer space. As darkness set down on that Salvadoran highway and Reagan finished his speech vowing to spend billions more to erect a space shield against a hardly credible threat of Russian attack, I felt like I was driving ever deeper into an endless, black void.

This anecdote hardly qualifies as even an asterisk in Reagan’s official biographies. Central America is long forgotten as an American political issue. And Star Wars morphed into a slightly less irrational National Missile Defense program that too many Democrats have stupidly backed. Reagan’s detractors have plenty of other waypoints to chart their memories. A half-dozen years ago, after National Airport was renamed for Reagan, writer David Corn came up with 66 points by which to remember the Great Communicator. A few of them bear repeating as the media deification of him extends through his funeral games:

“The firing of the air traffic controllers, winnable nuclear war, recallable nuclear missiles, trees that cause pollution, Elliott Abrams lying to Congress, ketchup as a vegetable . . . redbaiting the nuclear freeze movement, James Watt . . . ‘constructive engagement’ with apartheid South Africa, United States Information Agency blacklists of liberal speakers, attacks on OSHA and workplace safety, the invasion of Grenada, assassination manuals, Nancy’s astrologer . . . Fawn Hall, female appointees (8 percent), mining harbors, the S&L scandal, 239 dead U.S. troops in Beirut, Al Haig ‘in control,’ silence on AIDS, food-stamp reductions, Debategate, White House shredding, Jonas Savimbi, tax cuts for the rich, ‘mistakes were made.’ Michael Deaver’s conviction for influence peddling, Lyn Nofziger’s conviction for influence peddling, Caspar Weinberger’s five-count indictment . . . 200 officials accused of wrongdoing, William Casey, Iran-contra. ‘Facts are stupid things,’ three-by-five cards, the MX missile, Bitburg, S.D.I., Robert Bork, naps, Teflon.”

The list goes on. But make no mistake. Ronald Reagan deserves admiration for his tenacity and his political skill, if not for the outcome he produced. He took the fringe Goldwater movement and carried it into the mainstream of the GOP, thereby remaking his own party and, with it, American politics. He catapulted nutballs like Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority into positions of national legitimacy and trashed his own party’s Main Street traditions of fiscal responsibility.

His two biggest political promises — to break up big government and to use military power to bring “freedom,” as Lou Cannon surmises, to the rest of the world — were but empty bluster. Tripling the national debt, doubling the deficits, cutting taxes while bloating the military, he left government at the end of his tenure 30 percent bigger than he found it. And for all his saber rattling, he cut and run in Lebanon after 239 Marines were killed in a ‰ car bombing, and the only country he directly confronted with U.S. troops was the hapless Disneyland-size island of Grenada.

As Josh Green pointed out in a Washington Monthly piece last year, “A sober review of Reagan’s presidency doesn’t yield the seamlessly conservative record being peddled today.” He never seriously followed through on promises to outlaw abortion. He eventually raised taxes. He ignored any notion of a balanced budget. His assault on entitlements never fully materialized, and in 1983 he actually helped rescue Social Security. And on foreign affairs, he eventually ignored the radical misjudgments of many of his closest advisers, who were clueless to the meaning of Gorbachev, and found a way to accommodate the Soviet reform leader.

Reagan’s eventual compromise with Gorbachev on arms control should not be overblown. When Gorbachev arrived on the scene promoting glasnost and perestroika, there is little if any evidence that anyone in the administration, including the Gipper, could fully grasp the import of the moment. Myriad were the public White House and State Department statements brushing aside the notion of any real change in the “evil empire.” It was Gorbachev who took all the risks — monumental risks that paid off richly for his people but stranded him personally in a historical Siberia. Reagan, surrounded by many of the same neocon counselors who populate Washington today, came late to his entente with the Soviet leader. By the time Reagan made his take-down-this-wall speech in Berlin, the revolution unleashed by Gorbachev was well under way and the fall of the wall was as much as inevitable. Reagan had been calling for the demolition of the wall (as many had) since the day it was built. He just happened to make that speech at a time when Eastern Europeans, inspired by what they saw in Moscow, not Washington, finally felt freedom was in

their reach.

Most frightening is today’s conventional wisdom that Reagan was “correct” in forcing the Soviets to spend themselves out of existence in an escalating arms race. The Soviets were quite bankrupt all on their own without Reagan’s assistance. Soviet spending on arms was flat during the 1980s, deflating one of the most enduring myths surrounding Reagan’s “vision.” Reagan’s arms spending spree should more wisely be seen as reckless economics and old-fashioned brinkmanship. History has yet to judge if we, along with the Russians, have also bankrupted ourselves by pouring billions into tanks and planes while starving schools, hospitals and domestic infrastructure. Worse, what was the corollary to the Reagan policy of spending the Soviets into oblivion? If the Soviets had not collapsed (under what was mostly internal, not outside, pressure), what course would Reagan have taken? Were we to continue our spending binge and arms escalation ad infinitum? Or would we have been tempted to stage a pre-emptive attack to take down our rivals once and for all? Remember “with enough shovels”?

What Reagan did accomplish, however, should not be underestimated. While his own actions were not necessarily consistent, he firmly established a new tone and ethos in national politics. The mask of equanimity was ripped off American politics, and the winners in our society were finally given permission to publicly gloat. All of a sudden it was socially acceptable to denounce the poor, to blame the victims, to celebrate and even promote inequality. It was hip to be mean. The golf shirt, martini and cigar replaced the lunch bucket and a cool Bud as the icons of American workaday culture. Reagan’s legacy is best embodied not by the mistaken notion of him as a Strangelovian, bomb-dropping cowboy, but rather as the obedient radio and TV pitchman for General Electric. Fifty years from now, Reagan will be remembered not for lobbing a few missiles at Qaddafi or for funding the contras, but rather for presiding over the most radical transfer of wealth, upward, in the 20th century.

Breaking the federal Air Traffic Controllers Union, as Reagan’s first act in office, flashed a glaring green light for the trickle-down notions of social justice that still dominate our body politic two decades later. While Reagan didn’t shy from more centrist and pragmatic options when it befitted his own political survival, he nevertheless implanted the rhetorical and ideological sidelines of an economic and political playing field that has been shifted far to the right.

Reagan didn’t accomplish this shift all on his own. Nor was it a mere result of the clever, calculated and conspiratorial machinations of his colder-blooded handlers, ranging from Mike Deaver to “Mommy” Nancy. To a great degree, Reagan’s rise also reflected what had been an accelerating drift in the national Zeitgeist. Ronald Reagan would have been an impossible construction if it had not been for the stark failures of American liberalism — failures crystallized in the limp politics of Jimmy Carter. Reagan was carried to power as blue-collar “Reagan Democrats” from decaying cities and frayed suburbs defected in legions to the GOP. And they weren’t simply angry white men lured by cheap campaign demagoguery. Their hearts and souls were, instead, wooed and seduced by a candidate and a movement that was unabashedly bold and daring, that brimmed with new (and mostly bad) ideas, that was — at least in American terms — revolutionary, and that foamed with an oxygenated optimism of the sort that has become a dead language for liberals. On Ronald Reagan’s death, it is a lesson in politics that seems ever more urgent for the left to adopt — lest it wants its great-grandchildren 50 years from now still to be supine before the manufactured mythology of the Gipper.

In another forum someone suggested putting Reagan's face on food stamps.

http://www.lib.ohio-state.edu/arvweb/glenn/collection/senate/politicalcareer.htm

PC file names

Loads of people in America give a toss at this point, too. This is like commercial television has finally given up the ghost and admitted it's run by that shady commodity known as "the State."

http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/.element/img/1.1/misc/sp.cov.banner.gif

In 35-40 years when GWB passes is this what I'll have to put up with?

But maybe that's because there are tons of people in Chicago who can't stand Reagan.

Anyway, WTF??

Also, WTF?

http://www.godhatesfags.com/images/2004/Howard_Stern_Las_Vegas_5-11-2004.jpg

As a president, he often championed views that were either willfully deceitful or hopelessly ignorant. In charity, I usually assumed he acted from pure ignorance. It was harder to extend that charity to his advisors and political appointees, such as William Casey or Ed Meese. I can only view his administration as a horrid blot on the history of my country. His legacy was one of oppressive dictatorships in the world at large, corporate ascendancy, economic mismanagement and curtailed freedoms at home.

Otherwise, the man was rather likeable really. He had a nice smile and a warm, avuncular manner. Good with a quip, too. He had, you know, that (how shall I say?) movie star quality about him.

I think that's Mike D.

no caption necessary.

Reagan's Body Dies

Nancy Reagan Available at 72

http://www.bush-zombiereagan.com/

“People go to Dixon first,” acknowledged Joan Johnson, volunteer coordinator of the Tampico museum“It’s not as far off the beaten path.” When Johnson gets caught up in the Tampico-Dixon question, she said others calm her with a reminder: “This is Bethlehem. That is Nazareth.”

http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2010/jul/04/2-towns-claim-reagan-their-favorite-son/?breakingnews

"The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with the bones."

lots of nonsense on this thread

no one ever mentions it but reagan had a pretty dismal record when it came to civil liberties and government transparency -- weakening the freedom of information act, prosecuting leakers, pushing for mandatory drug tests in the workplace. he also used more signing statements than any president before him.

libertarians and "sensible" conservatives who think he was a great guy whose wonderful policies were reversed by bush and cheney are deluding themselves. virtually every bush administration abuse of power has its correlative in the reagan white house.

And he was evil. Don't forget that part.

I can't deny any of J.D.'s points (and he and I have recommended Walter Karp's columns and books; excellent reporter), but the revisionism to which his foreign policy has been subjected inr ecent years has some merit. I highly recommend The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: Reagan opposed the entire foreign policy commisseriat and Richard Nixon's counsel to follow his instincts on Gorbachev. Conservatives are remembering now that they dismissed RR as a traitor in '87 and '88.

I'll read it, but if it doesn't talk about Central America honestly, I won't take it seriously.

Orgy of conservative self-congratulation. Alessandra Stanley demurs.

And Digby cites this fantastic pwnage of Rush Limbaugh by a liberal.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/rush-owww.html

Imprint, a popular Toronto news show, had Dukakis on last night talking about Reagan. Dukakis praised him effusively for negotiating a treaty with Russia on (I think) medium-range missiles, and gently dismissed him on pretty much everything else--Reaganomics, getting credit for the breakup of Soviet Russia, etc. Make of that as you will; I know Dukakis doesn't exactly have the reputation as a sage.

Damn no Shakey Mo on this thread

Lou Cannon's bio still the best.

still kinda big of Dukakis to say ANYTHING nice about Reagan, since Reagan himself made a nasty joke about Dukakis's mental health during the 1988 campaign.

oh yeah, here's my calculus:

Lenin -> Stalin -> Brezhnev

Reagan -> Dubya -> Palin

(with Poppa Bush being a sort of Khrushchev figure or something)

this thread makes me feel hella old

I'll look in periodically on "The Corner" today and skim as many of the testimonials as I can stand. There will, of course, be an unspoken thread that will link many of them: "He did not see America as a fundamentally flawed endeavor or failed experiment. He understood before [everything else] how amazing and exceptional America is because of her people"--i.e., not like the current occupant.

Second-generation SpEd Ben Quayle:

When I was a child, President Ronald Reagan was the nice man who gave us jelly beans when we visited the White House.

I didn’t know then, but I know it now: The jelly beans were much more than a sweet treat that he gave out as gifts. They represented the uniqueness and greatness of America — each one different and special in its own way, but collectively they blended in harmony.

http://a1.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/hs036.snc6/166630_10150178866094199_602254198_8717064_8192103_n.jpg

http://www.subgenius.com/bigfist/pics2/logoart/dobbs6x9.GIF

Dukakis was not stupid, just a dreadful presidential candidate.

Anyway, fuck RR, shoulda died in '81 to help us all out.

I saw a performance of Stephen Sondheim's Assassins yesterday, in which Hinckley's attempt on RR is reenacted. Weird timing.

"Ev-ry-body's got the right to be diff-rent..."

Reagan's shameful support of late apartheid in South Africa:

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/02/05/ronald_reagan_apartheid_south_africa/index.html

"I'd like to remind you that Maynard Keynes didn't even HAVE a degree in economics."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3eyISCTG5Y

did anyone watch the HBO documentary? Hertzberg said it was more than pretty good.

Based on Jarecki's Why We Fight, I really wanted to see it. No HBO, though. (This is the first time I've clued into the fact that Reagan Jarecki is the brother of Friedmans Jarecki--I thought they were the same guy.)

well, sure

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/22/us/disney-and-reagan-united-at-presidential-library.html

He's the first president I really remember... rip

― luna (luna.c), Saturday, June 5, 2004 3:59 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPyjJ1MMUzQ

http://25.media.tumblr.com/49e71bfcdc06d5e3f5a4f4408a3f716a/tumblr_mmtw9jsU5i1qcujoko1_400.gif

the other week one of my eight billion cousins had a baby, causing her mom to send out an EMAIL BLAST to the FAM announcing its stupid name, which included the stupid middle name of REAGAN, "named after our country's greatest president"

this in addition to my '03-'07 friend REGAN (born '81 to mormon parents, defriended in '07 due to weird casual racism tendencies) and a girl at my high school - a frickin GIRL - named REAGAN. she liked horses a lot (like so many spoiled whites do)

kind of just wish he would die again, tbh.

not yr cousin, btw.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ySHtDHrLJY

what he says about the ANC must be heard to be believed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUTfwTVXlto

jeezus, Nancy is still alive

perlstein's new book is just about out yaaaay

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/book-review-the-invisible-bridge-fall-of-nixon-and-rise-of-reagan-by-rick-perlstein/2014/08/01/d657a372-05e4-11e4-bbf1-cc51275e7f8f_story.html

Great news.

Looking at a few seconds of the clip above, I realized that, whereas Bush Sr. used to immediately make me think of Dana Carvey, that's been replaced by an image of a disgusted James Cromwell saying, "You disappoint me, Junior."

you def saw that film too many times

Bar and Nancy such good actresses in that clip.

Can't wait for Perlstein's book.

perlstein's new book is just about out yaaaay

yes! yes! yes!

didn't know it ended in '76 though

from Frank Rich's review:

One of Perlstein’s enduring themes is that when it comes to the steady ascent of the conservative movement, contemporaneous journalists and Democratic and Republican elites alike are the last to figure out what is going on. He’s a connoisseur of wrong calls, many of them premature obituaries for the right, from now all-but-forgotten opinion titans of the day (Reston, Kraft, Alsop, Sidey, Evans and Novak). “Before the Storm” ended with Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s triumphalist judgment that the lopsided 1964 election results presaged Democratic victories for the foreseeable future. At the conclusion of “The Invisible Bridge” — which closes with Ford’s narrow Pyrrhic victory over the Reagan insurgency at the 1976 Kansas City convention — Perlstein turns to The New York Times for the epitaph. “At 65 years of age,” it said, Reagan was “too old to consider seriously another run at the presidency.”

good thing nobody pronounces conservatism dead these days eh

conservatism isn't dead it's alive and well in the Democratic Party

GOP is p fucked at least through the next presidential cycle tho

i'm not at all convinced of that

perlstein update! they're going after him for plagiarism

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/05/business/media/rick-perlsteins-the-invisible-bridge-draws-criticism.html

oh i'm for sure buying it now.

We've got a discussion going in the LBJ vs Nixon thread.

George Packer's review: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/08/11/uses-division

Huge Buzzfeed story on the Reagan White House turning down Rock Hudson's people's request for army hospital treatment in France:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/chrisgeidner/nancy-reagan-turned-down-rock-hudsons-plea-for-help-seven-we#.fqx4Q1MqNe

and of course this bit:

When Koop drafted Reagan’s remarks for the dinner, he wrote, in part, “It’s also important that America not judge those who have the disease but care for them with dignity and kindness. Passing moral judgments is up to God; our part is to ease the suffering and to find a cure.”

Within the White House and throughout the administration, though, many conservatives vigorously disagreed with Koop’s report and recommendations. Regularly, those with anti-gay opinions ruled the day. For Carl Anderson — then a special assistant to Reagan who worked in the White House Office of Public Liaison and now the current Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus — such language was completely unacceptable.

someone asked greil marcus on his website who he hated more, nixon or reagan. here's what he said:

I was raised in a Nixon-hating California family. His Senate campaign against Helen Gahagan Douglas—“The Pink Lady,” as he red-baited her—was family lore. Watergate was scary but more than anything thrilling. My friend Sean Wilentz, an historian of American democracy with as long and deep a view as anyone, once said to me, “We didn’t deserve Lincoln, and we didn’t deserve Nixon”—meaning someone that good, and someone that evil.

For all that Nixon did to traduce our democracy, though, my loathing for Reagan goes much farther. Nixon did many bad things—the Christmas bombing of Hanoi, the invasion of Cambodia, the murder of countless Vietnamese, setting the stage for the Khmer Rouge, debasing our political culture, COINTELPRO, the Hughes program, the enemies list, “If the president does it, that means it’s not illegal”—and many good things, including inviting Duke Ellington to the White House. But Reagan changed our political language and the terms of the debate. He was a smart man who knew what he wanted and how to get it. (Phil Hartman’s SNL portrayal of him as a tireless political genius behind his mask of bumbling imbecility is the best biography of him we have.) He removed many things from the public sphere and added many more. His influence—not just rote Republican worship—is greater today than it was when he was president. People cannot even think of him as he really was—in the words of the great political critic Walter Karp, a “vile tyrant”—which leads to Hillary Clinton saying, out of nowhere anyone has ever actually lived, that Reagan and Nancy Reagan started the national conversation on AIDS, which is like saying I won the Civil War.

Plus, I remember Reagan as governor of California all too well. As president, he seemed like a genial ideologue, trying to do his best. As governor he was cruel, hateful, contemptuous. See his last movie role, as a murderer and a crime boss in Don Siegel’s 1964 The Killers, for a glimpse of who he really was. Plus you get to see him shot to death by Lee Marvin.

http://greilmarcus.net/ask-greil/

otm

i assume this sentence is bleakly funny on purpose tho

For all that Nixon did to traduce our democracy, though, my loathing for Reagan goes much farther. Nixon did many bad things—the Christmas bombing of Hanoi, the invasion of Cambodia, the murder of countless Vietnamese, setting the stage for the Khmer Rouge, debasing our political culture, COINTELPRO, the Hughes program, the enemies list, “If the president does it, that means it’s not illegal”—and many good things, including inviting Duke Ellington to the White House.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af0Yei2sAbE

*further

He was a smart man

Having problems with this tbh

There are many different kinds of smart. Reagan lacked some and was a genius at others.

Plus, I remember Reagan as governor of California all too well. As president, he seemed like a genial ideologue, trying to do his best. As governor he was cruel, hateful, contemptuous. See his last movie role, as a murderer and a crime boss in Don Siegel’s 1964 The Killers, for a glimpse of who he really was.

J.G Ballard says exactly this in a footnote in the Annotated edition of The Atrocity Exhibition.

so lol greil marcus copying his homework

J.G Ballard says exactly this in a footnote in the Annotated edition of The Atrocity Exhibition.

reading this now, his footnotes are the best part!

Corey Robin on FB, re the death of Robert Parry and his '80s reportage:

I want to strongly recommend this piece by Jefferson Morley about the journalist Robert Parry who just died. Morley was an editor at The New Republic in the 1980s. Parry was one of the very few journalists who was on to the story of CIA funding of the Contras from the beginning. Aside from the story itself, here's why it's important:

1. As Morley shows, despite Congress passing a law prohibiting funding of the Contras, the Reagan administration and their apologists were completely open about Reagan's intention to break the law. Which is exactly what he did. We often hear that what makes Trump different is that his predecessors at least pretended to honor the norms and forms, thereby demonstrating the tribute that vice pays to virtue, whereas he openly flouts them. As Morley shows, that's just bullshit.

2. What's more, Reagan's defiance of the law involved two of the central questions of the second half of the Cold War: whether the US should be prosecuting that war and so violently (one of the scandals of the Contras involved the publication of a CIA manual for how to assassinate the Sandinistas and their supporters), and what power the president should have, independent of Congress, in doing so. Whenever I bring up Iran-Contra in the context of Trump, I feel like people's eyes glaze over, as if it were just an accounting error. It wasn't. It was a big fucking deal, involving fundamental questions of state violence and unaccountable state power.

3. For months and years, the press refused to touch the story. Even though it was an open secret in DC. It was only the introduction of the Iranian element (trading arms for money that would then be used to fund the Contras) that blew this story open and forced the media to start reporting on it. Again, we hear a lot about the threat to the media posed by Trump. There is just no comparison to the Reagan years. None at all. It was that much worse.

4. As an editor at The New Republic, Morley tried for months to get Parry's reporting in there. He was consistently stopped by Charles Krauthammer (yes, he was at TNR) and Marty Peretz. Again, things are better now.

https://www.alternet.org/bob-parry-rip-reporter-who-broke-iran-contra-story

Peretz was very pro-Contra, he even had at least one of them write a piece for TNR. And of course he had a bunch of neocons in there. Controversies among contributors, staff and readers, a number of whom, like me, ditched their subscriptions. Wild talk for a while of a breakaway mag, edited by Hendrick Hertzberg!

Parry died? Damn. Secrecy and Privilege is among the best of the Reagan/October Surprise exposes.

Peretz was a real POS

Is 14 years a respectful amount of time passed if one might want to dig up a dead president and punch him in the dick?

Nice as that sounds, it probably wouldn't be all that satisfying.

Pretty sure Reagan had no dick.

where do you think trickle down economic came from?

<q>Pretty sure Reagan had no dick.

― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, January 31, 2018 1:57 PM (twenty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink</q>

Good point. I guess I'll punch Nancy in the dick instead.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DU5--nFU8AADMtG.jpg
I can only imagine the conversations recorded in this book will set all-time records for fatuousness.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DU5--nFU8AADMtG.jpg

Still dead, though, right?

Deader than a whippet on a pikestaff.

Grim

Pretty grim when he was animate, too.

https://i.imgur.com/RWfYv2V.gif

The strangest thing about using Reagan to attack Trump is that Reagan was, by far, more like Trump than any other president. You could even say Reagan was the prototype and Trump's the final product. pic.twitter.com/w2Fb3kAy07

— Jon Schwarz (@schwarz) February 7, 2018

"Confronted Russian strongmen"

http://legendarystrength.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/saxons.jpg

Also LOL @ spoke of inclusion.

that ana navarro quote is a good reminder that a lot of the republicans who say they dislike trump would almost certainly have no problem with him if he had movie-star looks and charisma, looked more convincingly hurt and puzzled when someone accused him of corruption, and expressed his racism in the form of dog-whistle metaphors, dad jokes, and made-up stories.

There are also plenty in the Dem/indie rank-and-file who seem to hate Yam most for his bad manners and cravenness.

Friends of mine too. It's why I keep pointing out Trump as culmination of the horror that started on January 1981.

^^^^^^

he’s back

https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/politics/Ronald-Reagan-Hitting-Campaign-Trail-as-a-Hologram-496764531.html

more lifelike than the second-term version

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/ronald-reagans-racist-conversation-richard-nixon/595102/

from there to Philadephia, Mississippi

just remembered the Democrats' resolution condemning Trump's racist comments about the Squad was all about Reagan lmao https://t.co/Npkbq9lApS

— Sam Adler-Bell (@SamAdlerBell) July 30, 2019

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/ronald-reagan-presidential-library-evacuated-184430801.html

The wildfire in CA is closing in on the Reagan library, which is where he is buried. So the army corps of engineers is trying to dig up the coffins & corpse to move it to safety. This is the exact scenario all of punk rock historically has been an effort to summon.

— rustbeltjacobin 🌹 (@rustbeltjacobin) October 31, 2019

idk i think for some of us, we were thinking of the scenario where he was burned alive

you take what you can get

true -- at least they aren't forcing prison inmates making $1/hr to dig up the coffin of the man whose horrible policies contributed to them being in prison in the first place.

Man, I'd pay somebody a dollar to let me do that.

you only die twice

digging up Franco and Reagan in the same month must be a sign of something

"we, um...lost the corpse, sir"

JG Ballard was a Scorpio too!