Good Riddance, Reagan

Okay, I can’t take it anymore. That had to have been the longest fucking funeral in recorded history. And I feel for Nancy – she’s been doing this for over a week. Why didn’t we just have a map on the TV’s for the hours that the plane made it’s way from D.C. back to Cali. Haven’t seen cameras that parked on slow-moving vehicles since OJ went crazy.

The most striking image of the event was Nancy leaning down to kiss the flag-draped coffin in the Capitol Rotunda. You could hear every journalist in the room realize this was the money shot and a thousand cameras clicked in perfect unison to her lips meeting the cloth. I am surprised she’s as mobile as she is – I thought she’s be a little slower – good for her.

I will always remember Reagan because he was President when I was a kid. The optimism he created was wonderful (even if kicked off with the October surprise). The idea of a weapons system called Star Wars was too cool to imagine (even though later proved a pretty much fucked up, impossible idea). He seemed genuinely concerned for real people (even though he ignored AIDS, allowing it to remain un-researched and un-announced and claim millions of lives). He cared for kids (even though he tried to make ketchup qualify as a vegetable in school lunches). And his monetary policy was unprecedented (I’m still waiting for that trickle down to reach me).

Most notable is how the sociopaths in power today started cutting their teeth way back in 1980 – realizing that an imperialist America was the way to go and that a massive military build-up was not only good for morale but hideously good for business.

So I say good riddance, Reagan. You were an abrasive prick – forecasting a whole new tidal wave of abrasive pricks to come into office decades later.

I’ll close with Hunter S. Thompson’s reflection on the funeral of Richard Milhouse Nixon: (though my sentiments are not nearly as acrid as Mr. Thompson’s:

If the right people had been in charge of Nixon’s funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin.


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6 responses to “Good Riddance, Reagan”

  1. Tim Z. Avatar

    Almost as an antidote to a week of mass Reaganophilia, there will be a fortnight of events which will make the Republicans, neocons, and fundamentalists shudder.

    In a way, it starts today when the official portrait of President Bill Clinton is unveiled at the White House. It is the first time a presidential portrait has been painted by an African-American artist.

    Here’s the list of events for the next couple of weeks, both major and minor:

    Tuesday the 15th
    – The release of the book by Dr. Justin Frank, Bush On the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President.
    http://www.harpercollins.com/catalog/book_xml.asp?isbn=0060736704

    – Bill Moyers is scheduled to appear on Charlie Rose on PBS.
    Check your local listings. But in Chicago, that’s Ch. 20 at 11 PM.

    Thursday the 17th
    – James Bamford, author of, A Pretext of War: 9/11, Iraq, And The Abuse Of America’s Intelligence Agencies, will be the guest on Focus 580, an interview and call-in show on NPR outlet WILL-AM.
    This is scheduled for 11:07 AM to Noon CDT.
    If you live in East Central Illinois or West Central Indiana, you can hear it on 580 kHz AM.
    If you live out of range, hear it online at:
    http://will.uiuc.edu/am/ramfiles/livewill.ram

    Sunday the 20th
    – Former President Bill Clinton appears on 60 Minutes.

    Tuesday the 22nd
    – Release of Bill Clinton’s autobiography, My Life.

    Friday the 25th
    Fahrenheit 9/11 opens at movie theaters nationwide.

    NOTE: All times and days are subject to last second revision!

  2. J.Scott Barnard Avatar

    As to AIDS:

    White House budget documents from the 1980s show that Reagan proposed at least $2.79 billion for AIDS research, education and treatment. In 1998, the Congressional Research Service’s Judith Johnson reported that the administration spent $5.727 billion on HIV/AIDS from 1982 to 1989, with average AIDS outlays growing a generous 128.92 percent a year.

    …no later than Sept. 17, 1985, Reagan told reporters, “[I]ncluding what we have in the budget for ’86, it will amount to over a half a billion dollars that we have provided for research on AIDS . . . Yes, there’s no question about the seriousness of this and the need to find an answer.”

    –s

  3. J.Scott Barnard Avatar

    And if you read the transcript of the Clinton painting unveiling at the Whitehouse, you’ll see how gracious the current President was, complimenting Clinton. You should learn something from that.

    Yours are a bitter post and a bitter comment from two folks who should know better.

    Reactionaries, the two of you. Pathetic. –s

  4. Andy Avatar
    Andy

    Reagan could have chosen to end the homophobic rhetoric that flowed from so many in his administration. Dr. C. Everett Koop, Reagan’s surgeon general, has said that because of “intradepartmental politics” he was cut out of all AIDS discussions for the first five years of the Reagan administration. The reason, he explained, was “because transmission of AIDS was understood to be primarily in the homosexual population and in those who abused intravenous drugs.” The president’s advisers, Koop said, “took the stand, ‘They are only getting what they justly deserve.’ “

  5. Tim Z. Avatar

    Before this thread goes off into the “Andymatic Attic”, I would like to draw attention to one of the more interesting comments made at the Reagan funeral.

    This is what Reagan’s son, Ronald P. Reagan said as reported in The Baltimore Sun:
    http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bal-te.reagan12jun12,0,2556931.story?coll=bal-home-headlines
    He said his father was “a deeply, unabashedly religious man, but he never made the fatal mistake of so many politicians, wearing his religious faith on his sleeve to gain political advantage.”

    Wonder who Ron may have been talking about? lol
    BTW, thanks to Byron at BOR for noting this.