Geez, when does the period of mourning for an ex-president end? Ronald Reagan dies on June 5th, now it’s June 14th and I’m still seeing flags at half-staff. Or maybe they’re commemorating Ray Charles.
I could go on about my remembrance of Ronald RayGun, he of Star Wars, Iran-Contra, no-mention-of-AIDS, just say no, and so on. I lived through the Eighties, and I don’t remember such overwhelming love and support for Ronnie. Plenty of us hated him. So much so that Reagan’s approval ratings never did match up to Clinton’s.
But so many other bloggers have done a much better job than I have. I think all I wanted to say about the All-Reagan Love Fest last week is summed up in this cartoon:
Reprinted from www.KirkToons.com
I was reading the Altercation blog, Eric Alterman’s blog on Slate.com. One of his readers made the most excellent point regarding the all-week Reagan coverage:
They expect about 200,000 people to trod past the wooden box allegedly holding St. Ronnie’s remains, an event requiring endless coverage. Just a few weeks ago, a pro-choice rally on the mall drew what was conservatively estimated to be 800,000 participants. One warrants 24/7 coverage. The other barely gets noticed by the networks or the newspapers. Could someone kindly explain this to me?
Yeah, I can explain it to you. It’s that damn liberal media! You know, the liberal media owned by Westinghouse and General Electric and NewsCorp and Disney? Those damn liberals with their endless love and devotion to Ronald Reagan. Of course those damn liberals would never give front page coverage to a pro-choice rally!
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