Timothy Noah of Slate asks in the wake of The Reagans fiasco if we recall that Reagan's "rather extreme mental and emotional detachment were at the time noted not only by his critics but by many of his political allies." For those of you who are too young to remember his presidency well, check out the quotes from his advisers' memoirs in the column...

Do you guys ever get the feeling we're debating the same things over and over and over again? I mean, Monday most of you guys hated President Bush and President Reagan. Now it's Thursday and you guys still hate President Bush and you still hate President Reagan. I suspect if we check back Tuesday things will not have changed significantly. Shall we start a "Water is Wet" thread to figure out that issue once and for all? Leftists are so boring.

Nancy's astrologist told me William would say that.

Do you ever get the feeling that William1865 never addresses the issue at hand but instantly trots out "leftists are boring" and other such evasions, as if this is the 1980's Comedy Store and we're supposed to be one-upping Robin Williams on open mike night?

Yeah, me too.

And here's a pretty good eviceration of the whole bio-pic thing. Short version: The Jessica Lynch thing? A total, complete pack of lies. The Elizabeth Smart thing? They don't mention her Mormonism, which is important to the context of the story.

Hey William

If we're so boring feel free to leave and never come back again, again.

Im sure there's an Ann Coulter or Pat Robertson board that would be tons 'o laughs.

I feel that when they make a bio- pic it should be as accurate as possible = whether its a Reagan story or in the someday to come Hillary Clinton story. Its wrong to mislead people in regard to historical events,IMHO. Why isn't it a matter of pride to get the story right? Why wasn't it apparent that Mr. Streisand wouldn't do a fair job with this? Would you want right wingers doing a Clinton bio? :confused:

This is what burns your commies so much, Ray-Gun will go down in HISTORY as one of the GREATEST presidents of all time... see, doesnt that burn you up? Winning the cold war... ect ect ect.

Your boi spent most of his last term trying to cement himself as one of the greatest ever.. yet, 10 years from now he'll only be remembered for getting a little whoopie in the office when he should have been working.

Hence, america is not intrested in seeing some made up stories about a great president who is currently suffering and waiting to die...

Ah, The Big Lie. Gorbachev initiating glasnost had more to do with that than the Cracked Actor did. If the Soviet Union hadn't collapsed when it did, this country might have "voodoo economics" itself in to financial ruin.

And PF, let's check back in 20-30 years about how history views Ronnie Raygun. He may get a free pass now because of his condition, but just as Kennedy (rightly) gets raked over the coals for his missteps after 20 or so years of "The American Camelot" hagiography, so too will Reagan be seen as the pleasant, addled front man for some really not-nice people.

I think Clinton is in great health, I hardly think he's "waiting to die"

Amazing things happened in America during the reign of the B-movie actor: huge budget deficits, record-breaking unemployment, AIDS, the assassination of 230+ US troops in Beirut, massive influx of the mentally ill onto the streets, and the release of Back to the Future movies.

I mention the latter only for the edification of William and PF: these movies should serve as a primer for those of you who insist on re-writing history for the sake of a happy ending.

No doubt you've seen them.

Jim, for the record, I am not one who's in favor of the Smart or Lynch broadcasts. Why are these even necessary? Whether they contain 100% factual material or 50% or 0%, I just don't think they're necessary TV material.

Are we happy that Lynch was saved? Of course. Are we elated Elizabeth Smart came back alive? Of course. Who isn't? But is it necessary to blow these things out of proportion, to dramatize them in such a way that people begin to be turned off by the gladd happenings of the event? I don't think so.

We're overdoing this Lynch as hero thing (is she really a "hero," though?), and we're overdoing the Smart story.

Enough already!

BTW, how long till the Scott Pederson story comes to television? Jeesh!

Ratings. I plan to drink heavily that night.

Edited to add:

hit it, boys

It's from the album "Overnight Sensation." The guy used to drive me up the wall. Then, one night, everything came together. I was in the right mood when the last song on the the album came on, "Montana." It quickly became my favorite Zappa tune. They ought to make it the state song. Maybe they did.

[ November 06, 2003, 05:31 PM: Message edited by: twin58 ]

Great album. Not as good as Absolutely Free or We're Only In It For The Money, but still.

Somehow, I doubt that Shoshana Johnson will be watching the Jessica Lynch biopic.

Look, Shoshana Johnson is an overweight, black single mother, none of which fit into the pre-set American media categories for elevation to sainthood (unless she managed to kill Saddam singlehandedly), so no one (except a lot of black people and women) are rushing out to call her a hero, though she too survived the horrific ambush, was badly wounded and taken captive, and now has two badly damaged legs. I think she should take up her cause with Oprah--that's always a quick route to success of some kind. It worked for all those authors, and for Arnie!

The media, especially the mosquitos in the TV world, are money hungry, and they see instant $$ in trumping up the stories of Jessica Lynch, who was canonized before she even got off the gurney by the military and its Hollyfreakazoid advisors, and the same is true of Elizabeth Smart (young, blonde, formerly pure), except that her religion is a major part of what went down with her, so they'll just keep that bit out of the script.

I think they could easily have told the Raygun story without all the BS. The man had a few high points, but there were numerous low ones, and all in all, he was a so-so president. Why don't the GOPers elevate a truly decent guy like Dwight D. Eisenhower? I know Nixon, Ford, HW and Harding, etc. are slim pickens, but come on, you got Lincoln and TR in your column!

Back to Raygun, though--I'll never forget that one of his earliest campaign stops in 1979 was at the Nashoba County Fair in Mississippi (not far from where Schwerner, Cheney and Goodman were assassinated by Southern racists) and babbled on about "states' rights," a clear sign of where he was coming from and heading. Yeah, Ronnie, take it on the chin--the time will come when your second-rate acting and presidenting will get their due.

What about a biopic on Calvin Coolidge? Or Grover Cleveland? Or Benjamin Harrison? Or Martin Van Buren? Do most Americans even have a clue as to who they are?

[ November 06, 2003, 08:57 PM: Message edited by: fantomas ]

No, I like reminding people of how boring they are, just in case they forget.

Actually, water is wet only because we tell ourselves it is wet and we know what non-wet is like. If you lived under water your entire life and had never experienced life on a beach, how would you know water is wet? It is the only life you have ever known, so, since you had never experienced dry, you wouldn't realize that water is wet. Now, who says lefties are boring?

[ November 07, 2003, 06:14 AM: Message edited by: bobby78751 ]

But I did address the issue at hand. The issue at hand is lefties are filled with this psychotic hatred for President Reagan and President Bush and should probably be visiting their therapists rather than internet discussion boards. My take on this issue is that we've been here and done this. The sun's hot, snakes have no legs, the left hates President Reagan, blah-blah-blah. It's an established fact that is hardly worth debating.

Great, thanks.

[ November 07, 2003, 06:15 AM: Message edited by: William1865 ]

Nothing beats ignoring the subject, huh? Rather than addressing Reagan's former employees painting him as an "amiable dunce" -- they musta been Soviet agents, right? -- the two asses just bray on...

Principled conservatives should make a laudatory one. Clinton completed more of Reagan's agenda than Poppy Bush, in true DLC style.

In Williams right wing-nut bizarro world dissent = "psychotic hatred".

Much has been made of the quote, "Those that live in sin shall die in sin." No, Reagan never said that, publicly at least. But he did say things such as, "Maybe the Lord brought down this plague," meaning AIDS, because "illicit sex is against the Ten Commandments." Not really that different, is it? He's also quite misinformed, considering there's nothing about sex (besides adultery) in the Ten Commandments.

Bullshit. See: The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, ca. 1992-2000. The sheer hatred that the VRWC had for that sleazy snake-oil salesman was surreal. It was the only reason I voted for him in 1996; if your fellow travellers on the right had just shut. the. f**k. up. he would have been gone after one term. Welcome to my political life 1992-2000 with you rightists and Clinton. I bet somewhere on the Internet, some wingnut blamed the recent solar flares on him or his wife. Now THAT'S boring.

And when that freak Grover Norquist has campaigns to get Ronnie Raygun chiseled in to Mount Rushmore and to have every county in the country name something after him--hello Ronald Reagan Federal Building next door to here--then I don't see why we lefties can't say "Hey, the man had a horrible record as a President, why are turning him in to a saint?". It's like this one person wrote, they're going to turn him in to Lenin, preserved so that the faithful can file past him, tears welling up as they pay their last respects to The Great Man.

[ November 07, 2003, 08:44 AM: Message edited by: Jim Allen ]

I for one do not "hate" Reagan - I sympathize with his family as they have to watch him suffer with that horrible disease, and I have often said I admired him much more than his bland and useless successor (part of a bland and useless family IMHO, so the second part of your statement may be true), because at least Reagan had something he believed in. I may have thought his presidency was much more negative than his acolytes do (he certainly doesn't need my airport and a building and a frigging carrier named after him) but that is because I disagree strongly with his politics, and found his economic policies wrong-headed.

He did, however, end up hastening the end of the Cold War, by bankrupting the USSR before he could bankrupt the US, but I believe the ends did not necessarily justify the means. The risks he took with the entire planet during the arms build up were not justified, IMHO, but I can't deny the results (remember, when old-timers like me were in high school in the 80s, more than 1/2 of us believed we would see catastrophic nuclear war in our lifetimes).

Certainly the comparison to BushI could not be clearer - GHWB was someone who wanted to be president, but didn't know why, and had no plan at all when he got into office. Reagan went in and did a lot, although I believe a lot of the damage he caused was avoidable - he did stick by his guns and fulfill most of his promises.

Doom, Bush I did at least know that Reagan's fill-the-rich-folks' pockets plan was "voodoo economics," as he called it in his early 1980 debate with RR. Bush II knows it too, but it's part of the oligarchical plan the Corporate Class chose him to implement.

Ha! A Google search of "Clinton solar flares" brought this up: Perfect.

[ November 07, 2003, 08:48 AM: Message edited by: Jim Allen ]

Click on the link, scroll down a bit for...

66 Things to Think About When Flying Into Reagan National Airport

But what does that have to do with the left's hatred of Reagan? Is there some quota system by which lefties get to hate an ex-President as much as the righties get to hate Clinton. And yes, I believe the right's hatred of Clinton blinded them to political realities and opportunities that had to be accepted/seized in order for Clinton to be defeated. The right hurled so many accusations of wrongdoing against the guy that the legitimate ones got lost in the shuffle and noise. (I don't agree with Raze that any critique of the Clinton presidency is somehow invalid because he's no longer in office.) At any rate, I think the Dems/lefties are making the same mistake with W.

[quote]Jim Allen:
Ha! A Google search of \"Clinton solar flares\" brought this up: [QUOTE]NEW SOLAR FLARE SHOCK[/quote]Jim, you get that this is a joke, don't you? You said in an earlier post you suspected you could find right-wingers blaming Clinton for the solar flares, and then you post this. Do you get your own joke? Just making sure...

Yes.
I'd disagree, only in the sense that the left's intense dislike for the Faux President is based on a) the fact that he's only at 1600 PA Ave. because he and his gang stole the election and well documented opposition to his policies. The Clinton thing was just bizarre to me. I mean, I knew even before I cast my ballot in 1992 that he was a sleazy used-car salesman of the worst sort. Anyone whose goal in life from the time they're pre-pubescent is to be President is instantly suspect in my book. But after 12 years of Reagan/Pappy, I would have voted for anyone the Democrats put up that had a pulse. Anyone. It seemed to me that the VRWC's objection to him was a generation-gap thing, that Clinton represented what they thought was the 60's generation finally coming to power and they just hated that. It's like Reagan for me: he represented a repudiation of all the hippie ideals I had/have, what with his intentional evocation of the *shudder* 50's */shudder* But he was a BAD president in my book. Joe's link just scrapes the surface of why I think that. Bush The Elder? He was just lame, nothing particularly awful, just in over his head. He was better meeting up with Iranians in Paris to trade arms for the Contras.

Yes, '65, I. got. it. about the solar flares, I looked for the snarkiest example I could find. Your "Lefties have no sense of humor"? Now that's really mind-numbingly boring. We got it the first 800 times you mentioned it.

[ November 07, 2003, 09:34 AM: Message edited by: Jim Allen ]

"He has the ability to make statements that are so far outside the parameters of logic that they leave you speechless"

"My parents have never gone for simple, state-of-the-art lies. They weave bizarre, incredulous tales and stick by them with fierce determination."

Patti Davis, Ronald Reagans daughter

Oh, the "blind hatred"

Slate "lefty," hilarious. They publish a whole range of political writers, including I'm-voting-for-W zealot Chris Hitchens, and tear into every Dem prez candidate periodically (and often coherently, which is where they diverge from the babbling nutters here).

But then Reagan and his wife were adulterers; actually Nancy was a fornicator too, having been known for the quality of blow jobs she gave as a single young actress in Hollywood. But as always, the right-wing fanatics will sweep anything and everything under the rug for their heroes. Like I said, if they're going to canonize anyone, go with Eisenhower. He actually WAS a general with a vision, not plagued by scandal, and a decent Republican who did not destroy the country.

Interestingly, this is not the first time negative coverage of the Reagan's has been censored - when Trivial Pursuit was first marketed in this country (it was invented in Canada), the manufacturer took out only one question:

Q: Just how pregnant was Nancy Davis when she married Ronald Reagan?
A: Two months

They thought Americans would be offended.

I don't mind the right-wing supporting Ronald Reagan at all. That's fine.

But I have a problem with them using their influence to make CBS take the docu-drama off the air.

How many Kennedy family sagas have their been? How many were eliminated?

The right-wingers say they want to protect the legacy of an ill man who cannot defend himself...but who defended a murdered man when Kennedy epics were made?

It sucks that RR has suffered in his later years. It's even worse that his family must deal with it as well.

But karma is karma. He was a heartless SOB while in office:

His behavior during the AIDS onset was cowardly. His attitude towards the homeless, the mentally ill was atrocious.

I'm dumbfounded by the posters on this board that think he was courageous for staring down the Soviet Union when he hardly lifted a finger for his fellow citizens in his own country.

History is going to have a hard time finding the right (no pun intended) place, or grade for Ronald Reagan. It will give him credit for winning the Cold War, and will blame him for losing the AIDS war - an "A" and "F" if you will.

In many ways, Reagan's Presidency was like every one since Truman's - White House scandals, foreign policy driven by the failures of his predecessor, tax cuts (or regulatory revisions resulting in the rich getting richer), recession, deficit spending, and recovery. "C."

Mixed report card indeed.

By the end of his Presidency most Americans did feel better about being Americans (which is something the current occupant of the White House will never inspire), and that the country was better off after Reagan than before - it had been a long time since a President had had that effect. Reagan had the good fortune to rule after a complete disaster - Carter - so in the short term his accomplishments will seem bigger and brighter in comparison.

Hero or villain, saint or scourge, naive idealist or practical realist - "Reagan" is something for everyone.

I'm no fan of Carter's by any means (he started many of the massive Defense boondoggles continued by RR), but he arguably did more to promote Middle East peace than any president since. Carter's presidency came to be defined by the Iranian hostage "crisis," which 1) ended satisfactorily and 2) aside from bruising Uncle Sam's ego, wasn't all that important.

"Complete disaster" is a phrase some of us think fits Reagan more closely, as his reign extinguished much of the compassion that had crept into US policies (domestic and foreign) in the preceding 20 years.

Jimmy Carter's presidency can only be viewed as a complete failure by any reasonable evaluation, any yardstick we might use. I'll spare you the litany of horrors and just say that by 1980 the country was so tired of his 'leadership' that they would vote for the devil himself to replace Carter - and many believe that's exactly what was done.

Bill W., you dismiss the Iranian Hostage "Crisis" as ending "satisfactorily" and only bruising Uncle Sam's ego. Nothing could be further from the truth - our government was paralyzed for more than a year. Many of us will never forget Desert One, and the abject humiliation the United States suffered. American presidents have been dealing with problems created by Iran ever since. If Carter-Zbig & Co. had acted swiftly and effectively (despite the recessions and misery index) they might have won a second term - thus sparing the world Ronald Reagan's presidency.

I will acknowledge Carter's Camp David success - the best bribe a President has made in sometime. I'll take Presidents wasting American tax dollars before wasting American blood any day of the week.

I agree - Carter was an unmitigated disaster as President. He was a nice man in way over his head. The Carter presidency saw the rise of "stagflation," a phenomena never before, or since, seen - that is, inflation and interest rates, usually inversely proportional, rose in unison and at an alarming pace, completely crippling the American economy. To his credit, Carter has been much more effective and respect-worthy in his post-Washington years than he ever was during his Presidency.

Stagflation was not a result of the Carter presidency, it was a result of the second arab oil embargo in 1979, which raised the price of a necessary supply so high it had drastic effects on the economy.

As for the hostage crisis, Carter tried to walk a fine line between military action and dimplomacy that ultimately failed, and it took down his presidency, which, eventually, was what the Iranian government wanted. Remember they refused to even begin negotiations until after he lost the election (and if you believe the really wacky conspiracy theories, it was Bush Sr. who convinced them to wait), and in the end all they got were their own funds, which we had frozen. Contrast that to the arms-for-hostages deal.

Carter is a truly wonderful person who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but the country was far more divided than you might realize. He only beat Ford by a few hundred thousand votes, and 57 electoral votes, then lost to Reagan by about 8 million votes - although the electoral vote was far more lopsided.

If "Stagflation" was a direct result of the "Second Arab Oil Embargo" then Carter again deserves the blame. The "Second Arab Oil Embargo" was a result of Carter banning imports of Iranian oil to the United States - in response to the Hostage Crisis. Further proof that the Hostage Crisis was indeed much more than a 'bruise."

Carter's walking of a "fine line of military action and diplomacy that ultimately failed" is very nice spin for saying he failed in handling the most significant foreign policy challenge that faced the country since the pull-out from Vietnam. I agree CPT Doom it was this crisis more than any single event that cost Carter his Presidency.

Jimmy Carter does seem to come across as a nice man. His activities since being tossed out of office have truly helped many people. Carter has used his fame as a former President to do good - rather than to just putt well.

The fate, I am afraid, of the engineer-turned-president in the 20th century.

http://66.241.240.127/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.c...t=000792#000007

You're kinda making my point for me. National \"humiliation\" was, in this case, based on macho bullshit. (And let's see if \"Desert One\" -- can you sense the mythologizing indicated by our knowing the name? -- outlasts the 'copter disasters in Iraq because of which party was in the White House.)

The taking of 52 people didn't have to \"paralyze\" the US government. The nightly drumbeat of Ted Koppel's show -- started as \"America Held Hostage\"!!! -- helped transform the hostage-taking into the threatened castration of Uncle Sam.

Seems contradictory. I assume the swift action would've been a military one, killing some (or all?) of the hostages? When Carter's approach ultimately rescued all of them? Perhaps the whole "crisis" was karmic payback for us propping up the Shah all those years.

Comparing Carter to Hoover is indeed appropriate. Hoover, and Carter were both fairly competent men that let the events of their day capture them - events they seemed only able to react to - being ineffectual in their use of the power of the Office they held.

_________________________________________________

Originally posted by Undercenter:
... the Iranian Hostage "Crisis" ...paralyzed [the US] for more than a year. Many of us will never forget Desert One, and the abject humiliation the United States suffered.

Comment by Bill W:

You're kinda making my point for me. National "humiliation" was, in this case, based on macho bullshit. (And let's see if "Desert One" -- can you sense the mythologizing indicated by our knowing the name? -- outlasts the 'copter disasters in Iraq because of which party was in the White House.)
____________
____________
I'm not making your point at all. I thought your point was that the Iranian Hostage Crisis was overblown, essentially a "bruise" on an over-inflated Yankee Imperialist ego. Everything I written proves that it was so much more than the dismissive footnote your comments imply. The Hostage Crisis brought down a President - that in and of itself means that it is significant in our history. Period.

The American lives currently being lost in Iraq are tragic because they're being wasted in this oil soaked Imperialist adventure - and cannot be compared to the honorable men that were trying to free their fellow citizens from Islamic Extremist captivity - a captivity that had the outright support of the Iranian government.
_______________________________________________
Comment by Bill W:

The taking of 52 people didn't have to "paralyze" the US government. The nightly drumbeat of Ted Koppel's show -- started as "America Held Hostage"!!! -- helped transform the hostage-taking into the threatened castration of Uncle Sam.
__________
__________
Again, every counter point you make underscores my thesis that the Hostage Crisis was more than a footnote. The Hostage Crisis - not Ted Koppel’s late night show, paralyzed Carter’s Administration. The fallout from the Hostage Crisis did castrate Uncle Sam's Middle East foreign policy for years, and directly effected the national election in 1980.
___________
Originally posted by Undercenter:
If Carter-Zbig & Co. had acted swiftly and effectively...they might have won a second term..
I'll take Presidents wasting American tax dollars before wasting American blood any day of the week.
------------------------

Comment by Bill W:
Seems contradictory. I assume the swift action would've been a military one, killing some (or all?) of the hostages? When Carter's approach ultimately rescued all of them? Perhaps the whole "crisis" was karmic payback for us propping up the Shah all those years.
--------------------------------------------------
__________
__________
Not contradictory at all. American lives that would have been lost in a rescue of the Hostages would not have been "wasted" - these men would have been true heroes. And who's to say if a Delta Force rescue would have killed any of the Hostages. The men I've known of this caliber are rather effective and significant in character. A better plan for Desert One, and our history, as well as our present, could be radically different.

OK - well then left wingers: stand up next time when they make a salacious movie about JFK.

[ November 18, 2003, 09:36 PM: Message edited by: copman ]

Well isn't that what happened after John Kennedy was killed?People named all kinds of places & things after him. By the way whatever happened to Cape Canaveral-Kennedy-Canaveral. (renamed for Kennedy - then changed back- unk. why) Soon you can start naming stuff after Clinton and Gore and Dianne Feinstein- most every pol gets stuff named after them eventually,don't they?

That doesn't make it right.

I just love the irony of it. The man who didn't like Washington gets our airport named for him -- when it should be Ronald Reagan Los Angeles International Airport (although I for one have always, and will always, call it National).

The man who wanted smaller government gets the largest -- by far -- federal government building in DC named after him: the Ronald Reagan International Trade Center.

But then again maybe irony is lost on the GOP .. Bill Clinton declared the "era of big government is over" -- yet W and his GOP cronies in Congress have put it back in place with huge expenditures and huger deficits and limits on our rights.