"Now That Reagan's In the Ground, We Can Crap On His Grave!"

I swear the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's opinion page is going to give me an aneurysm one of these days. They've already begun the assault on Ronald Reagan's memory. Allow me to analyze the sentiment of the past few days.

First, we have some cute editorial cartoons by resident Ted Rall wannabe, Rob Rogers:

From June 12: Show that straw man who's in charge, Bobby!!!

From Today: This is so very wrong on so many levels.

Are you feeling the rage yet? If not, then join me in the extended entry, where I'll analyze the brilliant letters to the editor of the past couple days.

Let's start with the letters from Monday. There are too many to do full fiskings, so I'll just be excerpting these, but that's why we have hyperlinks. Anyway, let's get started:

Back to the ranch

The same local and national corporate media offering faux mea culpas over their obsequious and disgraceful role as pre-Iraq war White House press-release conveyor belts now attempt to resurrect and revise the reactionary presidency of Ronald Reagan.

Hmmm...let's do a meme count: We've got "corporate media," "White House mouthpieces," "March to War™," "Extreme right-wing president..." Yep, the gang's all here. Holy crap, these people are idiots.

Reaganomics, Star Wars, AIDS, Salvadorean death squads, PATCO union-busting, welfare queens and ketchup as vegetable, among countless others, still make one wince in recalling them.

I love the implication within this delusional screed that AIDS was Reagan's fault.

In retrospect, it appears that Reaganism marked the first societywide assault on everything decent and progressive from the New Deal/Great Society covenant between government and citizens by extreme right-wing economic and social forces.

There's the "progressive vs. extreme right" meme. You people don't even know what you're saying anymore, do you?

After a couple more paragraphs of attempted Bush comparisons, it ends with this line:

...come November, Americans will let the world know that we're fed up with government on horseback. Power to the people.

"Power to the people." I love the irony of lefties saying that, considering their party wants to take power away from the people.

BRING ME THE NEXT LETTER!!!!

...Oh, wait, there's nobody else here. Dang it, I knew these things were killing my brain cells. Well, now that it's too late to save 'em...

More fitting tribute

There's been a lot of talk recently about putting Ronald Reagan's picture on the $10 bill or on the dime. I have a better idea: Let's put his picture on the $1,000 bill. After all, during Mr. Reagan's administration, the percentage of the wealth held by the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans grew by 5 percent.

The income in most other brackets, when adjusted for inflation, either was stagnant or dropped. It would therefore be fitting to put his picture on the bill that would most likely be used by those Americans he helped the most.

Hey, it's our old friend, "The Wealthiest 1%!" It's amazing how similar the criticisms of Reagan and Bush are. It's almost like the left just applies them to any Republican president. Interesting.

That was the whole letter, actually. Let's move on to today's, which are a lot more, as liberals would say, "mean-spirited:"

It doesn't work

Now that Ronald Reagan has been laid to rest, can we please lay to rest the lie that is supply-side (a k a "voodoo") economics?

That's the entire letter. Just one sentence. Brilliant. Now, being the economic illiterate that I am, I can't say whether or not this is true, but still...one friggin' sentence? Put some effort into it, you morons! What else do we have here?

Reagan reality

At last, someone like John Nichols had the courage, in the face of all the hype, to tell it like it is about Ronald Reagan ("Reagan's Politics of Passion," June 9): a B-class actor and opportunist who shed his Democratic background to get Republican backing for his run for the governorship of California and beyond.

You say that like it's a bad thing to become a Republican. I guess that's what you wanted. After all, us Republicans are eeeeeeeevil. We will assimilate you all!

His record as president was dismal at best and the bit about his causing the demise of the Soviet Union is baloney. The Soviet Union was ready to collapse of its own weight when Reagan took office.

I've heard that so many times in the past week that all I see now is "blah blah blah I'm a liberal f**ktard blah blah blah Communism is good blah blah blah Ronnie Raygun blah blah."

Running up the deficit to enlarge our armed forces was completely unnecessary and dealt our economy a body blow that the first George Bush did not survive.

Yeah, that's why the economy was doing great until 9/11. Idiot.

Last letter. Finally:

More Reagan pap

How long had you had your "Reagan is dead" editorial set in type, ready to print? Alzheimer's disease took him long ago, and you must have known for years that his body would inevitably go to join his brain -- but still you had nothing more incisive with which to end your text than "history will say incontrovertibly that [the Reagan presidency] changed the country and the world" ("Reagan's Reach: An American President With an Enduring Impact," June 7). What pap.

Allow me to translate: "I'm so blinded by my ideological hatred of all things conservative that I can't even accept the idea that dead people deserve to be respected for at least a week before everyone sh*ts on their memory." There.

Consider the bankrupting of Russian Communism and the wonderful changes in Eastern Europe, yes -- but be fair. Consider the 1983 mission to Iraq, headed by Donald Rumsfeld, in which Reagan offered weapons and support to Saddam Hussein -- already well-known as a torturer -- and became complicit in the crimes of Saddam against the Iraqi people.

Here we go again with the "we created Saddam" BS. It's called "choosing the lesser of two evils." And I'm willing to bet you're still against the war that ultimately took him out of power.

Consider the hundreds of thousands worldwide who have been infected by the AIDS virus because the Reagan administration found forthright approaches to the control of sexually transmitted disease too distasteful to endorse, offering "Just Say No" instead of condoms. Those are part of the Reagan legacy, too.

This is still my favorite smear against Reagan. I mean, how dumb do you have to be?

SCIENTIST: We've discovered that a new virus called AIDS is spreading throughout the world.

IDIOT: What causes it?

SCIENTIST: Well, we think it's sexually transmitted. Gays seem to be affected a lot more for some reason.

IDIOT: Wait a minute...I'm gay! How do I avoid this horrible disease?

SCIENTIST: For one thing, you could cut down on the @ssf**king.

IDIOT: What? You homophobe! How dare you! I'm going to continue putting myself in danger because it feels good, and then when I'm dying, I'll blame you and Reagan for not curing AIDS in time!

Yeah, that was crude. I don't care. People who don't take responsiblity for their actions make me want to do violent things to them.

Make a list and draw a balance, please. "De mortuis nil nisi bonum" has no place in honest journalism.

Dang it, when Clinton dies, how many people will be upset about references to his blowjobs? I bet it will be these people. In any case, uh...YOU'RE ALLOWED TO RESPECT THE F**KING DEAD, ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU'RE DEALING WITH A FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT.

It's times like these I'm actually glad I don't know where the key to the gun cabinet is.

Posted by CD on June 15, 2004 06:03 PM
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