Reagan remembrances about to peak

Presumably the Reagan adulation will recede quickly after his funeral on Friday.  But while we're still remembering, I'll mention a few items.

Steve Gilliard has a good brief discussion on Why black folks don't remember Reagan with fondness 06/09/04.  One of the symbolic events most cited in this connection is from his 1980 Presidential campaign, when he appeared at the Neshoba County Fair in Philadephia, MS, and made a campaign speech in which he endorsed the concept of "states rights."

There was nothing unusual about his appearing at the Neshoba County Fair, because that is a major political event every year in Mississippi.  A prominent feature of it is speeches by politicians, and it's a big deal in state politics.  But the symbolism of the speech was important, because he used the buzzword-phrase "states rights," which people at the time were more like than now to instantly recognized as the rallying cry of the segregationists.  This was 1980; the public schools in Mississippi were integrated in 1970.  And the city where the Neshoba County Fair is held, Philadelphia, is famous as being the place where three civil rights workers were murdered in 1964.  That particular event is generally credited with being a big factor in galvanizing American opinion against Southern segregation.

I remember reading at the time about Reagan's appearance in a front-page story in the Mississippi Clarke County Tribune.  That paper didn't emphasize the significance of the "states rights" comment, but it jumped out at me immediately.  And I immediately recognized the meaning of his using it in a speech in Philadelphia.

The murderers wound up serving only a few years on a federal charge of violating the victims' civil rights.  The State of Mississippi, its politics at the time corrupt to the bone (which is part of what segregation meant in practice), has never brought murder charges.

But fortunately, there is no statute of limitations on murder.  And Mississippi's Attorney General Jim Hood is seeking now to do so for the first time.

Kevin Drum also cites this incident.  But then he oddly describes a visit to Philadelphia by Michael Dukakis as the Democratic presidential candidate in 1988, and notes that Dukakis didn't particularly emphasize any pro-civil rights themes.  He seems to think this makes the Reagan's 1980 Philadelphia appearance unremarkable.  I think he all-but-completely missed the fact that a candidate appearing in Philadephia is not unusual, because that's where the Neshoba County Fair political event is held.  His assumption that Dukakis' appearance was someone similar is just silly; it sounds like some vapid Republican talking point, actually.

Salon's Eric Boehlert take's a look at the generally fawning coverage of the Reagan legacy by the mainstrem media: Reagan porn 06/11/04.

"I think when somebody dies there's a tendency for the press to view them through rose-colored glasses. It's only polite," says Alex Jones, director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University. "But I think they're doing a great disservice by making this totally positive and uncritical coverage. In fact, Ronald Reagan was a very controversial president, and journalists should be trying to offer something that resembles an honest look back at Reagan's administration." ...

Looking back, former Washington Post political columnist and historian Haynes Johnson says the press, in addition to genuinely liking Reagan as a man, was acutely aware of the charges by conservatives that it had a liberal, unpatriotic bias. And that defensiveness translated into deferential treatment. "The press wanted to bend over backward not to be seen as part of the liberal establishment agenda," says Johnson. "I was conscious of it myself."

Sadly, most of the press corps continues to "bend over backward" to make sure that no one thinks that they have "a liberal, unpatriotic bias."  Of course, the blowhards of Oxycontin radio continue to spew endlessly about the Liberal Press.  Why shouldn't they? They've learned that "ganging the ref" worked for them.

"I'm struck by [the length of] this," Johnson says. "From the time Jack Kennedy took a bullet in the head [on Nov. 22, 1963] until he was buried at Arlington Cemetery -- that was four days of TV coverage. This is a whole week."

Times change, don't they?