I see that Patrick of Patrick's Place was featured recently on AOL People Connections. Good to see. Patrick has one of the more active AOL blogs that deals with political and media issues.
In one of his recent posts, he gave special attention to what a bad boy I was about remembering Ronald Reagan's faults. So go check out his explanation of what a prick I was about the whole thing.
He's too polite to put it that way, of course. He has several posts there about Ronald Reagan's funeral and the issues surrounding it. Check those out, too, while you're there.
Cartoonist Tom Tomorrow was also a bit of a prick about the Reagan Week, too: This Modern World: Reagan McNews 06/15/04. But he draws much better than I do.
4 comments:
I loved the "This Modern World" this week. I would have posted it in my journal, but I had already used a similar one. It's hard to keep a respectful silence when all the news coverage contradicts every memory I have of that time in history!
I think it's self-explanatory why you would post all those counterarguments to the fawning media in general. Respect for the dead is one thing, glossing over serious missteps in the Reagan administration to practically canonize the late President is another.
What's the female equivilent of a prick? On second thought, don't answer that! Whatever the terminology, I was in your corner....I also couldn't stomach the near-deification of Reagan....any more than I can stomach his current incarnation, Dubya....
The female equivalent of a prick? A prickette, maybe? :)
I think all three of the comments reflect my approach, too. Reagan was a person, and I wouldn't think of belittling his family's grief.
But he was also President of the United States and a key leader of the Republican Party. To spend a week remembering only vague images about "optimism" or his cute quips would be to just go with the flow of the trivial way our mainstream media, particularly TV, treats public affairs and public figures.
It will be interesting to see how Nancy Reagan in particularly goes about guarding her late husband's memory now. Her reputation as a dragon lady was probably well deserved. But it's obvious that she loved him, and was always trying to protect his interests and his image.
I see that their son Ron compared Reagan's religious approach to Bush's: "Dad was also a deeply, unabashedly religious man. But he never made the fatal mistake of so many politicians wearing his faith on his sleeve to gain political advantage. True, after he was shot and nearly killed, early in his presidency, he came to believe that God had spared him in order that he might do good. But he accepted that as a responsibility, not a mandate, and there is a profound difference." - Bruce
Post a Comment