| should the country not wait until the body is cold and we've had time to think before beatification? let's give it ten years or more--even mother teresa was no mother teresa.
each time i hear that reagan was a "great communicator" i think only of that droning monotone which i alone seemed to hear, and those ****ing index cards. much of reagan's persona and intellectual grasp was mediocre, at its absolute best. he was not a jefferson or lincoln, or even a roosevelt. we should not act in haste to put reagan's name or likeness on currency, monuments or (shudder) public schools (why can't the airport suffice, for now?).
when they have so recently departed, it is difficult to speak or think ill of the dead, especially of one who has suffered so long with so terrible an illness. but there is much to consider in ronald reagan's dubious legacy of (then) record deficits, rosy optimism, and his unwavering denial in the face of what others might recognize as facts. the country should consider, in totality, reagan's reactions and actions regarding aids, poverty, homelessness, "freedom fighters," arms for hostages, the improbable functionality and hideous expense of a "star wars" missile defense system and so on, before pasting his cheesy old mug onto so many multi-colored and watermarked greenbacks.
there is a wide gulch between the myth ("ended the cold war," "america's most popular president") and the man (slept a lot, forgetful), as time (and surely future unauthorized biographies, gutter tabloids and "docu-dramas") will further reveal. right now even his nemeses are in praise of one who was (as everyone secretly knows) largely the rightist's pitchman stuffed into a shirt and positioned in front of a teleprompter--a virtual automaton. as gore vidal observed, many years before reagan's death, our fortieth president is "a triumph of the embalmer's art." | |
