Friday, June 11, 2004
The Gipper can shut the hell up
I'll probably take a little bit of flack for this one, but I really don't care that much Ronny Reagan died. Chances are, if you are of the same age as me, you shouldn't either.
Why?
Well, most of us really don't remember anything about him. He was out of office by the time we were learning to write cursive. We had no real perception of the end of the Cold War, or what a "Teflon president" was.
He wasn't really a terrific president, but as his nickname implies, his scandals never really stuck to hi B-movie actor smile. I'm sure he was nice enough in person, but all he managed to do in his 8 years was run up a huge debt. The only reason he got props for ending the Cold War is because the USSR was already on its last leg when he was in office, and so he opened talks with it at the last moment possible.
We always talk about what a well-liked president he was. Did you know that Clinton had a higher average approval rating than Reagan did? Clinton also had a higher average approval rating in the last 2 years of his presidency.
Ronald Reagan died a long time ago, when Alzheimer’s began to set in, and he became nothing (I know what it does to people, my grandfather went down with it). Even before then, he did nothing to contribute to society after his presidency, like Carter and occasionally Clinton do. So we really haven't lost anything in this past week, except the ability to think, "Gee, I wonder how Ronnie is doing right now." We always talk about how strong Nancy Reagan is, but I'll give more props to my grandmother any day, who didn't have the wealth and wonder drugs that Nancy did when dealing with her husband.
I'm talking about this because even the British press won't shut up about him, which makes me wonder what sort of hell all of you are going through, not able to receive any real news.
So stop looking back at what you don't remember, and start looking at what's going on right now. The world of 2004 seriously demands you attention, not some old dead fart that you'll forget in a year’s time.
