Nancy Reagan: History’s Handmaiden

America’s Widow® In Myth & Legend    

What can’t we recall about Eternal Former First Lady Nancy Reagan?

A chronicle of her death foretold!

Barack Obama’s shocking reference to Nancy’s astrology interests.

How Nancy pioneered fashion grifting, clearing the path for Sarah Palin.

With the Reagan Library running out of things to say, Nancy came to the rescue with a show about the many fancy dresses she somehow acquired during her Washington years.

Nancy’s Sacramento Legacy: California’s homeless Governors.

How the Reagan Library, Nancy Reagan Impresario, managed to bring cult religion to a 9/11 memorial.

When Nancy paused from Reagan monument unveiling to pile up more cash for the Reagan Library, the most grotesquely overstuffed of our nation’s presidential mausoleums.

That time Nancy teamed up with a noted Congressional whorehound to get Ronnie’s statue into the Capitol building on the double.

When she worked to squeeze out naysayers, or anyone independent, from the Reagan centennial Commission.

How the Reagan Library found room for Nancy’s dresses, notes from Ronnie and a god damn Boeing 707, but somehow can’t cover Iran-Contra because it lacks “freshness.”

Her Saudi diamond trove.

How love of her life Ronald Reagan was bonking Doris Day in the runup to marrying a pregnant Nancy.

That time “Just Say No” nostalgia failed to put John McCain over the top.

When they photo shopped Nancy’s head  into the dedication of the Reagan aircraft carrier. 

 

When the Reagan Library lost all that stuff.

                  What’s your favorite #NancyMemory?

 

 

 

 

Boris Silly

Liberty Triumphant Over A Dead Cow?  Treasures From The Yeltsin Center  yeltsin dead cow

The New York Times reports another outbreak of American style presidentialish-ness, this time in the wilds of Russia.

The Boris Yeltsin Presidential Center looms over Yekaterinburg, where young Boris began his climb of the greasy Communist pole.  His previous boosts to local history  include destroying  the building where the Bolsheviks killed the Russian royal family.

Boris is going to get the full American cheese plate, with stirring versions of his “compelling personal story” and a reproduction of his tank-standing posture in the events leading up to the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Tanks for the Memories  tank

 

Tank-adjacent events apparently not to be marked include his killing hundreds while shelling the Parliament which had impeached him. parliamentshelling  Americans still basking in the afterglow of Saint Ronnie’s miracle victory over Communism may not recall that in the aftermath of  Parliament’s defeat Yeltsin rewrote the constitution removing any limits on Presidential power, enjoyed two genocidal wars in Chechnya and elevated the obscure Vladimir Putin to greatness.  While looting the economy.

Visitors will thrill to a recreation [“not a replica” the Times stresses] of his presidential office, featuring the actual furniture.

 

 

Guess Who’s Coming To Free Mandela?

Surprise!  reaganthatcherdance_pic

The wonder-working ways of Ronald Reagan never cease to amaze, but this one’s really quite something:

Reagan Freed Mandela!

Or so one right-wing crank would have you believe.

“After eight years of Ronald Reagan’s policies of “constructive engagement” that worked to prepare the volatile nation to peacefully embrace true self rule, apartheid fell.”

This is glorious news.  Most of the Nelson Mandela tributes flooding all media have a moment when they pause to educate the youngsters, gently breaking it to them that not everybody was on board with the ANC’s struggle against Apartheid .

And Reagan’s halo may have been diminished by reminders of what he actually did in this era – align with South Africa to prop up messianic witch burner Jonas Savimbi in Angola, put the ANC on the State Department’s terrorist list, all the while criticising Apartheid  [mildly] while disparaging its opponents, and resisting any action to do anything about it.

Chummy!  Reagansavimbi

The ever ongoing effort to prove Reagan’s saintly mastery of all things can never stop, lest a crack appear in the facade. Hordes of Gipperitists mobilized to brush off the threat posed by “The Butler” film, and racist actions and associates are cleaned up daily.

But this time at least it all had a happy ending:

“Nelson Mandela proved himself more than deserving of the opportunity Ronald Reagan and others had given him and his reborn nation.”

Beats of No Nation

 

Hunger Gains: Shoutie Hack America’s Only Chance For Solid Meal

 

“there is such a hunger for a Chris Christie” eats

Not content with his supporting role in foisting the Cult of Jobs upon the masses, Washington Wise Man Walter Isaacson has identified a frightening new need in America.

In a classic of false equivalence even handedness, Isaacson cries out from our present morass of the Democrats – very much to the left and the Republicans – very much to the right,” grasping the substantial presence of Chris Christie as our democracy’s only sign of hope.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ronald Reagan Really Racist?

Four Telling The Defense         
   
Your Washington Post op/ed page outdid itself this past Sunday, cementing its role as the home for thoughtful conservative refutations of arguments never seen in the Post.
This week four clowns identified as “Ronald Reagan historians” went on at great length, trying to refute accusations of Reagan’s racism found in contemporary cinema classic “The Butler.”
The Charge: Reagan’s enthusiasm for South Africa’s aparthied regime reflected something other than fear Castro’s armies would reach the Cape of Good Hope.  Here’s where the Right’s frenzied creation of “facts” on the ground and in their own minds really earn the honoraria.  The Right’s dense layers of hackery, resident scholarship and dead horse beating pay off in the form of robot armies available for instant mobilization.
Your Voices of Outrage:
                                            Steven F. Hayward  Haywardreagan
From his climate denialist American Enterprise institute day job, Hayward sallies forth to write Reagan books and muse in the pages of the Weekly Standard about all things climate and  Churchillian.   Churchill is the giveaway: Imperial Nostalgia is self explaining.
                                           Paul Kengor  kengorreagan
The author of  “What Bush and Moses Have in Common” flirted with birthers while promoting his book “The Communist,”  explaining Obama’s evil as stemming from youthful consorting with Stalinists.  Kengor emits a steady stream of Reagan-ish tomes, notable even within the genre for their reverent tone. Reagan’s lifeguard duties are analyzed for seeds of greatness, and Reagan administration enthusiasm for Saddam Hussein is blithely minimized, with Kengor taking for gospel somewhat selective memories of our assistance to Saddam’s poison gassing Iranians.
                                           Craig Shirley  shirleyreagan
A fully paid up member of the vast right-wing conspiracy, Shirley has taken to cranking out Reagan bios when not busy with his pr firm Shirley & Banister.  The outfit has repped most right obsessions at some point in their birthing, including fanciful versions of Bill Clinton, John Kerry, and Barack Obama’s biographies, as well as premier Nixon apologist and renaissance man Ben Stein.  The Clinton book was authored by former FBI agent and serial fantisist Gary Aldrich, currently  “President & Founder” of the Patrick Henry Center for Individual Liberty.  Shirley serves on the advisory board, with the Board itself chaired by disgraced yet strangely buoyant Reagan henchman Ed Meese.
                                           Kiron K. Skinner  skinnerreagan
Skinner’s career has been dedicated  pummeling the reading public with endless Reagan mix tapes, repackaging the man’s every scribble for posterity.  But prolonged exposure to Reagan’s Own Hand, Path, Stories, and Voice tends to reinforce the negative images she hoped to overturn.  
Casual indifference to fascists? Sure!  Reagan’s radio scripts reveal a highly relaxed view of car bomb assassination in the streets of Washington.  When Pinochet’s men killed Chile’s former foreign minister in 1976, Reagan mused over “what appeared to be the murder of a leftist by someone on the right “, but swiftly moved to pleading for bringing back the House Un-American Activities Committee.
An inevitable point in Skinner’s Reagan excuse making  comes when she coquettishly informs us that ” I happen to be black,” ergo Reagan cannot be racist. A less intimate version of the Jack “he showered with them” Kemp clowning.
We’ve been through these hijinks before, with many of the same clowns explaining away Reagan’s ties to racist former States Rights Democrats transmogrified into Republicans.       Â