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Diet Deficit Delight

Sarah Palin continues rummaging around the Reagan legend cupboard, searching for a usable past.

She fished up a gem in her Thanksgiving day ramblings, quoting the voice from beyond that

“all great change in America begins at the dinner table.”

What change did the master of folksy smarm propose back in those halcyon days?

His salute to domestic furniture’s decisive role immediately preceded a speech section where Reagan sought to mobilize today’s youth, calling on them to fink out their parents if insufficiently “American.”

“…If your parents haven’t been teaching you what it means to be an American, let ’em know and nail ’em on it“

What one American did to the American diet is clear: Reagan helped further degrade our already tenuous relation of food to nutrition.

The legend is true: Reagan’s administration tried to pass off delicious corn syrupy ketchup as a vegetable until laughed out of town. But they also killed studies of American’s diets, and abolished the office issuing diet and nutrition guidelines.

And Reagan was of course the Father of Frozen Food Day.

Bold New Platform       

George W. Bush has announced exciting new plans for his Presidential Library, spraying the horizon with many, many numbered lists of intentions, notions and fanciful ideas.

Just what will his legacy be all about?

The Bush Library will continue Bush’s on-going worldwide effort to devalue words by grasping them tightly to himself:

Join The Freedom Registry for only $50!

In the spirit of the age, the Bush Library hopes to mobilize the sinister power of social networks through its Member Advocates. But if the roaring success of the Bush administration alumni blog is an indicator, Face-book will remain fairly Bush-free.

The Bush Library web site is doing its part to erase the Kennedy assassination stain from local consciousness, offering a map of “Dallas Landmarks” with Dealey Plaza unmarked.

Not From Around Here?

We’ll be seeing a lot more of Bush’s attempts to tie himself to great “dissidents,” hiring a guy from Columbia whose “One Million Voices Against FARC” Face-book page harnesses the power of the web against the plucky jungle fighters by presenting seven [7] photos, one of Cheney and two of them of Bush.

Something called ” The Freedom Collection of the Bush Institute’s Oral History Project” looms, in which “the Institute will bring together dissidents who are participating in the Freedom House oral history project. They will share their experiences and promote best practices.”

Not to be confused with the just announced “George W. Bush Oral History Project,” by the University of Virginia’s Miller Center.

 Friendly Ghosts

What sort of probing questions might the Miller-narrians ask?

Lets take a loving look back at the Reagan Administration, the Millerists’ hard hitting interview with Caspar Weinberger.

What did they chat about?

The interviewer glides lightly over Iran-Contra, and asks Weinberger no questions about hiding documents in the Library of Congress, lying about it to the Special Prosecuter, his indictment, or his pardon by George H.W.Bush on eve of trial.

“Weinberger’s notes proved to be an invaluable contemporaneous record of the views and activities of the highest officials regarding those sales. They revealed, among other things, that contrary to his sworn testimony, Weinberger knew in advance that U.S. arms were to be shipped to Israel in November 1985 without Congressional notification, in an effort to obtain the release of U.S. hostages, and that Israel expected the United States to replenish the weapons Israel shipped to Iran. Weinberger’s notes also disclosed that, contrary to his sworn testimony, he knew that Saudi Arabia was secretly providing $25 million in assistance to the contras during a ban on U.S. aid.“

Lame or not, the Miller Center best get going,  given some Bush administration figures shall we say slippery memories.

Hallowed Be Thy Name

Having already made Ronald Reagan the equivalent of  Roman emperor, Republicans may go the next logical step and proclaim him a god.

A resolution proposed for the Republican National Committee Winter Meeting attempts to tie Republican candidates to a series of  ten conditions.  Reagan’s name is evoked five times in his role as prophet, role-model and seer, with pols instructed to agree or be gone.

Parties have a long history of demarcating the in and the out, with mixed outcomes.

Lenin laid down the law in the Communist International with “The Twenty One Conditions.”

  Results were mixed.  

Vanity Plot?               

Anxious to display something, anything which had touched the great man for the Lincoln Bicentennial, in 2007 the Kentucky Historical Society spent $19,000 on a pair of earrings which may, or may not, have belonged to Lincoln’s wife.

The earrings history is sketchy. Basically, it’s a letter from a guy who once owned them, saying he was sure they are the real deal, he just wasn’t sure how.

The scandel has allowed Illinois, Kentucky’s sworn enemy in the Lincoln-sphere, to sneer.

“‘That’s not much of a provenance,” said Thomas Schwartz, director of research at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois…It’s not enough that a collector has a hunch, especially if he can’t even provide the person that he purchased it from.“

We do know that Mary Todd Lincoln was a proven earring wearer.

The earrings may now join Kentucky’s other famously fake Lincoln artifact: the replica birthplace cabin which now graces Kentucky’s entry in the US Mint’s parade of state quarters.

Cabin Fever!   

You’ll Always Remember When You First Heard

Anniversaries not divisible by five never get the respect of their more numerically endowed brethren, but this year’s Kennedy assassination anniversary has had some high-points.

Chronicle Of A Death Foretold  

Your USAToday published a “where-did-it-end-up?” roundup of assassination related objects – planes, cars and oddities.  The items are dispersed to a sprawling collection of government and for-profit museums and collections, the private sector equivalent of the presidential library system – intrepid local hustlers, cranks and visionaries, following their dreams.

From Baylor University’s  Ruby’s slipper to Historic Auto Attractions‘ really creepy artifacts and diorama collection, the stuff is everywhere.

Baylor lost out to SMU on the George W. Bush Library, but they can keep their head up in Kennedy conspiracy theory archives.

Auto Attractions provides an alternative past of a sort – what if Jack Ruby had shot Steve Buscemi rather than Oswald?