Legendary New York Times’ Â book reviewer Michiko Kakutani [aka “the stupidest person in New York“] is the latest to fall for one of the oldest bricks in Ronald Reagan’s Wall of Cheese, the lifeguard story.
In the course of reviewing Ron Reagan’s auspiciously timed memoir, she retails without questioning young Ron Reagan’s recycling of a tale. Specifically, the self-generated legend that young Ronald Reagan saved 77 people from drowning in the Rock River at Dixon Illinois. Â In seven years, for neat symmetry.
Where does this nicely divisible number come from? Everywhere and nowhere. By all accounts young Ronald worked summers as a lifeguard during high school and college.  Aside from providing him a head start on skin cancer little is known beyond his later stories. Your more careful accounts of Reagan’s adventures among the “boyency challenged” speak of him being “credited” with saving 77 lives.  More gushing accounts, including his museum foundation‘s,  add the definitive proof that he claimed to have carved a notch on a log every time he plucked someone from  the turgid waters.
Pastures Of Pawlenty Results are pouring in, and former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty’s 2012 campaign launch video is on its way to comedy gold.  Ominous music, quick cutting between historic footage and the fairytale grittiness of handheld cameras [Thanks, Battle Of Algiers!]   lend a semblance of urgency to Pawlenty’s flat intonation, but can the Rick Santorum Of The North overcome his roots in America’s Almost Canada? Amidst the familiar 60s crawl – MLK! Moonshots! – Pawlenty’s not afraid to take controversial stands                  He Does Not Care For Communism!    Â
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We also get such oddities as a wagon train [in black and white, for authenticity!]
The Kennedy Library used to [and may still] have a display of Jack’s Greatest Hits from press conferences of yore.It was amazing.  Even allowing for who chose the footage, the fawning questions setting JFK up to knock it out of the park every time were breathtaking.  But it wasn’t heard to convey energy and what passed for wit after the torpid Eisenhower years with Mom & Dad.   I think we’ll be spared the excitement of future Woodstock anniversary commemoration, but someone thinks there’s still juice to be extracted from round numbered Kennedy dates.HBO’s “A President To Remember” nominally marks the 50th anniversary of Kennedy’s inaugural.  Creator Robert Drew has great black and white footage of men in suits looking decisive, beyond that I’m guessing.The publicity materials are sparse, but the film seems blissfully unaware of the vast efforts by actual historians and journalists to take Smiling Jack down a peg. It’s still selling the original Kennedy premise of energy, drive and vague goals.Drew laments“We’ve had generations that have never known a active lively president who was well-regarded” What’s presented is Kennedy at his empty-suitest.  The publicity clip opens with JFK sound over video that sounds spliced together from a  couple of sources, and amounts to emphatically stated blather of the highest order:“I run for the presidency because i have strong ideas about what this country must do. That’s what i think this election is about, that’s what we’re going to begin to do next Tuesday”
