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?

 

 

 

 

Giant Obama Sparks The Usual Death Wish

Gritty!  

The chamber of commerce from Hooters’ hometown builds a sand sculpture near the Democratic Convention site, and people pretend to be shocked that its cheesy.

And the wingnut airforce rises in it’s fury to wish Barack Obama dead. 

Because lame pr stunting,often from the same clowns, has never disgraced past gatherings.

Dixon Illinois, 2011 

Myrtle Beach, SC 2008  

Myrtle Beach, SC 2012   

 

Who’s The Leader of the Club That’s Made For You & Me?

R-O-N-A-L-D  R-E-A-G-A-N!   

 

The New York Times takes note of an exciting new collaboration high above Semi Valley: the Reagan Presidential Library and the corporate heirs of Mickey Mouse, joining to celebrate their mutual need for fresh meat.

The paper makes much of the odd-couple shoe-horning of Disney into an august “Presidential Library,” but the Reagan people in particular are practiced hands at odd lash-ups.  They’ve devoted much of their energy over the last several years to building a vast airplane hanger, making Nancy Reagan’s old dresses into a tax deduction, while losing more documents than any of their peers.  All the libraries face declining attendence and have tried to morph into vaguely pop history palaces.

The lets call it limited engagement of Reagan and Disney takes up much of the article, but in fact there were links. Disneyland’s opening was c0-hosted by Reagan.   Reagan’s sinister CIA Director, Bill Casey, was Counsel for CapCities, which swallowed ABC during Reagan’s reign and was a principal component as Michael Eisner rebuilt Disney.

 And Reagan cut a lot of ribbons for them.

 

The Times speculates about Disney’s motives:

 “Exhibitions of memorabilia have long been one of Disney’s tools for furthering its corporate interests. A few years ago, the company teamed with the Pompidou Center for a display of animation art as part of a campaign to persuade the French to embrace Disneyland Paris.”

As long as we’re going there, how’s EuroDisney working out?   Twenty years on the park remains mired in debt. On the plus side,    French Communists egged then Disney head Michael Eisner to protest EuroDisney’s launch, perhaps the only decent thing the Party did since the Anti=Nazi Resistance. 

 

The Mild, The Innocuous, & The K Street Shuffle

 

Over Done

                           

Fresh from mocking his real estate adventures, thoughtful observers have a new stick with which to beat mock socialogist David Brooks, while striking a glancing blow at Eternal President Ronald Reagan.

Brooks storied mendacity offends all right thinking folk, but now he’s throwing music into his pop culture poporiti, with comic results.

He’s joined the cult of Bruce Springsteen, with the added ickyness of traveling to observe The Boss’s caring antics in several of Europe’s tanking economies.

Nothing revulses like the clueless drawing vast conclusions from pretend empathy.

Bonus points to Alex Pareene and  “Mobutu Sese Seko” for recalling Springsteen inspired dimness of the Reagan era, when another Republican failed to strap Bruce to their caring conservatism.

 

Reagan Real Estate: The New York Times Visits Sacramento

 

Castles In Dispair   

The Times’ “Home” section usually sticks to house porn of the bold and the beautiful.  The trouble comes when they wander into check-able facts.

The paper’s housing survey of America’s junior executives, the governors, revealed the shocking truth that many of them do not care for the Victorian glam of their official residences.  I can’t speak to other cases, but almost everything in The Times’ two paragraphs on the Reagan’s Sacramento mansion debacle is wrong.

The article says

“Jerry Brown, who was criticized for not moving into state digs during his first stint as governor of California in the 1970s, turned out to be ahead of his time. When he returned to the post decades later, the mansion was gone — sold off to save money. (Mr. Brown now rents a 1,450-square-foot apartment in Sacramento.)”

As more “newsy” New York Times sections have reported in the past, the Reagans started this cavalcade shortly after taking office, refusing to live in the 19th Century splendor of California’s Governor’s Mansion and hurling California governors into decades of homelessness rootlessness.

 Ronnie and Nancy lived in a rental, paid for by caring millionaire friends.  And were criticized for it. Reagan pals also paid for a cheesy new suburban mansion with the muy, muy authentico name “Casa de los Gobernadores,” tragically incomplete when the Reagans left town.  The new house never passed into state ownership, and Brown’s renting generated him largely positive press, much of it focused on an allegedly floor-based mattress.

Brown’s successor lived in another rental gifted by thoughtful moguls, as did his successors.  When Arnold Shwarzenegger came to town the owner of the Reaganesque mansion made a failed push to sell it to the state, recalled in this intermittently working slide tour.

And now Jerry’s back, in a “loft” again granted by providential millionaires.