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Dick Gets Off A Good One  

Nixon post-presidential kitten with a whip Monica Crowley  is cracking wise, favoring America with her lighter side.  Crowley normally spews forth  venomous chatter for the thoughtful conservatives of Fox News, but apparently views her Twitter feed as a fount of humor.

Crowley’s comic career began with Richard Nixon’s political death, as he used his New Jersey exile to emit an endless series of ponderous tomes.

Book Learning   

While decent people looked away, hoping Nixon would slink into the shadows from which he came, Crowley saw opportunity. She wormed her way into the great man’s shrunken entourage, assisting on several of his awful books. Some saw her comic potential early.

That, the involuntary kindness of strangers,  “striking” blond hair, and she was on her way.

Crowley’s latest cutups concern Rush Limbaugh muse Sandra Fluke.  Fluke’s engagement has gotten some notice, and Crowley did not disappoint:

 Some apparently failed to see Mo-Cro’s sly wit, requiring her to lament the Professional Left’s tone deafness: 

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.

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.

 White House Wannabe 

Proven comic resource Glenn Beck has returned to the headlines, through the unusual path of set decoration.

Becky has launched a new series of stirring web-cast addresses, taped in a make-beleave Oval Office.

He has a history of borrowed gravitas attempts in the past, including his MLK Makeover at the Lincoln Memorial, and a previous Oval-ation when he was still on cable.

Glenn’s fantasy White House is sort of a mash-up, with blue screens to add “punch” to his bold observations. When words fail to portray the hell-scape President Obama is leading us to, the pictures can take over. 

Beck’s pretend POTUS platform is a return to yesteryear in many ways, with the Bush era Churchill bust returned to its place of glory,    and the God-awful Bush Presidential Seal rug back in action.  Glenn apparently missed the Obama rug swap, with the attending “controversy.”

 Wouldn’t You Like To Know!   

Gawker historian in residence John Cook has fun poking the National Archives for their deference to former greats.

The George W. Bush administration’s papers are squirrelled away, and no, you can’t see them till Bush is done with them.  Bush left office having made a hash of his electronic records, resisting disclosure to the end despite estimates  millions of emails had gone missing.  In retirement only Bush and Ghost Who Walks Cheney have access to the goods until 2014, so Cook has been mischievously asking what our betters have been asking the National Archives for, FOIA-ing the records of their document requests.

The Archives will have none of that nonsense.  They’ve denied his request for what are clearly public records, showing a tender concern for Bush’s privacy not demonstrated by the man himself.

Archives have had a pattern of hiding their dealings with past greats, refusing historian Anthony Clark‘s requests for records on the foundations all the Presidential Libraries run to keep their guy’s image ever shinier.

Deference to greatness reached it’s apogee under the last Archivist of the United States. Bush appointee Alan Weinstein remained mute over the Bush email destruction by deed or sloth, and reacted to Bush’s grabbing censorship rights for ex Presidents and their decendants by inventing the happy club of “presidential families” who he hoped and prayed would do right by history and release the stranglehold on facts Bush granted them.

And then retired.  Good to see the current team is upholding the tradition of cringing deference.

Back In Black?   

Salute to hardest working man in show business David Weigel, for spotting Michael Reagan’s latest cry for help.

Hopefully having exhausted the old “New Reagan” mine, the Ronald Reagan semi-scion’s increasingly desperate attention seeking has led him to tap new veins of comic gold, riffing off the Bill Clinton/First Black President meme.

Writing for Tiger Beat of the rhythm-less The Conservative Teen , the Toni Morrison of strained analogies digs deep.

Boldly so, considering President Reagan’s colorful past.

Michael Reagan is known for these fanciful histories, having previously analogised Gerald Ford and Saddam Hussein.