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The Thousand Oaks Acorn visits the Reagan Library, dipped in history.

From tiny acorns some mighty old chestnuts swell, as the Reagan Presidential Library finds a willing conduit for its Berlin Wall fantasies.

The Library is going all out to forever tie the Wall’s collapse to Reagan’s utterances, with the keen insights of  “exhibit specialist” Rob Zucca showing Acorn the way.

Apparently, the Wall was a commie trap! 

“They [The Reds] always said it was a security wall to keep the west out. Well, it was to keep their people in.”

“The Library’s claim is the chipping away—and eventual removal—of the barricade paved the way for the reunification of Germany and the advent of freedom and democracy in Eastern Europe.”

– neatly reversing the actual sequence of events, in which the Wall was more the last act of East Germany’s internal collapse, which was itself one of the last Stalinist regimes to go.

Reagan Library director of communications Melissa Giller riffs on Reagan quotes of the 60s, 70s, and today, plugging in “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction” along with the inevitable Thatcher reference.

“It was his lifelong mission to bring the end of communism and he was able to do it, as Margaret Thatcher said, ‘without ever firing a shot’”

But as we now know, Mags opposed German unification, plotting with wiley Frenchman Francois Mitterrand to block it.

But  Giller cannot be restrained:

“…even today, there are places such as Iraq and Afghanistan where American soldiers are fighting for freedom and democracy.“They may not have a physical Berlin Wall,” she said, “but walls still exist.”

Indeed. 

MMM, Cake!

                                                                  

Bill Clinton revisited past triumphs Sunday, visiting embattled Kosovo to salute its quasi-independence from Serbia.

                                                                                                                           

And to unveil the vast statue of himself gracing Bill Clinton Boulevard in exotic Pristina.  A jaunty Bill is presented, clutching in one hand a portfolio or briefcase inscribed with the date bombing Serbia began.

Inglorious withdrawals and never were’s in Haiti and Somalia have yet to receive bronze commemoration.

Media Fight Among Selves Over Who Killed Communism, Reagan Apparently Not Present

Your Role In Its Downfall 

Yet another instance of European condescension towards Ronald Reagan, The Man Who Wasn’t There®.

A spat amongst former East Berlin correspondents over who triggered an East German official’s incoherent statement which opened the Berlin Wall has somehow completely ignored Reagan.

Riccardo Ehrman and Peter Brinkmann both questioned Politburo member Günter Schabowski the fateful night of November 9, 1989, as he stumbled through presenting half-way measures easing travel from East to West Berlin.  Reporters pressed the poorly briefed Schabowski over the announcement’s meaning, leading the German Democratic Republic’s unwitting funeral director to say that border controls would relax “Immediately. Without delay.”

Demoralized guards and popular pressure did the rest, and the Wall was breached.

But did either of these esteemed gentlemen put it in writing?

 

To mark his retrospective genius the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library is getting all gussied up,  celebrating the Berlin events Reagan wasn’t President for.

US News & World Report: The Blog breathlessly reports spirited new efforts in the  continuing campaign to link Reagan’s stirring 1987 call for Communism to die swiftly with actual events more than two years later. The Library is going all out: conference on past glories, Checkpoint Charlie memorabilia, and for the kids,

“…the library will display a replica where visitors can scrawl their messages of peace just as the East and West Germans did on the original.”

      No apparent mention of actual events at the time, like the heroic marchers in Leipzig who challenged East Germany’s leadership on the ground.

Reagan-Wall Tumbling claims have settled into a cliche resolutely polished for all occasions,   like the wall fragments incorporated into Reagan’s recently unveiled Capitol Hill statue.

But fact-based snubbing of the Great Communicator remains treasured tradition in some circles.  Who can forget James Mann’s cruel tallying of previous equally ineffectual Berlin occasions when Reagan waxed wistful about the Wall’s fall.

   And lest we forget, Reagan trained his steely gaze upon North Korea too, still standing at last report .

   

    Bill Due   Â

To the storied Plains of Kosovo, where the embattled former Yugoslav dominion rebuilds itself as an alternative Albania.

Like the Land of Eagles, Kosovo loves them some US Presidents.  Pristina pines for former President Bill Clinton to dedicate the massive statue they’ve erected on Clinton Boulevard in his honor, but he won’t be able to come until next month.

Kosovars love of Freedom’s Own Land and its former leaders is apparent at every turn.

Feet Tragically Obscured     

Good news from the watery Philippines, where tragic flooding ends on a happy note.  Renowned shoe fetishist and drag queen ideal Imelda Marcos’s shoe collection at the Marikina Shoe Museum was plucked from the rising waters by quick thinking museum staff.

Now the Marcos family can concentrate on the career of Strongman Scion Bong-Bong Marcos.