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 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.

Someday I’ll catch up with today’s youth, with their curation, but until then I’ll remember old times, and follow in their wake.

Behold:   

h/t pareene

…But Happy To Let The States Do It!

The Washington Post explores new frontiers of letting presidential candidates make up their own history, giving Rick Santorum an opportunity to fuzz up his campaign against birth control.

Melinda  Henneberger in her fantisy feminist pose She The People spoke to the man himself after the fringe radicals of Salon pointed to his views on sex [against it, unless in the right hands].

Henneberger has Santorum identifying as Catholic, so of course he’s against birth control, before moving on to the Supreme Court’s Griswold ruling which got the states out of your bedroom.

It’s a philosophical question you see; Santorum feels the Supremes overreached.  He’s only for leaving the states alone to do as they please, what could be the harm?

Henneberger then drags in cartoon Fox liberal Alan Colmes, who apparently bungled a reference to Santorum’s fetishising his dead son, to end on a “how dare you” note to those who would attack this good man.

“ I’d feel silly pretending to believe he’s going to be even metaphorically riffling through medicine chests”

She may write, but she isn’t paying attention.

Back in the day, all thoughtful folk knew Ronald Reagan couldn’t possibly be elected with all his right wing baggage.  The road to hell begins in pretending as though the crazies won’t act on their impulses.