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His grace! impossible! what, dead?
Of old age too, and in his bed!...
'Twas time in conscience he should die!
This world he cumber'd long enough;
He burnt his candle to the snuff;
And that's the reason some folks think,
He left behind so great a stink!"
Jonathan Swift, from "A Satirical Elegy on the Death of a Late Famous General"
It was inevitable that the death of Ronald Reagan, when it finally came, would be greeted with an effusion of saccahrine tributes to the 40th President of the United States. But nothing could have quite prepared the innocent bystander for the eruption of dishonest, cynical, and preposterously stupid propaganda with which the media and political establishment have responded to the death of Reagan. Of course given the unending stream of bad news pouring out of Iraq and other parts of the real world during the past year, the Bush administration and their friends in the media were looking desparately for some way to change the subject and counter the increasingly depressed and surly mood in the country. The memorial celebrations of the 60th anniversary of D-Day were intended originally to create that diversion. But the timely death of Reagan has provided an even greater opportunity for an explosion of media-sponsored hero-worshipping, flag waving and mythmaking.
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