My Rant on the Reagan love letter...uhh, miniseries

[jmowreader]

Republicans Worry CBS Won't Elevate Reagan to Sainthood

Ronald Reagan was one of America's worst presidents. He is the first Alzheimer's-afflicted president. He blew through money like a shipload of drunken sailors on shore leave, threw money at the military in some of the stupidest ways imaginable (how can you justify putting 600 ships in the fleet but not authorizing enough sailors to man them, or buying a fighting vehicle that requires the men inside to carry rifles without sights--or that is twice as fast as the ambulances that support it?), and nearly started a nuclear war with a thoughtless off-the-cuff comment. And that's not to mention his putting a wreath on the graves of the SS troopers buried at Bitburg, his declaring ketchup to be a vegetable for the school lunch program, his stationing 243 Marines in a barracks in Beirut so they could get blown to smithereens in their sleep (then attacking sleepy Grenada a few days after their barracks was bombed to take America's mind off the dead Marines)... Oh yeah, I guess we should mention that he armed Iran, he armed Iraq, he sold Saddam Hussein the equipment, formulas and precursors for his chemical and biological weapons program (as well as the helicopters he used to gas Halabja in 1988), his running mate flew to Iran before the 1980 election to convince the revolutionaries to hold the hostages until Reagan was inaugurated so that Carter would be sure to lose, his inattention to the AIDS problem, the fact that he listened to Arthur Laffer and Jude Wanniski in the first place, and that he gave James Watt a job as secretary of the interior...I think you get the idea.

Oh, and my favorite: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." I just about puked when I heard that, and as I was at the speech, I heard it before you.

Ronald Reagan was such a slimy piece of shit that even today visitors to the Reagan Presidential Library are required to wear calked boots to keep from falling on their asses as they wade through the ooze.

You may have heard that CBS is preparing to show a miniseries about ol' three-felonies-before-lunch Ronnie. My bet is it's probably going to be pretty damn tame. The Republican Party, however, isn't happy. They want a panel of conservative historians, friends of Ron, and Nancy Reagan to review the miniseries, and if this is not done they plan to ask CBS to run a notice every ten minutes across the bottom of the screen that says the show isn't "accurate." Frankly, if they let the Republicans edit the thing they need to run that same notice. You think they'll be allowed to leave in the part about Reagan allowing the infomercial to come into existence? (Before Reagan was president, it was illegal to make a commercial that lasted more than fifteen minutes. Under Reagan, commercials could be any length.) You think that, just maybe, they'll leave in the part about the Fairness Doctrine being stripped away as an
infringement on broadcasters' freedom of speech? Or the $37 billion in corporations Henry Kravis and George Roberts bought in those eight years? You think they'll show KKR closing the Safeway my mom shopped in for over a decade because a store in a town with three thousand people in it isn't quite doing its part to pay down the $8 billion in junk bonds that were sold to buy the Safeway Corporation?

Is it possible that they'll leave in the part about Reagan refusing to raise the minimum wage for eight straight years?

Do you think they'll allow the great new Spanish word "Maquiladora," which was coined in the Reagan era, to be mentioned?

Maybe they'll tell you all about Reagan's precious nickname for his wife. He called her "Mommy."

Maybe they'll show you Ronnie's favorite thing to do at cabinet meetings...you know, fall asleep.

Nope. The Republican Cut of "The Reagans" will show Ronald Reagan as a great and visionary leader with groundbreaking policies that changed the world for the better. They'll say that Reagan ended the Cold War. They'll say that Reagan balanced the budget. They'll say that Reagan was the greatest president in history.

Give me the tape. I'll make a real assessment of the failed Reagan administration--that Ronnie was a do-nothing figurehead for George H.W. Bush.

[tom_paine]

1. kick

[stevebreeze]

2. Great Rant! But ....

NPR just announced that the movie was pulled.

:kick:

[ScreamingMeemie]

3. Locking.

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MrsGrumpy
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