June 11, 2004
The Beginning of the end
We have been having a state funeral all week. You would think this was a surprise; that we hadn't been expecting ithe death of the great communicator for several years. Let it be said that Ronald Reagan has died like a Queen. It's almost as good as a hurricane for the media, who are being played like a fiddles at a square dance, milked like cows (don't you love my benign Midwestern metaphors) by the current administration. The week long bi coastal extravaganza has provided a lavish distraction to the many major messes that Group that runs George W. has made here and abroad. And just as W. hired a lawyer too. Sadly it seems to be working--hordes waiting all night in line to touch the flag on his coffin, without a clue what they are worshipping. The administration is hustling to stand under the big black umbrella.
The group that runs George W has pumped this to the maximum,and the media, as usual goes right along for the hayride.
A letter to the editor of the Boston Globe printed in its entirety so you won't hav to subscribe.
Deeper meaning to our grief
6/10/2004
I AM NO psychologist, but I suspect the overwhelming outpouring of grief over the death of Ronald Reagan has little to do with the man's passing. After all, we had to be prepared for this moment, perhaps even hopeful considering his condition. We appear to be in the middle of a week-long tsunami of media coverage and mourning on both coasts that might rival the passing of Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Kennedy combined.
I don't want to open an ideological Pandora's Box, but we may be placing the Gipper in the wrong company here.
I don't question the sincerity of the grief; it is heartfelt and deserving. What I think is that we are, on some deeper level, mourning the loss of the America Reagan lived in his personal mythology and revived and articulated so well for so many.
Reagan glorified an America whose wisdom, courage, and decency could withstand the ravages of the Great Depression and rise up to challenge the barbarity of Nazism, a nation that could call on its young to defend the principles of freedom and justice upon which we were founded, a generation willing to give up their limbs and lives at Omaha Beach and the Bulge and Tarawa.
After spending the last week seeing the images and reading the accounts of now old men who sacrificed their youth at Normandy for an enduring principle, the very essence of Americanism, the sad reality of America's current place in the world is just below the surface of our grieving countrymen. That within a mere 60 years the world has seen the courage and moral leadership of FDR, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and, yes, Reagan, wither to the level of a George W. Bush is a stunning and embarrassing realization.
There is much to mourn in America today, but it has little to do with Ronald Reagan.
THOMAS GOTSILL Yarmouthport
This story ran on page A18 of the Boston Globe on 6/10/2004.
© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.
As far as I'm concerned, Reagan was the beginning of the President as Idiot Savant .
Let us hope that his shining influence will persuade The Group that stem cell research is not the tool of the devil, but the legacy of the Gip.
I'm posting this incompletely, because it will be very stale by the time I get to a computer I can manage.
Photo note: You've seen this before, but I'm a desperate woman