Ronald Reagan, that evil fuck President who willfully destroyed working class communities to give tax breaks to the rich. Reagan was happy to do it so long as it was African-Americans that bore the brunt.

Reaganomics left half the Black population on welfare. Reagan had no conscience about it. He had a money lust which hit hardest on those who were weakest and least able to fend for themselves.

Stopping poverty wasn’t on Reagan’s tick list. Rather it was cut corners and take, take, take from the poor - which stooped as low as having the tomato base on pizzas reclassified as fruit to ensure he could slash the cost of school dinners. He even tried to do the same with tomato ketchup but failed.

Reagan’s policy was simple - if you were poor: fuck you. If you were sick: fuck you. If you were dying of cancer: fuck you and get a goddamn job.

For young African-Americans in the 1980s, it seemed the hard-earned achievements of the sixties’ Civil Rights movement had been too easily betrayed and forgotten. And when crack cocaine hit the inner cities, it seemed any hope of a future was gone.

Against this background arose a culture of music that was to redefine Black America. Hip-Hop and Rap reflected the poverty, despair and violence of life in the ghettoes. It also railed angrily against the indifference and cynical exploitation by successive Presidents, whose only interest was to help themselves and help the rich.

Letter to the President is a fascinating over-view of the rise of Hip-Hop and Rap, and their importance in bringing a community together against a common enemy. Narrated by Snoop Dogg, and with contributions form Quincy Jones, KRS-One, David Banner, 50 Cent, Chuck D, Ghostface Killah, Nelson George, Sonia Sanchez, and Dick Gregory.
 

He’s back?

Imagine some rightwing billionaire buying this and then spending millions having the Gipper cloned.

He vill be raised in a monastery in upper Bavaria, jah, until he is ready to be unveiled and take his rightful place on da vorld stage.

Quick, someone alert Alex Jones!

Via The Washington Times:

The bids are lofty for a vial that once held Ronald Reagan’s blood, now up for grabs at an online British auction house. At the moment, the leading bid is $5,081 for a 5-inch glass vial with “dried blood residue from President Reagan,” drawn from him at George Washington University Hospital after a 1981 assassination attempt by John Hinckley Jr. A separate hospital form is also included in the package from Guernsey-based PFC Auctions, which also is selling celebrity autographed guitars and a slice of royal wedding cake from Prince William and Kate Middleton’s nuptials, among many other things.

And the vial? The slender glass tube with green stopper once belonged to a relative of a Maryland-based laboratory technician who actually analyzed the contents more than three decades ago. The mysterious keeper-of-the-vial held onto it, and eventually informed officials at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library of its whereabouts.

After some back and forth, the vial keeper got the green light to sell it, assuring the auctioneer that “everything was OK, National Archives was not interested in what I had, nor was the Secret Service, the FBI and other agencies … it was simply something that was of no importance at this time, and that I was free to do with whatever I wanted with it.”.

A letter of provenance is included with the listing from the seller:

“These articles have actually been in my family’s possession since 03/30/1981, the day that President Reagan was shot in Washington D.C. Back in the 70’s and 80’s, my mother worked for Bio Science Laboratories in Columbia, Maryland. Her laboratory was the laboratory contracted by Walter Reed Army Medical Center as well as the George Washington University Hospital to handle blood testing as well as other types of testing. Her lab did the blood work and testing for President Reagan. The test tube and the lab slip that I have are for his blood work to be tested for lead on [Monday] 03/30/1981. The testing was completed and the test tube was sitting on my mother’s desk. At the end of the week, she asked the director of her laboratory if she could keep the paper work and the test tube. The director of the lab told her no problem and really never gave it a second thought. It has been in my family ever since. My mother passed away back in November last year [2010] and my father passed away in January 2009. Prior to their passing, they knew that it was the only thing that I wanted with regards to their personal property or money that they accumulated over the years…

“About 3 to 4 months ago, I contacted the Reagan National Library and spoke to the head of the library, a Federal Agent. I told him what I had, how I came across it and so on. We spoke for about 45 minutes. The reason that I contacted the Reagan National Library was to see if they would like to purchase it from me. He indicated that if I was interested in donating it he would see to it that he would take care of all of the arrangements. Prior to hanging up the phone, he said to me, do me a favor, don’t move from where you are, I will call you back within 30 minutes but I have to make a couple of phone calls to seek legal counsel, consult with National Archives, the FBI and other three or four letter agencies that I have heard of. I said am I in any kind of trouble or will there be some black cars/suv’s or helicopters hovering above my home and he said not yet but possibly in the very near future depending on what he learned from the phone calls he had to make. I told him alright, I will not move from where I was sitting and would await his return call. He called back in 25 minutes and said that everything was ok, National Archives was not interested in what I had, nor was the Secret Service, the FBI and other agencies. Since 30 years had passed by, he thought that it was simply something that was of no importance at this time and that I was free to do with whatever I wanted with it. He then stated that he felt the family would be interested in it being returned to them and if I was interested in doing so to contact him and he would make all of the arrangements. I told him that I didn’t think that was something that I was going to consider, since I had served under Pres. Reagan when he was my Commander in Chief when I was in the ARMY from ’87-’91 and that I was a real fan of Reaganomics and felt that Pres. Reagan himself would rather see me sell it rather than donating it.

Classic!
 

 
In an inspiring Op Ed piece in today’s New York Times, Columbia University’s Jeffrey D. Sachs takes but a few paragraphs to thoroughly demolish the dominant ur-myths of the past three decades of Republican politics, and to illustrate how the New Progressive Era is already upon us.

Both clueless Democrats and ignorant, rightwing assholes like Frank Miller should read this short essay very carefully:

Occupy Wall Street and its allied movements around the country are more than a walk in the park. They are most likely the start of a new era in America. Historians have noted that American politics moves in long swings. We are at the end of the 30-year Reagan era, a period that has culminated in soaring income for the top 1 percent and crushing unemployment or income stagnation for much of the rest. The overarching challenge of the coming years is to restore prosperity and power for the 99 percent.

Thirty years ago, a newly elected Ronald Reagan made a fateful judgment: “Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.” Taxes for the rich were slashed, as were outlays on public services and investments as a share of national income. Only the military and a few big transfer programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and veterans’ benefits were exempted from the squeeze.

Reagan’s was a fateful misdiagnosis. He completely overlooked the real issue — the rise of global competition in the information age — and fought a bogeyman, the government. Decades on, America pays the price of that misdiagnosis, with a nation singularly unprepared to face the global economic, energy and environmental challenges of our time.

Washington still channels Reaganomics. The federal budget for nonsecurity discretionary outlays — categories like highways and rail, education, job training, research and development, the judiciary, NASA, environmental protection, energy, the I.R.S. and more — was cut from more than 5 percent of gross domestic product at the end of the 1970s to around half of that today. With the budget caps enacted in the August agreement, domestic discretionary spending would decline to less than 2 percent of G.D.P. by the end of the decade, according to the White House. Government would die by fiscal asphyxiation.

Both parties have joined in crippling the government in response to the demands of their wealthy campaign contributors, who above all else insist on keeping low tax rates on capital gains, top incomes, estates and corporate profits. Corporate taxes as a share of national income are at the lowest levels in recent history. Rich households take home the greatest share of income since the Great Depression. Twice before in American history, powerful corporate interests dominated Washington and brought America to a state of unacceptable inequality, instability and corruption. Both times a social and political movement arose to restore democracy and shared prosperity.

Sachs goes on to state what already seems self-evident to many of us:

This is just the beginning.

The young people in Zuccotti Park and more than 1,000 cities have started America on a path to renewal. The movement, still in its first days,  will have to expand in several strategic ways. Activists are needed among shareholders, consumers and students to hold corporations and politicians to account. Shareholders, for example, should pressure companies to get out of politics. Consumers should take their money and purchasing power away from companies that confuse business and political power. The whole range of other actions — shareholder and consumer activism, policy formulation, and running of candidates — will not happen in the park.

The New Progressive Movement (The New York Times)

 
The German artist Joseph Beuys always seemed to be in Edinburgh, when I was young. Exhibiting at the Richard Demarco Gallery, or discussing art, democracy and socialism with whoever was around.

Born in Germany in 1921, his influence as an artist and an activist during his 64-years of life was so effective that we are, in many respects, all Beuys’s children. Take this as his defintion:

‘...one of the most influential and extraordinary artists of the twentieth century.

Artist, educator, political and social activist, Beuys’s philosophy proposed the healing power and social function of art, in which everyone can participate and benefit…’

Beuys’s best known works are the performance pieces How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare (1965), Filz TV (1970) in which Beuys responds to a TV covered with felt, I Like America and America Likes Me (1974), where he shared a room with a coyote for 3 days, and the social sculpture 7,000 Oaks, which he explained to Demarco in 1982 as:

“I think the tree is an element of regeneration which in itself is a concept of time. The oak is especially so because it is a slowly growing tree with a kind of really solid heart wood. It has always been a form of sculpture, a symbol for this planet ever since the Druids, who are called after the oak. Druid means oak. They used their oaks to define their holy places. I can see such a use for the future…. The tree planting enterprise provides a very simple but radical possibility for this when we start with the seven thousand oaks.”

Beuys always dressed the same in his artist’s uniform of Trilby hat and multi-pocketed fishing vest, to keep the focus on his art, as he believed art must work towards a better social order:

Only art is capable of dismantling the repressive effects of a senile social system that continues to totter along the deathline: to dismantle in order to build ‘A SOCIAL ORGANISM AS A WORK OF ART’… EVERY HUMAN BEING IS AN ARTIST who – from his state of freedom – the position of freedom that he experiences at first-hand – learns to determine the other positions of the TOTAL ART WORK OF THE FUTURE SOCIAL ORDER. work included.

Political activism was important to Beuys. I recall in 1980, when he presented Jimmy Boyle Days, where he went on hunger strike in protest over convicted killer Jimmy Boyle’s move from Barlinnie’s Special Unit, where Boyle had rehabilitated himself as an artist and sculptor, to Saughton Prison, where he was no longer able to practice his art. Beuys saw little difference between art and activism, and his support for Boyle led to a huge outcry over the place of art in society, that led to the Scottish Arts Council removing its key financial support form the Demarco Gallery.

In 1982, he surprised critics and fans alike with his one and only single, “Sonne statt Reagan”, a disco attack against President Reagan’s stance on nuclear arms. The song’s title, “Sun Not Rain/Reagan”, was a pun on the German word “regen” for rain and Reagan. Some critics thought Beuys had sold out, but they failed to see his humor, and the serious intention behind the disc. Beuys may have been unpredictable, but his work is always life-affirming.
 

 
Joseph Beuys’ ground-breaking Filz TV, after the jump…
 

 
As I’ve admitted on this blog before, I was a teenage Ayn Rand fanatic. I owned all of her books, cassette tapes of her lectures and every single issue of The Objectivist, The Objectivist Newsletter and The Ayn Rand Letter. I’m not exactly proud of this fact, but what can I do? Thankfully it didn’t take me that long to outgrow this nonsense, but for good or ill, I still to this day have a pretty good working knowledge of her philosophy and life’s work.

This morning it popped into my head, appropos of nothing, how much Ayn Rand railed against Ronald Reagan before she died and I recalled one particular essay from one of the final issues of The Ayn Rand Letter where she asked her readers not to support Reagan and instead to vote for Gerald Ford, who Reagan was challenging for the GOP nomination at the time (and who appointed her loyal apostle and acolyte, Alan Greenspan, to his position as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board).

I’m guessing that a lot of Republican Ayn Rand fans—maybe this will be news to Rep. Paul Ryan and Senator Rand Paul—probably don’t realize that their hero had such a dim view of The Gipper…

From The Ayn Rand Letter, Volume IV, Number 2, November-December 1975:

Now I want to give you a brief indication of the kinds of issues that are coming up, on which you might want to know my views.

1. The Presidential election of 1976. I urge you, as emphatically as I can, not to support the candidacy of Ronald Reagan. I urge you not to work for or advocate his nomination, and not to vote for him. My reasons are as follows: Mr. Reagan is not a champion of capitalism, but a conservative in the worst sense of that word—i.e., an advocate of a mixed economy with government controls slanted in favor of business rather than labor (which, philosophically, is as untenable a position as one could choose—see Fred Kinnan in Atlas Shrugged, pp. 541-2). This description applies in various degrees to most Republican politicians, but most of them preserve some respect for the rights of the individual. Mr. Reagan does not: he opposes the right to abortion.

From Rand’s final public speech, “Sanction of the Victims,” delivered November 21, 1981:

In conclusion, let me touch briefly on another question often asked me: What do I think of President Reagan? The best answer to give would be: But I don’t think of him—and the more I see, the less I think. I did not vote for him (or for anyone else) and events seem to justify me. The appalling disgrace of his administration is his connection with the so-called “Moral Majority” and sundry other TV religionists, who are struggling—apparently with his approval—to take us back to the Middle Ages, via the unconstitutional union of religion and politics.

The threat to the future of capitalism is the fact that Reagan might fail so badly that he will become another ghost, like Herbert Hoover, to be invoked as an example of capitalism’s failure for another fifty years.

Observe Reagan’s futile attempts to arouse the country by some sort of inspirational appeal. He is right in thinking that the country needs an inspirational element. But he will not find it in the God-Family-Tradition swamp.

If you know any conservative Republican Ayn Rand fans, you should forward this post to them, just to annoy ‘em.

Below, William F. Buckley on Ayn Rand:
 

 
All observations made during his presidency, except for Edmund Morris’s recollection from the recent HBO documentary:

“A high-powered cheerleader for our worst instincts, a nasty man whose major talent is to make us feel good about being creepy and who lets us pretend that tomorrow will never come.”
     —Activist Roger Wilkins

“His answer to any questions about young men being killed for some vague and perhaps non-existent reason in Central America has been to smile, nod, wave a hand and walk on.  And America applauds, thus proving that senility is a communicable disease.”
     —Columnist Jimmy Breslin

“Poor dear, there’s nothing between his ears.”
     —British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher

“I dig the cat. He’s spontaneous. A lot of times he’ll blurt stuff out – I can relate to that.”
     —Van Halen replacement lead singer Sammy Hagar

“Reagan swaggering around. Poor old thing! He’s about as masculine as Marjorie Main. He was never a symbol of masculinity – though he sort of plays it ... There is something rather grandmotherly about Reagan. And then again, he’s rather boyish. Between the two, he comes off as non-threatening ... He isn’t popular. There isn’t anything about his policies anybody likes. The pollsters’ questions are so dumb: ‘Do you find him a nice old thing who makes you feel good when he honks away on the box?’ ‘Yes, he’s a nice old thing who makes me feel good when he honks away on the box.’ Well, that isn’t an endorsement of war in Nicaragua.”
     —Author Gore Vidal

“His errors glide past unchallenged ... The general message of the American press is that, yes, while it is perfectly true that the emperor has no clothes, nudity is actually very acceptable this year.”
     —British journalist Simon Hoggart

“The difficulty about figuring Reagan out was he was not introspective.  Therefore, to try and interview this guy, who was so incurious about himself, was very unrewarding.  He would tend to take refuge behind anecdotes and jokes, but when I tried to probe him about fundamental things – his religious beliefs, his feelings about women and children – I just got this echoing sound that I was talking into a large, rather cool cave.”
         —Reagan biographer Edmund Morris

Excerpted from the “Reagan Centennial Edition” of my 1989 book The Clothes Have No Emperor, available here as an enhanced eBook.

Below, Ronald and Nancy Reagan like drugs. A lot.
 

 
As I wind up my two weeks on Dangerous Minds, my last two posts consist of my favorite observations by others, offered during his presidency:

“Ronald Reagan is merely an anthology of the worst of American popular culture, edited for television.”
     —Media critic Mark Crispin Miller

“God, he’s a bore. And a bad actor. Besides, he has a low order of intelligence. With a certain cunning. And not animal cunning. Human cunning. Animal cunning is too fine an expression for him. He’s inflated, he’s egotistical. He’s one of those people who thinks he’s right. And he’s not right. He’s not right about anything.”
     —Director John Huston

“I would never refuse an assignment unless it completely repelled me. ... A national magazine asked me to go to Santa Barbara to photograph the President at his ranch. Well, I hate Santa Barbara and, far worse, I hate Reagan. I can’t ignore my feelings and just make a pretty picture.”
     —Photographer/environmentalist Ansel Adams

“It takes deep bravery to be fearless about one’s own hypocrisy. Politicians of average duplicity cower at being found out. Not Reagan.”
     —Columnist Colman McCarthy

“Look at the Reagan of the 1930s: a no-talent jerk with looks, charm, and a line of blarney who talks himself into one cushy job after another ... Then come the 1950s. In return for his manful anti-communistical efforts in the screen actors’ union, the pimps, procurers, and purveyors of popular culture who own stage, screen and radio arrange for him to be paid off with a job selling General Electric toasters on TV and smarmy right-wing politics on the chicken-croquette circuit. How humiliating to think of this unlettered, self-assured bumpkin being our president.”
     —Journalist Nicholas von Hoffman

“If we told Reagan to walk outside, turn around three times, pick up an acorn, and throw it out to the crowd, we’d be lucky to get a question from him asking, ‘Why?’”
     —Unnamed White House aide

“He’s melting. No one’s noticed yet, but he is melting. We’re talking about a semi-solid mass with dark hair. If the Democrats had come out and just said, ‘He’s melting,’ I think they would have done much better.”
     —Actress/writer Carrie Fisher

Excerpted from the “Reagan Centennial Edition” of my 1989 book The Clothes Have No Emperor, available here as an enhanced eBook.

 
Some highlights from President Reagan’s March 19, 1987 press conference, at which he finally answered questions that had built up in the four months since the Iran-contra scandal broke:

“... I don’t know ... I don’t know ... I don’t know. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was ... I did not know at that time that there was any money involved. I only knew that ... All we’d learned ... Helen, I don’t know. I only know that ... All that I know ... Sam, all I know is that ... I can’t remember ... There are other people that don’t remember either ... I did not know that I had said it in such a way ... I didn’t realize that I had said that ... We didn’t know ... I didn’t know how far we could go ... I still do not have the answer ... It was a complete surprise to me ... We’re still waiting for that to be explained ... I don’t know ... I don’t know ...”

Excerpted from the “Reagan Centennial Edition” of my 1989 book The Clothes Have No Emperor, available here as an enhanced eBook.

 

 
In his 1986 New York Times best-seller The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, an examination of various bizarre neurological disorders, Oliver Sacks provided an account of oppositely impaired patients – aphasiacs, who can’t understand spoken words but do take in information from extra-verbal cues, and tonal agnosiacs, who understand the actual words but miss their emotional content – watching a speech by President Reagan.

“It was the grimaces, the histrionisms, the false gestures and, above all, the false tones and cadences of the voice,” wrote Sacks, which caused the word-deaf aphasiacs to laugh hysterically at the Great Communicator, while one agnosiac, relying entirely on the actual words, sat in stony silence, concluding that “he is not cogent ... his word-use is improper” and suspecting that “he has something to conceal.”

“Here then,” wrote Sacks, “was the paradox of the President’s speech.  We normals – aided, doubtless, by our wish to be fooled, were indeed well and truly fooled ... And so cunningly was deceptive word-use combined with deceptive tone, that only the brain-damaged remained intact, undeceived.”

Excerpted from the “Reagan Centennial Edition” of my 1989 book The Clothes Have No Emperor, available here as an enhanced eBook.

 
A companion piece to “Facts? We don’t need your stinking facts!” After all, facts can be so … inconvenient.

12/8/83 Continuing his tradition of holiday season insensitivity, an obviously well‑fed Ed Meese scoffs at the notion that the Administration’s policies are unnecessarily cruel to the poor. “I don’t know of any authoritative figures that there are hungry children,” he declares. “I’ve heard a lot of anecdotal stuff, but I haven’t heard any authoritative figures ... I think some people are going to soup kitchens voluntarily. I know we’ve had considerable information that people go to soup kitchens because the food is free and that that’s easier than paying for it ... I think that they have money.

12/12/83 Addressing the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, President Reagan tells this heart-warming story: “A B‑17 coming back across the channel from a raid over Europe, badly shot up by anti‑aircraft ... The young ball‑turret gunner was wounded, and they couldn’t get him out of the turret there while flying. But over the channel, the plane began to lose altitude, and the commander had to order bail out. And as the men started to leave the plane, the last one to leave – the boy, understandably, knowing he was being left behind to go down with the plane, cried out in terror – the last man to leave the plane saw the commander sit down on the floor. He took the boy’s hand and said, ‘Never mind, son, we’ll ride it down together.’ Congressional Medal of honor posthumously awarded.”

12/12/83 Introducing this year’s White House Santa, black action star Mr. T, as “a man who I admire a lot,” Nancy Reagan plops herself in his lap and plants a kiss on the top of his bald head.

12/15/83 Ed Meese tells the National Press Club that literature’s classic miser, Ebenezer Scrooge, to whom he has recently been compared, suffered from a “bad press in his time. If you really look at the facts, he didn’t exploit Bob Cratchit.”  Explains Meese, “Bob Cratchit was paid ten shillings a week, which was a very good wage at that time ... Bob, in fact, had good cause to be happy with his situation. He lived in a house, not a tenement. His wife didn’t have to work ... He was able to afford the traditional Christmas dinner of roast goose and plum pudding ... So let’s be fair to Scrooge. He had his faults, but he wasn’t unfair to anyone.”

12/16/83 Columnist Lars‑Erik Nelson – after checking the citations on all 434 Congressional Medals of Honor awarded during World War II – reveals that not one of them matches the story President Reagan told the other day. “It’s not true,” writes Nelson. “It didn’t happen. It’s a Reagan story ... The President of the United States went before an audience of 300 real Congressional Medal of Honor winners and told them about a make‑believe Medal of Honor winner.” Responds White House spokesman Larry Speakes, “If you tell the same story five times, it’s true.”

12/20/83 At a press conference, President Reagan claims that El Salvador has “a 400‑year history of military dictatorships.” As it happens, though, the first military regime didn’t take power until way back in 1931. Okay, so he was off by a few centuries, so what?

12/21/83 The Washington Post reports that the White House is feverishly searching the Medal of Honor files in an effort to verify President Reagan’s story. Says a researcher, “We will find it.” They never do.

12/28/83 Dr. George Graham, a member of the President’s Task Force on Food Assistance, says he doubts that “anyone in their right mind believes that there is a massive hunger problem.” He further claims that black children are “probably the best‑nourished group in the United States.”

12/28/83 Lars‑Erik Nelson reports that a reader saw a scene very similar to President Reagan’s Medal of Honor story in the 1944 movie Wing and a Prayer. “Adding to the confusion,” writes Nelson, “Dana Andrews at one point reprimands a glory‑seeking young pilot with the words: ‘This isn’t Hollywood.’  ... You could understand that some in the audience might confuse reality with fiction.”

1/11/84 Lars‑Erik Nelson suggests another source for the Medal of Honor story: an apocryphal item in the April 1944 issue of Reader’s Digest, a magazine known to be a life‑long Reagan favorite. “The bomber had been almost ripped apart by German cannon,” it read. “The ball turret gunner was badly wounded and stuck in the blister on the underside of the fuselage. Crewmen worked frantically to extricate the youngster, but there was nothing they could do. They began to jump. The terror‑stricken lad screamed in fear as he saw what was happening. The last man to jump heard the remaining crewman, a gunner, say, ‘Take it easy, kid. We’ll take this ride together.’”

All entries are excerpted from the “Reagan Centennial Edition” of my 1989 book The Clothes Have No Emperor, available here as an enhanced eBook. More to come.

 
Besides, really, what does any of this matter if Armageddon is imminent?

10/13/83 Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker is informed that President Reagan has appointed William Clark – as unqualified for this job as for all his others – to be the new Secretary of the Interior. “You’re kidding,” says Baker. “Now tell me who it really is.”

10/19/83 Asked at a press conference about the safety of the US Marines in Beirut, President Reagan says, “We’re looking at everything that can be done to try and make their position safer.  We’re not sitting idly by.”

10/23/83 A truck bomb at the US barracks in Beirut kills 241 Marines.

10/24/83 In the face of political strife on the island of Grenada, White House spokesman Larry Speakes calls press speculation about a US invasion “preposterous.”

10/25/83 Claiming that US medical students there are in grave danger, President Reagan diverts attention from the Beirut fiasco by launching an invasion of Grenada. Lest there be any doubt about Presidential involvement in this decision, photos are released showing a pajama‑clad Reagan – up at 5:15 a.m.! – being briefed on the situation. Curiously, reporters are prevented from covering the invasion.

10/26/83 American students from Grenada kiss the tarmac upon landing in South Carolina. Scoffs school bursar Gary Solin, “Our safety was never in danger. We were used by this government as an excuse to invade Grenada.” President Reagan says US troops “got there just in time” to prevent a Cuban takeover.

11/3/83 President Reagan explains that the military action he ordered in Grenada was not an invasion but was, rather, a “rescue mission.” As for a UN resolution deploring this action, “It didn’t upset my breakfast at all.”

12/3/83 Concrete barricades are erected in front of the White House to prevent truck bombers from cruising in as easily as they seem to in Beirut.

12/6/83 The Israeli newspaper Maariv reports that during a meeting with Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, President Reagan – who spent World War II making training films in Hollywood – claimed to have served as a photographer in an army unit filming the horrors of Nazi death camps. Shamir says Reagan also claimed to have saved a copy in case there was ever any question as to whether things had really been so bad. When asked just that question by a family member, Shamir quotes him as saying, “This is the time for which I saved the film, and I showed it to a group of people who couldn’t believe their eyes.”

12/6/83 Revealing his rather disturbing view about the “coming of Armageddon,” President Reagan says, “[Not] until now has there ever been a time in which so many of the prophecies are coming together. There have been times in the past when people thought the end of the world was coming, and so forth, but never anything like this.”

All entries are excerpted from the “Reagan Centennial Edition” of my 1989 book The Clothes Have No Emperor, available here as an enhanced eBook. More to come.

 
Also, a very bad man finally loses his job.

6/29/83 President Reagan appears on a TV tribute to James Bond, where he speaks about the fictional secret agent as if he was a real human. “James Bond is a man of honor,” says the President, “a symbol of real value to the free world.” Says Tip O’Neill aide Chris Matthews, “This is the kind of thing we all thought Reagan would be doing if he had lost the ‘80 election.”

7/26/83 Reagan appointee Thomas Ellis acknowledges at a Senate hearing that he belongs to an all‑white country club, was a recent guest of the government of South Africa (where he has extensive holdings) and served as director of a group that financed research on the genetic inferiority of blacks. Still, he says, “I do not believe in my heart that I’m a racist.” He withdraws his name two days later.

8/2/83 Rep. Pat Schroeder (D‑CO) says that Reagan is “perfecting the Teflon‑coated presidency ... nothing sticks to him. He is responsible for nothing – civil rights, Central America, the Middle East, the economy, the environment. He is just the master of ceremonies at someone else’s dinner.”

8/22/83 Barbara Honegger resigns her job at the Justice Department after writing an Op‑Ed piece for The Washington Post in which she calls Reagan’s policies toward women “a sham.” Described by a department spokesman as a “low‑level munchkin,” she holds a news conference three days later to display a photograph of herself with President Reagan. “They called me a Munchkin,” she says. “This is me with the Wizard of Oz.”

9/1/83 A Soviet fighter mistakenly shoots down Korean Air Lines flight 007 after it strays into Soviet airspace, killing 269. George Shultz calls Tip O’Neill to tell him about the incident. “What does the President think about this?” asks O’Neill. “We’ll tell him when he wakes up,” says Shultz. Only after CBS shows President Reagan on horseback at his ranch as the crisis unfolds does he reluctantly return to Washington.

9/15/83 President Reagan wears his new hearing aid at a state dinner, prompting fashion‑conscious guest Merv Griffin to exclaim, “I think everybody’s running out to get them whether they need them or not.” Despite Griffin’s fatuous comment, there is in fact no surge in the purchase of unnecessary hearing aids.

9/21/83 Interior Secretary James Watt describes the makeup of his coal‑leasing commission to a group of lobbyists. “We have every kind of mix you can have,” he says. “I have a black, I have a woman, two Jews and a cripple.” As a public furor erupts, a spokesman explains that Watt “was attempting to convey that this is a very broadly based commission.”

9/27/83 Polio victim Bob Brostrom arrives at the White House on crutches to present 120,000 pieces of mail supporting James Watt. If Watt loses his job for saying “cripple,” argues Brostrom, then hospitals for “crippled children” should change their names.

10/4/83 At a meeting with congressmen to discuss arms reduction, President Reagan – in office for almost three years – says he has only recently learned that most of the USSR’s nuclear arsenal is land‑based. This elementary information is essential to any rational thinking about disarmament.

10/9/83 Claiming that his “usefulness” to President Reagan “has come to an end,” James Watt resigns. “The press tried to paint my hat black,” he says of his troubled tenure, “but I had enough self‑image to know the hat was white.” He later assumes a crucifixion pose for photographers.

All entries are excerpted from the “Reagan Centennial Edition” of my 1989 book The Clothes Have No Emperor, available here as an enhanced eBook. More to come.

 
The President says and does some more stupid things.

4/14/83 President Reagan is asked if his administration is trying to overthrow the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. “No,” he says, “because that would be violating the law.”

4/18/83 Seventeen Americans and 46 Lebanese are killed when a truck bomb plows into the US embassy in Beirut.

4/27/83 President Reagan asks Congress for $600 million for his Central American policies, pointing out – as if it had some relevance – that this “is less than one‑tenth of what Americans will spend this year on coin‑operated video games.”

5/4/83 President Reagan lauds the Nicaraguan contras as “freedom fighters” and observes that nuclear weapons “can’t help but have an effect on the population as a whole.”

5/18/83 During a speech to the White House News Photographers dinner, President Reagan sticks his thumbs in his ears and wiggles his fingers. Says the leader of the free world, “I’ve been waiting years to do this.”

5/28/83 Telling his aides that, rather than reading his briefing books, he spent the eve of the Williamsburg economic summit watching The Sound of Music, President Reagan says, “I put them aside and spent the evening with Julie Andrews.”

6/9/83 Addressing a forum in Minnesota, President Reagan is asked how the Federal Government plans to respond to a report on education that he has “approved ... in its entirety.” He is unable to provide anything more specific than that he is “going to have meetings,” and finally turns to Education Secretary T. H. Bell for help. “Could you fill in what I left out?” the President asks Bell. “I won’t be offended.”

6/10/83 Reacting to President Reagan’s claim that he has increased federal aid to education, House Majority Leader Jim Wright (D-TX) says, “It embarrasses all of us as Americans to have to point out that the President of the United States is not telling the truth ... I want to believe that he doesn’t know any better. I want to believe that those who furnish him those spurious statistics are the culprits and that the President of the United States is innocently making these statements, not aware of their total untruth.”

6/16/83 Ariela Gross, a 17‑year‑old New Jersey student, meets with President Reagan to present him with a petition supporting a nuclear freeze. She reports that the President “expressed the belief that there must be something wrong with the freeze if the Soviets want it.”

6/29/83 President Reagan suggests that one cause of the decline in public education is the schools’ efforts to comply with court‑ordered desegregation.

All entries are excerpted from the “Reagan Centennial Edition” of my 1989 book The Clothes Have No Emperor, available here as an enhanced eBook. More to come.

 
Also in this installment, the President talks repeatedly about his ass.

1/10/83 Complaining about loose-lipped members of his Administration talking to the press, President Reagan declares, “I’ve had it up to my keister with these leaks.” This causes The New York Times to explain that “keister” is a “slang term for rump.”

1/13/83 Responding to Michael Deaver’s literary agent’s announcement that The Deaver Diet – recounting the Reagan PR guru’s 35-pound weight loss – will be published in 1984, columnist William Safire writes, “The Reagan White House has pioneered the New Graft. Instead of selling influence, sell your White House celebrity.” In an editorial, The New York Times notes, “For a White House aide to publish a diet book while jobless totals rise and cheese lines lengthen is a sure setup for Johnny Carson.” The book is never published.

1/20/83 In an interview with Business Week, Interior Secretary James Watt – who has described environmentalists as “a left-wing cult dedicated to bringing down the type of government I believe in” – compares them to Nazis. “Look what happened to Germany in the 1930s,” he says. “The dignity of man was subordinated to the powers of Nazism ... Those are the forces that this can evolve into.” Observes Wilderness Society chairman Gaylord Nelson, “I think the secretary has gone bonkers.”

1/20/83 President Reagan tells reporters about “the ten commandments of Nikolai Lenin ... the guiding principles of Communism,” among them “that promises are like pie crust, made to be broken.” Soviet scholars claim that no such commandments exist, and point out that Lenin’s name was Vladimir.

1/25/83 Unimpressed by President Reagan’s understanding of the underclass, NAACP executive director Benjamin Hooks says, “For the last thirty years he’s been in a dream world ... I think he actually believes that giving more to rich people will make them work harder, whereas the only way to make poor people work is to tax their unemployment benefits.”

2/15/83 The New York Times: REAGAN MISSTATEMENTS GETTING LESS ATTENTION

2/24/83 Three Canadian documentaries, including the Academy Award nominee If You Love This Planet, are classified as “political propaganda” by the Justice Department.

3/8/83 President Reagan tells a national convention of evangelicals that the Soviet Union is “the focus of evil in the modern world ... an evil empire.” Says historian Henry Steele Commager, “It was the worst presidential speech in American history, and I’ve read them all.”

3/22/83 Describing a memorable moment at a GOP leadership meeting, Sen. Bob Dole (R-KS) says, “The President, in one of the rare times I have seen him really disgusted, threw his glasses down and said he’s had it up to his keister with the banking industry.” The New York Times again explains that “keister” is a “slang term for rump.”

3/23/83 In what will become known as his “Star Wars” speech, President Reagan proposes a space‑based defense system to laser-blast incoming missiles out of the sky, just like in the movies. Just like one in particular: the 1940 film Murder In the Air, whose hero, Secret Service Agent Brass Bancroft (played by Ronald Reagan), gets involved with “The Inertia Projector,” a death ray that can shoot down planes.

All entries are excerpted from the “Reagan Centennial Edition” of my 1989 book The Clothes Have No Emperor, available here as an enhanced eBook. More to come.

 
Previously on The President Reagan Show, he told a Time magazine reporter that he sometimes feels trapped in the White House:  “You glance out the window and the people are walking around Pennsylvania Avenue and you say, ‘I could never say I am going to run down to the drugstore and get some magazines.’ I can’t do that anymore.”

10/12/82 White House spokesman Larry Speakes to the press: “You don’t tell us how to stage the news, and we don’t tell you how to report it.”

10/19/82 During a White House meeting with Arab leaders, President Reagan turns to the Lebanese foreign minister. “You know,” he says, “your nose looks just like Danny Thomas’s.”

11/11/82 President Reagan explains that his proposed five-cents-a-gallon gasoline tax would not be a tax at all. “It would be,” he explains, “a user fee.”

11/25/82 Larry Speakes chooses Thanksgiving as the ideal moment to announce that the White House is considering a proposal (conceived by Ed Meese) to tax unemployment benefits. This, says Speakes, would “make unemployment less attractive.”

11/26/82 Ed Meese denies that taxing unemployment benefits has been seriously considered, though he can’t help adding, “We do know that generally when unemployment benefits end, most people find jobs very quickly.”

12/4/82 President Reagan returns home from his five-day trip to Latin America. “Well, I learned a lot,” he tells reporters. “You’d be surprised. They’re all individual countries.” An aide is soon sent out to explain that the President certainly didn’t mean to imply that he was surprised by this.

12/9/82 Discussing his feelings of confinement with a reporter for People magazine, President Reagan says, “Sometimes I look out there at Pennsylvania Avenue and see people bustling along, and it suddenly dawns on me that probably never again can I just say, ‘Hey, I’m going down to the drugstore to look at the magazines.’”

12/15/82 Literary agent Bill Adler announces that The Deaver Diet, recounting the White House aide’s 35‑pound weight loss, will be published in early 1984. Adler says the book will consist of 75% diet, 20% exercise and 5% “inspiration.”

12/16/82 Spontaneously conveying one of his regrets to a Washington Post reporter, President Reagan says, “I sometimes look out the window at Pennsylvania Avenue and wonder what it would be like to be able to just walk down the street to the corner drugstore and look at the magazines. I can’t do that anymore.”

12/18/82 Sharing a sudden thought with a radio interviewer, President Reagan says, “I sometimes look out the window at Pennsylvania Avenue and wonder what it would be like to be able to just walk down the street to the corner drugstore and look at the magazines. I can’t do that anymore.”

All entries are excerpted from the “Reagan Centennial Edition” of my 1989 book The Clothes Have No Emperor, available here as an enhanced eBook. More to come.