My family is not very good with current events. Case in point: we were cussing the mailman up one side and down the other as a lazy bastard today until we finally remembered.
Reagan.
What is it they're doing to him now? Burying him?
For the record - if by some bizarre twist of fate I die famous - let it be known that, no matter how famous I am, I do NOT want to be carted from one end of the country to the other, shown to millions of people, cried over, discussed endlessly, had the mail stopped for me, et cetera, ad infinitum. No fuss, please. Just chuck me into the coffin and cover me over like the rotting side of meat I will be.
I suppose at this point I should say something about how, personal distaste for spectacle aside, I respected Reagan as a person and so on, but actually I didn't. I was born about three days before Reagan was elected, and so, while I may have lived through the Reagan administration, it was not precisely my most politically aware stage of life. Reagan fell into that awkward time period of too long ago for me to really remember but too recent to be covered in my history classes. We did cover Reagan briefly in Environmental Politics, but that was confined to my professor bringing in a picture of Reagan's pet environmentalist, Julian Simon (actual quote: "The only environmental problem is the environmentalists!"), pinning it to the blackboard, and drawing horns on. Succinct, but brief.
My main hope is that when Bush Jr. finally kicks it he will not get all this hoop-la, but that instead the news will be quietly swept under the rug, as news of Nixon's death was. God knows he's as big a fuck-up as Nixon. At least Nixon wasn't a war criminal. That's right, our darling president doesn't have to follow the rules - he can torture people all he wants! And so can other people, because he told them so, in an actual written memo! His good buddy Mr. Ashcroft said it was just fine! Against the law, but hey, that's a-okay, since we're hunting TERRORISTS! God, I need to move.
Reagan.
What is it they're doing to him now? Burying him?
For the record - if by some bizarre twist of fate I die famous - let it be known that, no matter how famous I am, I do NOT want to be carted from one end of the country to the other, shown to millions of people, cried over, discussed endlessly, had the mail stopped for me, et cetera, ad infinitum. No fuss, please. Just chuck me into the coffin and cover me over like the rotting side of meat I will be.
I suppose at this point I should say something about how, personal distaste for spectacle aside, I respected Reagan as a person and so on, but actually I didn't. I was born about three days before Reagan was elected, and so, while I may have lived through the Reagan administration, it was not precisely my most politically aware stage of life. Reagan fell into that awkward time period of too long ago for me to really remember but too recent to be covered in my history classes. We did cover Reagan briefly in Environmental Politics, but that was confined to my professor bringing in a picture of Reagan's pet environmentalist, Julian Simon (actual quote: "The only environmental problem is the environmentalists!"), pinning it to the blackboard, and drawing horns on. Succinct, but brief.
My main hope is that when Bush Jr. finally kicks it he will not get all this hoop-la, but that instead the news will be quietly swept under the rug, as news of Nixon's death was. God knows he's as big a fuck-up as Nixon. At least Nixon wasn't a war criminal. That's right, our darling president doesn't have to follow the rules - he can torture people all he wants! And so can other people, because he told them so, in an actual written memo! His good buddy Mr. Ashcroft said it was just fine! Against the law, but hey, that's a-okay, since we're hunting TERRORISTS! God, I need to move.
posted at 08:13 PM on 06/11/04
by kat -
Category: Politics
Stumble It!
Comments
Kellie wrote:
06/11/04 09:29 PM
Adam wrote:
Actually, Nixon <b>was</b> a war criminal. Remember his and Kissinger's carpet bombing campaign in Cambodia? The secret war in Laos?
Honestly, what do they teach the children in the schools these days! ;)
Honestly, what do they teach the children in the schools these days! ;)
06/18/04 12:01 PM
kat wrote:
"Remember his and Kissinger's carpet bombing campaign in Cambodia? The secret war in Laos?"
No. I wasn't even *thought* of when Nixon was president, and, again, he's too recent for most of my teachers to have treated in history class. Made them feel old, I suppose.
You may go feel old now. <grin>
No. I wasn't even *thought* of when Nixon was president, and, again, he's too recent for most of my teachers to have treated in history class. Made them feel old, I suppose.
You may go feel old now. <grin>
06/21/04 12:59 PM
Julia wrote:
They shut down a lot of the federal government for Nixon's funeral, as a general day of mourning. I just don't remember if the mail was included. I do remember that they were asking certain "essential employees" to work that day, and they'd get both the wages for the day's work AND the wages for the vacation day. IRS employees working on tax returns (which included me) were among those they considered "essential" at that point, as it was late April and they were trying to get 1040s processed as quickly as possible. Oh, and this was also shortly after the bombing in Oklahoma City, so morale wasn't exactly up for a lot of federal workers.
I took the day off. I needed to take a day off that week to deal with someone else's emergency. That was one of the least fun days I ever took as vacation. But I was grateful to Nixon for choosing to die when he did so I didn't have to burn REAL vacation hours on it.
I took the day off. I needed to take a day off that week to deal with someone else's emergency. That was one of the least fun days I ever took as vacation. But I was grateful to Nixon for choosing to die when he did so I didn't have to burn REAL vacation hours on it.
07/24/04 04:19 PM
Wow, I feel so old. I was around for the last two years of Carter. I was old enough to get some sense of Reagan as a president, especially because I lived in Germany for the last two years of his presidency. But I mainly remember him for being an actor and having jelly beans on his desk.