Paul Slansky remembering Reagan

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Author of "The Clothes Have No Emperor" discussing and remembering Reagan.


http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/ ... o_emperor/

That is beyond uncalled for, you are mocking a dead President a day after the anniversary of his birth. What you just did is in poor taste to say the very least. That would be like Rush going out and mocking John F. Kennedy on the anniversary of his birth.

You're right. I would have done it the day of but I don't have a computer at home at the moment.

Happy Belated un-birthday Ronnie!! You left us about 50 years too late!

Seriously, you are really over the line.

I don't see an issue with it. Haven't you ever heard of 'birthday beats'?

I know Slansky HATED Reagan and was (and IS) a flaming liberal-I've read his book-but I think he's being too hard on him. I DID, however, like Slansky's approach to chronicling the 80s, which is probably the last decade in which pop culture was more culture than pop (Slansky hates Madonna, so what, I'll take her music over most of today's rappers).

Some of the characters that popped up in the 80s occasionally were never equaled, such as subway shooter Bernard Goetz, who blew away several black kids on a late run Manhattan subway car because, supposedly, he thought they were about to kill him with long screwdrivers (the survivors later said that they used the screwdrivers to rob quarters from arcade games, arcade games being another quaint, distant memory of a time when every home DIDN'T have a Playstation). One of the kids was paralyzed from the neck down.

Then there's Gary Hart, who seems quaint compared with some of the political crooks of today. (OMG, he had sex with somebody other than his wife! And that disqualified him from the presidency! I guess pols hadn't considered raping the treasury as a career move yet.)

The bad part is that Reagan's embrace of mergers and acquisitions as an economic growth strategy gave us several bubbles and ultimately a depression that nobody can fix. It also gave us debt up to our eyeballs and billion dollar yearly salaries while most people earn a pittance. But the 80s per se weren't all that bad.

1/21/81 At his first Cabinet meeting, President Reagan is asked if the Administration has plans to issue an expected Executive Order on cost‑cutting. He shrugs. Then, noticing budget director David Stockman nodding emphatically, he adds, “I have a smiling fellow at the end of the table who tells me we do.”

1/21/81 On his first full day on the job as National Security Adviser, Richard Allen receives $1,000 and a pair of Seiko watches from Japanese journalists as a tip for arranging an interview with Nancy Reagan.

2/2/81 At his hearing to become Under‑secretary of State, Reagan crony William Clark is subjected to a current events quiz. Is he familiar with the struggles within the British Labour Party? He is not. Does he know which European nations don’t want US nuclear weapons on their soil? He does not. Can he name the Prime Minister of South Africa? He cannot. The Prime Minister of Zimbabwe? “It would be a guess.” Despite his wide-ranging ignorance, he is confirmed.

2/5/81 Testifying before Congress, Interior Secretary James Watt – of whom President Reagan says, “I think he’s an environmentalist himself, as I think I am” – is asked if he agrees that natural resources must be preserved for future generations. Yes, Watt says, but “I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns.”

2/11/81 Labor Secretary Raymond Donovan eases requirements for the labeling of hazardous chemicals in the workplace.

3/6/81 New York Times: REAGAN IS MOVING TO END PROGRAM THAT PAYS FOR LEGAL AID TO THE POOR

3/18/81 Responding to charges that three Baltimore slums he owns should have been boarded up months ago, White House aide Lyn Nofziger says, “If I didn’t own them, somebody else would ... It’s much ado about nothing.”

3/30/81 Following Reagan’s shooting, Secretary of State Alexander Haig rushes to the White House briefing room where, trembling and with his voice cracking, he seeks to reassure our allies that the government continues to function: “As of now, I am in control here, in the White House, pending return of the vice president.” Afterward, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger confronts Haig and informs him that he has misstated the line of succession, which actually places the Speaker of the House and the president pro tempore of the Senate ahead of the Secretary of State. Snarls Haig, “Look, you better go home and read your Constitution, buddy. That’s the way it is.”

3/31/81 An ABC News/Washington Post poll shows that President Reagan’s popularity rating went up 11 points after he was shot, though not everybody suddenly adores him. One student writes in his college newspaper that he hopes Reagan dies of his wounds, prompting Nancy to inquire about the possibility of prosecuting him.

4/1/81 CNN airs a videotape of psychic Tamara Rand “predicting” the Reagan shooting on a Las Vegas talk show reportedly taped on January 6th. Rand said she felt Reagan was in danger “at the end of March” from “a thud” in the “chest area” caused by “shots all over the place” from the gun of a “fair‑haired” young man named something like “Jack Humley.” Four days later Dick Maurice, the show’s host, admits that this astonishing “prediction” was actually taped the day after the shooting. Still, she had it pegged pretty close.

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

You have been over the line for a while with your ignorance and gluttony in your consumption of propaganda. Reagan was scum and the cult formed around him is worse than the one around the founding fathers because we SHOULD know better about Reagan since we've actual records of all of what he's said and done and who he associated with. Not to mention the idealized parts of Reagan are all of his FAILED POLICIES.

5/9/81 New York Times: C.I.A. SEEKS LAW FOR SURPRISE SEARCHES OF NEWSROOMS

5/10/81 Washington Post: REAGAN WANTS TO ABOLISH CONSUMER PRODUCT AGENCY

5/11/81 Ed Meese calls the American Civil Liberties Union “a criminals’ lobby.”

5/21/81 New York Times: WHITE HOUSE SEEKS EASED BRIBERY ACT / SAYS 1977 LAW INHIBITS BUSINESS ABROAD BY U.S. CORPORATIONS

6/12/81 President Reagan fails to recognize his only black Cabinet member, Housing Secretary Samuel Pierce, at a White House reception for big‑city mayors. “How are you, Mr. Mayor?” he greets Pierce. “I’m glad to meet you. How are things in your city?”

6/16/81 President Reagan holds his third press conference, where he responds to questions on the Israeli attack on Iraq (“I can’t answer that”), Israel’s refusal to sign the Nuclear Non‑proliferation Treaty (“Well, I haven’t given very much thought to that particular question there”), Pakistan’s refusal to sign the treaty (“I won’t answer the last part of the question”), Israeli threats against Lebanon (“Well, this one’s going to be one, I’m afraid, that I can’t answer now”), and the tactics of political action committees (“I don’t really know how to answer that”). As for skepticism about his administration’s grasp of foreign affairs, the President declares, “I’m satisfied that we do have a foreign policy.”

7/23/81 Invited by Treasury Secretary Donald Regan to join the negotiating session at which his tax bill is being shaped, President Reagan chuckles and says, “Heck, no. I’m going to leave this to you experts. I’m not going to get involved in details.”

8/5/81 The Reagan Administration begins sending dismissal notices to over 5,000 striking members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Union (PATCO). By week’s end, the union is broken.

8/6/81 Washington Post: WHITE HOUSE SEEKS TO LOOSEN STANDARDS UNDER CLEAN AIR ACT

8/13/81 President Reagan takes time out from his summer vacation at his home in Santa Barbara, California – which is oddly called a “ranch” though no livestock or crops are raised there – to sign the largest budget and tax cuts in history into law. When his dog wanders by, a reporter asks its name. “Lassie,” the President replies, then corrects himself. “Millie!” he says. “Millie. Millie’s her name.” Everyone laughs and laughs, because it’s just so funny when someone forgets his own dog’s name and confuses her with a movie dog.

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

The hypocrisy is quite stunning.

I have no objection whatsoever if you choose to defend Reagan against the information contained in this work. Perhaps you might want to paint a more complete picture of him, as opposed to the slanted and one-sided portrayal that has emerged from Slansky's research. (The irony would be truly delightful!)

But if you are free to level Beck's accusatory finger at Soros, then skafather is free to level Slansky's at Reagan.

Last I checked, George Soros was in the land of the living still. Smearing an individual when they are deceased is just plain tacky.

Someone has to defend history while your drones create a bloody fracking religion based off of a senile old man who was manipulated by some very disgustingly corrupt people.

Suit without a hangar topic

I think many insiders knew Reagan was in the initial stage of Alzheimer's disease during his first term, and I think the shooting by Hinckley probably sped it up. Reagan should have done the sensible thing and left the presidency after his first term ended.

OK, so you are never to criticize Hitler or Stalin again, and must defend them anytime someone else tries to "smear" them.

Do you understand now why what you just said is stupid?

He clearly meant it only for one of god's prophets like Reagan, not some stinking lefty like Hitler.

8/19/81 White House counselor Ed Meese sees no need to wake President Reagan just to tell him the Navy has shot down two Libyan jets. Defending Meese’s decision, Reagan explains, “If our planes are shot down, yes, they’d wake me up right away. If the other fellows were shot down, why wake me up?”

8/31/81 Former movie actor Rex Allen, who spent 45 minutes with President Reagan after presenting him with four pairs of free boots, says, “He acted like there was nothing else in the world he had to do, nothing else on his mind.” Says an unnamed White House aide, “There are times when you really need him to do some work, and all he wants to do is tell stories about his movie days.”

9/4/81 The Agriculture Department proposes cutting the size of school lunches and offering tofu, yogurt, cottage cheese or peanuts as viable meat substitutes. Also, condiments such as ketchup and pickle relish would be reclassified as actual vegetables.

9/23/81 President Reagan plays host to welterweight champion Sugar Ray Leonard and his wife. “We’re very proud,” says the President, “to have Sugar Ray and Mrs. Ray here.”

9/25/81 President Reagan announces that he has withdrawn the proposal to cut school lunches. He suggests that a dissident faction in the Agriculture Department might have come up with the idea as a form of “bureaucratic sabotage.” And just to set the record straight, aide James Johnson explains, “It would be a mistake to say that ketchup per se was classified as a vegetable. Ketchup in combination with other things was classified as a vegetable.” And what things would ketchup have to have combined with to have been considered a full‑blown vegetable? “French fries or hamburgers.”

10/2/81 At a White House briefing with Caspar Weinberger, President Reagan is asked how his MX missiles will be deployed. “I don’t know but what maybe you haven’t gotten into the area that I’m gonna turn over to the, heh heh, to the Secretary of Defense,” he says sheepishly. “The silos will be hardened,” Weinberger says, then nods approvingly as Reagan ad-libs, “Yes, I could say this. The plan also includes the hardening of silos.”

11/13/81 The White House announces that the Justice Department is investigating a $1,000 payment given to National Security Adviser Richard Allen by a Japanese magazine after he helped arrange a brief post‑inaugural interview with Nancy Reagan. “I didn’t accept it. I received it,” says Allen, who explains that “it would have been an embarrassment” to the Japanese to have returned the money. He takes a leave of absence while the investigation continues, embarking on a doomed attempt to save himself by going on TV and taking his case directly to the people, who couldn’t care less who the National Security Adviser is as long as they’re not required to know his name. The President hails his integrity, then names noted foreign policy non-expert William Clark to succeed him.

11/13/81 Dismissing charges that Reagan economic policies are unfair, GOP finance chairman Richard DeVos scoffs, “When I hear people talking about money, it’s usually people who don’t have any.”

11/23/81 President Reagan vetoes a stopgap spending bill, thus forcing the federal government – for the first time in history – to temporarily shut down. Says House Speaker Tip O’Neill, “He knows less about the budget than any president in my lifetime. He can’t even carry on a conversation about the budget. It’s an absolute and utter disgrace.”

12/2/81 Following a four‑month investigation into William Casey’s business dealings, the Senate Intelligence Committee gives the CIA Director the rousing endorsement of being not “unfit to serve.”

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