I can respect someone that is true to their convictions and is willing to admit a mistake. I appreciate the honesty of this post even though you and I probably live on different ends of the political spectrum. In the end, there is enough about W to ridicule without creating fiction.

Mommie? He called his wife 'Mommie'?

I feel badly that I called Reagan an idiot. He's not a total idiot.

Anyway, yes, I think he used to call Nancy Mommie as her nickname but again that quote from above where he says 'Mommie' is not really from his diaries.

i see now. thank you.

i wouldn't feel bad though. he was a terrible actor, and a snitch, and yet, he was able to pull off the greatest performance of his career in fooling the American public into voting for him. twice (with a little help from the ascending Religious Right).

We need Zombie Reagan!

*slowest slow clap in the world*

So, you just did a whole column on an e-mail forward?

Hmm. I'm having serious problems with the de facto characterization of Ronald Reagan as the sainted High Father of "true" conservatism, either. Gimme Goldwater, not the casting couch slut who laid the first bricks of foundation for the house of shit the current administration holds court from.

Seriously, your writing is like a LiveJournal bot with a healthy sprinkling of sound-bite ad sloganing from '80s Saturday morning programming. ...and I'm not just talking about this column.

I think it is disingenuous at best, and manipulative at worst, to characterize the diseased political situation in this country as solely the fault of weak Democrats and "understandably" misguided neo-cons and that somehow, the sainted ghost of Ronnie will somehow make things better.

One last thing, and this is meant in all good humor: You're even still a little disingenuous at the end, I think. I don't think you liked Michael Jackson in 1986, I think you looooooooooooooved him.

So why was he an idiot again? Just wondering if that whole having "facts" thing was getting in the way of your fun.

Anyhow, I know that's a snippy comment to make, but I'm in a mood. Good on you for admitting your mistake.

I heard on the lettermen show that over one presidential lunch Reagan had with Bush senior, that he brought along Bush junior,..during the course of the lunch Bush junior placed a bread roll on his head and said "look everybody,..i have a bread hat."...this paragraph from the reagan diaries make me squeeze a tiny bit of piss out....i am sadden to know that if maybe false now.

I SAY WE NEED ZOMBIE GOLDWATER

Iran Contra, arming Afghanistan, rich got richer - etc.
however....he did prevent a nuclear war.

"Seriously, your writing is like a LiveJournal bot with a healthy sprinkling of sound-bite ad sloganing from '80s Saturday morning programming. ...and I'm not just talking about this column."

This is an insult, right? I couldnt understand. It was so self-indulgently descriptive.

Stop reading me?

The column was not on an email forward but a recent book that's been published and pretty popular radio and internet rumor about said contents of book. To make it more personal, I included a detail about something I'd done.

He prevented a nuclear war ? Could you show some evidence of that ?
I mean, yeah the U.S.S.R. collapsed on his watch and he didn't push the button. W00t !
But To give him credit for the prevention of nuclear war ? Jimmy Carter did it too. So did Gerald Ford, Nixon, Johnson, Eisenhower, and Kennedy.
Come to think of it, SO FAR George W. Bush has prevented nuclear war too. Yay ! , Go George !

Wow... You really understood this piece. It was totally Sleepylady's intention to start a debate on the merits of Ronald Reagan.

Bravo, Dummy!

Another thread enriched by your ham-fisted, asinine take...

Thanks, I look forward to your next failure of an article junior.

oh and flag.

So you would characterize her take on Ronald Reagan as informed and realistic, or did you just want to take a swipe at another poster?

It was her intention, based on her response to me, to comment on the release of a new book. She even showed the cover, which was very nice of her. It is a very nice photo of somebody who was probably a very nice man who did a lot of very nice things.

How is it surprising, again, that we ended up talking about the merits of Ronald Reagan after a column with such gems as:

SleepyLady said:

I am now asking sincerely: How is one not supposed to take this as being implicitly very pro-Reagan? Is that not, then, a commentary on the merits of Ronald Reagan? I don't really care about your pee contest with Chainlink, but I think it's really disingenuous to say that the OP didn't invoke discussion on Reagan's merits herself. Maybe you just need a little more ham-fist in your diet.

So, to get at least a little bit back on-topic:

How did Ronald Reagan make it cool to speak out against stupidity, again? His wife consulted astrologers. He built his entire popularity on an anachronistic mischaracterization of the Soviet Union. He misunderstood the Middle East just as much as GW, but he did it in a much more subtle way. (I'm not giving somebody credit for not waging pre-emptive war.)

I truly feel like somebody had to have slept through most of the '80s to think it was a time when people spoke out against stupidity.