A press release from the state Department of Transportation that it will dedicate a portion of State Road 9A as “Ronald W. Reagan Memorial Highway” tomorrow morning makes me long for the days when such a ceremony would be greeted with indignation and outrage. Those days actually existed, right?
Anyway, writer David Corn summed it up best in his 1998 piece written shortly before Washington National Airport in D.C. was renamed in honor of the Gipper. For those of you who didn’t catch it then, it’s still essential reading:
66 Things to Think About when Flying Into Reagan National Airport
The firing of the air-traffic controllers, winnable nuclear war, recallable nuclear missiles, trees that cause pollution, Elliott Abrams lying to Congress, ketchup as a vegetable, colluding with Guatemalan thugs, pardons for FBI lawbreakers, voodoo economics, budget deficits, toasts to Ferdinand Marcos, public-housing cutbacks, red-baiting the nuclear-freeze movement, James Watt.
Getting cozy with Argentine fascist generals, tax credits for segregated schools, disinformation campaigns, “homeless by choice,” Manuel Noriega, falling wages, the HUD scandal, air raids on Libya, “constructive engagement” with apartheid South Africa, United States Information Agency blacklists of liberal speakers, attacks on OSHA and workplace safety, the invasion of Grenada, assassination manuals, Nancy’s astrologer. Drug tests, lie-detector tests, Fawn Hall, female appointees (8 percent), mining harbors, the S&L scandal, 239 dead U.S. troops in Beirut, Al Haig “in charge,” silence on AIDS, food-stamp reductions, Debategate, White House shredding, Jonas Savimbi, tax cuts for the rich, “mistakes were made.”
Michael Deaver’s conviction for influence peddling, Lyn Nofziger’s conviction for influence peddling, Caspar Weinberger’s five-count indictment, Ed Meese (”You don’t have many suspects who are innocent of a crime”), Donald Regan (women don’t “understand throw weights”), education cuts, massacres in El Salvador.
“The bombing begins in five minutes,” $640 Pentagon toilet seats, African-American judicial appointees (1.9 percent), Reader’s Digest, CIA-sponsored car bombing in Lebanon (more than eighty civilians killed), 200 officials accused of wrongdoing, William Casey, Iran/Contra.
“Facts are stupid things,” three-by-five cards, the MX missile, Bitburg, SDI, Robert Bork, naps, Teflon.
– Posted by Anne Schindler
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