ET TU, BONZO: A CENTURY’S WORTH OF RONALD REAGAN IN HIS OWN WORDS
By Anthony Pignataro/CalWatchdog.com
This year makes 100 since Ronald Reagan was born, so Republican Assemblyman Curt Hagman of Chino Hills is holding an essay contest and putting up prize money from his campaign coffers—$500 to the winner, $250 to the runner up.
The writing rewards are easily one of the best uses of political donations I’ve ever seen. But the essay rules—well, rule; there’s only one—also create the potential for political embarrassment. Entrants are permitted up to 1,000 words to explain the importance of one of Reagan’s quotes or speeches. That’s it.
Reagan’s words can be plucked from any time in his life—from his two terms as U.S. President, his two terms as California governor, his years as president of the Screen Actors Guild, some movie dialogue he might have ad-libbed in Bedtime For Bonzo or even a particularly effective warning he shouted at kids playing grab-ass around the Lowell Park pool when he was a teenaged lifeguard. That dude always had his mouth running.
This is the Reagan quote I would have written about: “We were not trading arms for hostages, nor were we negotiating with terrorists.” Not only did Reagan say that as president during the Iran-Contra scandal, but in 1990 he included it in “An American Life: The Autobiography,” on page 512.
That probably isn’t what Hagman wants in his essay contest. Doctrinaire Republicans like him have always fascinated me—they are government officials who distrust government, and they explain their distrust by venerating Reagan, another former government official.
For example, Hagman folded this Reagan quote—”A government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth”—into a 2009 op-ed piece for ChinoHills.com. Hagman rhapsodized, “The President’s words are just as true today as when he said them many years ago given California’s inability to eliminate any outdated bureaucracy to help solve our $26 billion budget shortfall.”
The truth is that Reagan raised taxes as governor of California, and as President he never eliminated a government program or department. Yet Republicans trip over themselves as they drop to one knee at the mere mention of Ronald Reagan’s name—a name which now adorns one of the largest aircraft carriers ever built, as well as a hundred other structures around the world.
That’s not even close to the ultimate goal of the Reagan Legacy Project, which wants each of the world’s 3,141 countries to include at least one building named for Reagan. It would be a fitting tribute: naming all levels of our government—perhaps the most bloated and sprawling in history—after the so-called champion of small government.
But it’s not quite as spectacular as the tribute being paid to former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger by the men who brought us Spiderman and Strawberry Shortcake.
“The man who was recently in charge of the world’s eighth-largest economy will be turning himself into a cartoon character,” reported Entertainment Weekly, the new go-to news source for all things Arnold, in its April 8 issue. “And not just any cartoon character, but the Governator, a sunglasses-wearing superhero with an Austrian accent who’ll be at the center of an ambitious, kid-friendly multimedia comic-book and animated TV series codeveloped by no less a hero make than Stan Lee [Andy Heyward, who produced the Shortcake, Care Bears and Inspector Gadget cartoons is also involved].”
A name on a building is one thing, but getting your likeness used in a comic and cartoon series is virtual immortality. Never mind that Schwarzenegger didn’t really do anything as governor—comics are about fantasy. If Stan Lee really wanted to go off the deep end, he would have set the comic in 2005, during the height of Schwarzenegger’s term of office, rather than after Arnold left office. Imagine that for a moment: a superhero striding the Capitol halls, thwarting disaster with a wave of his hand. Even Arnold doesn’t buy that.
There were times people were upset with me for not being able to do certain things as governor,” Schwarzenegger told EW. “They felt I was the Terminator. They thought I was going to take care of things like in the movies…. I tried to tell them that it was more complicated than that.”
This, of course, is an older, more mature Schwarzenegger than the one who held up a broom at a Sacramento campaign rally in October 2003 and promised to clean up state government. Words like that seem hollow now, but only if you think about them.
If you just repeat the words and ignore the deeds (or lack thereof), then it’s very easy to imagine Ronald Reagan as a pivotal figure of history or Arnold Schwarzenegger as a superhero.
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8 Comments
Whenever we attempt to elevate anyone, from any field, high onto a pedestal, we tend to forget that at the end of the day they were really just fellow human beings, little different from the rest of us, usually trying to do the very best they could with the circumstances under which they were required to operate.
By even the most extreme stretch of the imagination, President Reagan was not a saint. Not everything he did as an elected official, at either the state or the federal level proved to have been the best path to follow,
particularly in the crystal clear perspective of 20-20 hindsight.
Yet he led this nation through some extremely difficult challenges and amid whatever harm he may have caused or facilitated, he accomplished and facilitated a great deal more very, VERY great good.
In this greatest and most free of all nations, no elected official, from any party, should be considered worthy of beatification. But neither should whatever good they accomplished be ignored.
For the consideration and recognition of such people, there is, indeed, a middle way. A way in which we might give due recognition for the good in a public official’s life, and still acknowledge the bad and learn something constructive from it.
lest we forget
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reagan_administration_scandals
howardx: Can you offer the name of a single modern-day President, of any party or persuasion, whose administration was *not* beset by periodic scandals? I would be surprised if you could. I would be more suprised if, just once, you proved half so willing to subject liberal elected officials, candidates and causes to the same level of critical scrutiny to which you subject conservative elected officials, candidates, and causes. Just once.
the difference is greet, this article is about reagan so a list of reagan scandals is quite appropriate. i especially enjoyed revisiting reagan and ghw bush’s treason during iran contra. good times.
howardx: I wasn’t addressing the primary subject of the article (I say “primary” of course because it clearly does not only address Reagan, but also Schwarzenegger and, not nearly so cleverly as was intended, Bush as well [did you look closely at the photo?].)
No, I was adressing *you*, and inquiring as to whether or not *you* could offer the name of a single modern-day President, of any party or persuasion, whose administration was *not* beset by periodic scandals. An inquiry that *you* completely ignored, as expected.
I was addressing *you*, and expressed that I would be surprised if, just once, *you* proved half so willing to subject liberal elected officials, candidates and causes to the same level of critical scrutiny to which *you* subject conservative elected officials, candidates, and causes. I am still waiting for that sort of fair and balanced treatment from *you* or, for that matter, pretty much any other liberal as well.
I love how authors of articles such as these spend a good deal of ink slamming what they call “Doctrinaire Republicans” “like Hagman,” never once addressing equally “Doctrinaire Democrats” who are also in elected office.
The truth is all Presidents, past and present and of either party, have both their sycophants and their detractors. Reagan may not have been the best President we ever had, but neither was he the worst…not by a long shot.
this coming from the guy who will give ANY conservative a pass as witnessed by your whitewashing of welfare cheat star parker’s past just recently. pardon me if i just fart in your general direction instead loser.
Lol @ howardx! While I love a good pythonism as well as the next guy, your accusations against me in this case are entirely unsupported by the facts. I routinely take conservatives to task whenever they violate the principles to which they claim to ascribe.
Further, I have never white-washed anything concerning Ms. Parker. Like her, I have always fully acknowledged the mistakes she has made in the past. I have commended her for having the courage to publicly admit to them, to accept responsibility for them, and for having the strength of character to rise above her mistakes and the many great difficulties she once faced in her life.
At least Ms. Parker does admit to her mistakes and her failings. Unlike Rep. Richardson, who, to my knowledge, has never once acknowledged any of her own very public mistakes and failings and, instead, spends all of her time and effort denying and otherwise white-washing THEM.
Oh and by the way, howardx. You really should consider giving up your unfortunate habit of calling people names and offering insult as you do. Resorting to such childish tactics serves no constructive purpose. All it does is provide evidence for the belief that you are unable to hold your own in a civil and respectful encounter among adults in the arena of ideas without resorting to such juvenile silliness.
Your views would be taken much more seriously if you could but learn to present them in ways that are less ridiculing and more respectful.