Liberals Struggle for Nice Things to Say About Reagan

he death of former president Ronald Reagan was followed by a week-long awkwardness as non-conservatives, especially the left-leaning and liberal-slanted individuals across the nation, searched for something socially acceptable to say about the late Californian.

The normal mixed feelings of seeing a longtime political adversary take a dirt nap were compounded by the unrelenting, merciless coverage of sunny-side up Reagan throughout the week since his death on June 5. For liberals, who had previously been pouring on the rancor against two-dimensional Reaganite George W. Bush and his re-election campaign, the "sudden" death of the 93-year-old ex-president and conservative icon created an uncomfortable air for expressing their views of the modern political climate, and the right-wing politics inherited from Reagan’s administration.

Daniel Kirkland, a talk show on the left-wing radio network Air America, summed up the difficulty of liberal commentary in the past week.

"You hate to see anybody die, regardless of their politics," said Kirkland, "but if Muhammad Ali died, and everyone was going around pretending he won every boxing match when he stepped into the ring, you’d start to feel the urge to remind everyone about the losses. Why does someone have to all of a sudden be perfect just because they died?"

Even the usual safe-havens for liberal free speech have felt the pressure to be nice during the funeral hoopla, and the pressure has begun to show.

"You’d think God himself died," grumbled Tina Crowley, a Green Party campaign organizer in Trenton, New Jersey. "Nobody here has even wanted to talk about politics all this week. And we’re the friggin’ Green Party. Some people were even saying some nice things about Reagan here, it was enough to drive you batshit. Like ’Maybe James Watt didn’t intend to do all that environmental damage.’ Yeah, that’s possible."

Professor of Sociology Deatria Lumley experienced the same difficulties with the ex-president’s death.

"Separating a man from his work is easy outside politics, but becomes all the more impossible when that man was a president," said Lumley. "He may have been a nice guy in his private life, but as someone who works with deteriorating underclasses and witnessing first hand the cuts to social programs and the damage it does, myself and people in my profession find it difficult to conform to social expectations of funeral etiquette."

Adding her own thoughts on Reagan, Lumley complimented him, "The man didn’t blow us up, no matter how close we might have come. It keeps me up at night thinking about just how close."

Other liberal mourners included public defender Jacob Howitzer: "He always gave us a lot of laughs. Not directly, or at least I guess he didn’t realize it was funny. Phil Hartman, he did a cool Reagan impression on Saturday Night Live." Howitzer added: "I miss him, I really do. Hartman was a genius."

Another mourner, leaflet distributor Bryan Forbes: "He had nice hair."

Folk concert organizer and self-described "Earth Mother" Loretta Melbourne: "Fuck it. He was a prick. Call me a cold bitch, I just plain didn’t like him."

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Did President Bush know about Osama bin Laden's terrible plans before September 11th? You bet your flight-school-flunking ass he did.

On August 19th, the CIA intercepted a top-secret communication between bin Laden and one of his top aides. Does the phrase "up your nose with a rubber hose" mean anything to you? Exactly. The CIA transmitted this translation to the president later that day:




oSamaYomama17: Hey diddle diddle, Malcom in the Middle.

die4aLLah: wasssssssaap, bitch?

oSamaYomama17: Ain't a thing, dawg. We still on for Allah's House Party?

die4aLLah: huh?

oSamaYomama17: Shit. Am I the only one that reads these code booklets? You know, the thing? Praise Allah, you stupid. I'm surprised they even let your ugly ass into flight school. You know, we gonna blow up them buildins and the White House or some corn field out in Pennsylvania or some shit? What, you got something else going on that week?

die4aLLah: Aw, right. Shit yeah dawg. I read ya. I though you wuz talking bout the J-lo concert on Sunday. I'm witcha. Death to them hatless motherfuckas! C;-P

oSamaYomama17: Ain't that some true shit. We still meeting up at the mall later?

die4aLLah: Without a doubt. As long as you're still not cruising round in that tired old head wrap. Haha. l8ter!



Many of you may have your fragile little worlds destroyed by the notion that the president knew of these horrors beforehand, but it'll bleach your pigment even further to know that it's happened before. Many times. Truman knew all about Pearl Harbor before it happened. Nixon knew about the Kennedy assassination. Hell, Reagan even knew who shot J.R.

But why, you ask, would Bush sit by and do nothing if he knew of the tragedy to come? Simple. Osama bin Ladin is…

George W. Bush's father.

I know we've all been led to believe that George Bush, Sr. is his true father. And it seems to make sense, what with the name and all. But what few know is that when W. was very young the powers that be feared the creation of an evil dynasty and took action, hiding him from his true parents. He was taken to live with his aunt and uncle Barbara and George, where he grew up far from the influence of Osama and his dastardly ways. Everyone knows that Osama bin Laden has more brothers than a Malcolm X fan club, but few in the media cared to dig deep enough to discover that among the list of Osama's fifteen brothers there lies one very familiar name: George Bush.

Senior.

What delicious irony that the progeny of Osama "Maraudin'" bin Laden would be hidden right under his nose, raised in the tutelage of his seafood-intolerant world leader brother. When Osama found out, he responded by throwing a rock at a plane in what was thought to be outrage. Though that's only an educated guess at best since bin Laden has long been known to throw rocks at planes to express a wide range of emotions.

Understandably, this has put President Bush in the most delicate of situations. Naturally, he wants to stop the needless destruction and loss of lives, and to bring the terrorists to justice. But he's pulled even more strongly by the need to confront his infamous father and come to grips with his own heritage. Bush, like any man, wants to play catch with his dad and go with him to a strip club. He wants the warm fireside chats, bugshit fatherly advice and savvy bomb-making lessons that are the birthright of all 87 of Osama's children.

Decisive action by Bush last August could have possibly averted the tragedy of September 11th. But what about the tragedy of a son never coming to know his father? Let's step back from our own selfish perspectives for a bit and think for a moment about a family reunion that's long overdue.

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Nancy, sweet Nancy—my heart beats for you and you alone. To see that smile of yours, though the teeth are somewhat crooked, is the only thing worth living for. I would do anything in the world to show you the vastness of my love, like Brando's ass.

If my heart were made of wood, I would break apart the lumber and build you a house, a house made from my heart. You could live in my heart literally the way you do metaphorically now. Sure, my heart is kind of small, I would have to make the walls extremely thin, and we're not talking any kind of mansion here, but a shack—a shack made of love, from and out of my heart.

Even if this were not the case, if my heart were just my heart as it is now, sinew and muscle, probably more muscle, I'm not really sure of the make-up of the human heart, I would still build you a house. It would likely be grotesque and hideous, and haunt you in your nightmares, and once again, would be extremely small and thin-walled; but it would not stop my building it. I would not stop building it even if you demanded I stop, for that is how much I love you: Enough to not listen to you. The only thing that would stop me would be my death, which likely would have occurred as soon as I ripped my own heart out.

Perhaps I could live on an artificial heart. Artificial, like William Shatner's hair. I understand people can only live so long on artificial hearts, so I definitely would have to work fast. It would be a rush job, this heart house, but I'd get it done. Barring the days needed to recover from surgery, assuming I could even find a surgeon who would remove my heart just so I could use it to build your house. I mentioned it to my psychiatrist last week and he said most of them would turn me away at the door. But that wouldn't stop my search.

Come to think of it, this is a lot to ask, you know. Are you sure you want a heart house? I go through the trouble of ripping my heart out and getting an expensive operation and heart that will only last a few weeks just to build you a shitty heart-shack, you know, it all sounds like I'm doing all the work in this relationship. Why don't you give up your heart as well? Or build me a house? If we put them together we can make a bigger heart house, you know, and we can probably share it. I could even make a porch out of my liver and use your lower leg for stairs—it's not much to ask, one lower leg. I'm giving up my liver for the porch, goddammit. You won't even walk on crutches for me.

You know what? Fuck this whole thing. You're starting to make me feel like a big asshole. It's too bad I can't build a house out of asshole, I'd have more than enough at this point. The smell might bother you at first, but if our regular house isn't good enough, you have no right to complain. And I don't want to hear one word about how shitty my heart house is. If you had given up a few more body parts I could have really decked it out, but noooo, not Nancy, it's fine to cut people up and use their body parts to build adobes as long as it's not her body parts. You can be a real selfish bitch, you know? Like when my friends and I are playing X-Box and you yell from the bedroom to turn the volume down, you have to get up for work in 2 hours. Nice, Nancy, real nice.

I'm sick of this bullshit. You know, I think I'll build you the heart house anyway. Why not? You already saved me the trouble by ripping my heart out for me. Might as well do something with it. But don't expect no mansion, you life-draining succubus.

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