he world took a long, mournful pause, or perhaps a quiet vacation, when Ronald Reagan passed away of natural (or supernatural) causes June 5, after a long bout with Alzheimer's that apparently plagued him all his life. He was ancient.

Despite the week of funeral processions, not all machinations in America stopped, as grief-stricken politicians began the work of "tidying up" the Reagan legacy as president of the United States of America, 1981-1988, and a phantom on the political scene ever since.

A week of remembrance has reminded us frequently of Reagan's strong moral values, his deep faith, his dedication to democracy, how he made it "okay" to be a "patriot," and that charming way he had of ignoring important questions. Mostly forgotten are Reagan's fundamentalist cow-towing, his close-minded prejudices, his fascistic pursuit of global democracy, the mania of conformity he embraced, and how the poor dangled on the shit stick for the entire duration of his reign. All minor changes in the book of American history rewritten in the wake of the president's death.

A proponent of America as the Enforcer, Reagan ran up a national deficit in the trillions of dollars chasing military superiority, even though our nearest rival, Russia, had no hopes of keeping up. Conservatives point to the collapse of the Soviet Union, which had begun happening long before, as proof Reagan's policy was a success, which is quite like saying taking out six mortgages on your house is worth it if your neighbor can no longer afford his house payments.

The military build-up came with a price, of course, as social programs were mauled as if by a big Libertarian bear. Welfare slashed, minimum wage ignored for years, leading to a growing body of working men and women living beneath the poverty line, and don't make anyone piss themselves laughing by asking about school funding and the arts. So important was the stealth bomber the president even slashed the runaway costs of school free lunch programs, and made ketchup a vegetable to meet national health requirements.

Blind to any problem created after communism, Reagan led a government effort to ignore the AIDS crisis until it had ravaged whole communities and helped conservatives who believed AIDS a homosexual plague carried on by promiscuity remain comfortably ignorant. A wise decision, since avoiding spending anything to save American lives allowed the purchase of the Patriot missile, which didn't work, and of course allowed him to piggy bank money for his masterpiece: Star Wars, a cheeky name for his imaginative laser defense system that would stop "just about" every nuclear missile aimed at the United States and give us real tactical superiority over Russia should a Roland Emmerich movie ever occur here. But don't worry, nostalgias—the current president hasn't given up on the fantasy.

But we shouldn't, however, forget Reagan the man. The wealth of misinformation he gave us entertained people everywhere. According to Reagan, trees were bad for the environment, homeless people preferred living on the streets, hired mercenaries fighting for right-wing causes were "freedom fighters," and important decisions betraying your own political ideological statements weren't worth remembering. Lest we forget, he also expanded presidential powers into strikebusting by firing the air traffic controllers like a $400,000 a year Pinkerton.

Even as the sorrow winds up for America, text book manufacturers are busy as we speak preparing the Reagan legacy for the next generation of leaders.

According to Shouton-Felix's Greg Ward, a history book editor: "I think we've decided to skip all the irrelevant material from 1981-1988, people only seem to remember The A-Team and New Wave music from the decade anyway. We think Reagan's presidency is best represented by a full-page headshot of the president, with the caption: 'Win one for the Gipper!'"

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."

Hey folks, and welcome back for another episode of Reflections of a Goocher, taped live before a recently-alive studio audience. We're here talking to celebrity housewife Susan Lutwidge, this year's recipient of the Lutwidge Family Prize for Drama.

SU: Good to have you here, Susan.

SL: Good to have been had here, Stu.

SU: So, is it true what I've been hearing about your recent plastic surgery?

SL: Well, if you've been hearing the truth it is.

SU: Good point.

SL: But yeah, I recently went in for Botox treatment, since my face was starting to look like Ed Asner's couch.

SU: I was going to say something.

SL: Good of you. But the thing is, when I got there I found out that Botox is extremely expensive. Go figure. Really makes you wonder about all those Vietnam vets who were paralyzed for free. So anyway, instead the doctor turned me on to Reebox treatment, which is where they inject your face with space-age sneaker rubber.

SU: It looks great.

SL: Thanks, Stu, I feel great. And it's comforting to know that the next time I fall while jogging, my face is going to bounce off the pavement like a superball.

SU: Talk about "saving face"!

SL: No shit.

SU: Okay Sue, we're low on time here so I'm afraid we're going to have to skip straight to the bonus round. Your question, for a chance to win all the tea in Denmark: Who is the tallest man ever to win the Noble Prize?

SL: Uh, Nelson Mandela? Dude's black, right?

SU: No, I'm sorry, the correct answer is Steve "The Stork" Goodgee, who won the Noble for Frisbee Golf in 1997. You may have been thinking of the lesser-known Nobel Peace Prize, which is awarded every year for outstanding achievement in the field of keeping the peace. The Noble awards those who keep it real in the face of being spanked in the nuts by a flying projectile. Thanks for playing.

We'll be right back after this commercial break.


Hey there Ricky, sorry to hear your dad got arrested again.

Yeah, my life sucks. This is the worst family vacation ever.

Come on, look at the bright side. Maybe your dad didn't do it.

Yeah, but they caught him with her jammies and everything.

You're probably right. Hey, wanna play doctor?


Holy Jehovah, we're back! And now it's time to check in with Hank Spankman and Johan Sebastian Crackersnatch, RoaG's own professional conversationalists:

HS: So, Johan, I hear you bought a bike recently.

JSC: That's a balled-in-the-face lie.

HS: Well you know what they say, there's a crayon of truth in every lie.

JSC: I always heard it was a train of vermouth in every life.

HS: That makes me very thirsty.

JSC: Me too, but I can't eat that much cheese.

HS: Chee—You know the thing about you? You're exactly like a cross between Bob Dylan and Bob Denver.

JSC: Well, you're like a cross between Bob Hope and a vacuum cleaner.

HS: I think I vacuum cleaner than you.

JSC: I vacuum naked.

HS: Do you always remember to wash behind your gears?

JSC: So we're back to the bike thing again? Okay, I'll admit it. The bike bought me.

I'm afraid that's all the time we've got this week folks, and I'm also afraid of spiders. We'll go into that some other time.

—closing theme, AKA "Can't Hug the Love Bug" by Styx—

º Last Column: New Mexico Sucks
º more columns