Former President Ronald Regan’s affliction with Alzheimer’s has left him unable to comment on George W. Bush’s. However, his son Ron Reagan, Jr., sure is shooting his mouth off:

“My father crapped bigger ones than George Bush,” says the former president’s son, in a flame-throwing conversation about the war and the Bush administration’s efforts to lay claim to the Reagan legacy. [...]

“The Bush people have no right to speak for my father, particularly because of the position he’s in now,” he said during a recent interview with Salon.

I’m not going to debate the merits of President Reagan’s various bodily excretions. Suffice it to say, I have a hard time believing that Junior is an authority on parallels between Reagan’s and George W.’s policies.

Ronald Reagan Jr., or Ron as he prefers, hasn’t done anything memorable since his Saturday Night Live appearance in 1986 when he revealed that he was only interested in his father’s career to the extent it permitted him to have “fun” being on shows like SNL. He couldn’t be bothered to attend the Republican Convention’s tribute to his father, but instead listened to it on NPR on his way to the store.

Frankly, he appears far more interested in establishing organizations like The Creative Coalition with fellow “political” actors like Susan Sarandon. After all, it can’t hurt to have a failed talk-show host and former ballerina using his father’s name recognition and clout to lobby for free speech for artists (along with government handouts grants in support of the arts).

Of course, Reagan’s father was also known for his military buildup and aggressive foreign policy. “Yes,” he concedes, “there are some holdovers from my dad’s years, like Elliott Abrams and, my God, Admiral Poindexter, who’s now keeping watch over us all. But that observation doesn’t hold up. My father gave a speech a couple years after he left the White House calling for ‘an international army of conscience’ to deal with failed states where atrocities are taking place. He had no thought that America should be the world’s policeman.

No, you stupid twit. Your father’s speech was given in 1982 at Oxford. (You probably don’t remember because you were busy practicing your pirouettes and trying to iron out your sexual orientation.) What your father said was that we needed an international army of conscience created by the U.N. that would use force, if necessary, to right wrongs.

Another great one from your father which you probably didn’t hear:

The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead or the next. It was the deep knowledge — and pray God we have not lost it — that there is a profound moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest.

He gave that speech on June 6, 1984. Unfortunately, it’s been forgotten by a country full of satin-slippered cheese munchers like you who’ve forgotten their history and to whom their gratitude is due.

He believed there must be an international force to intervene where great human tragedy was occurring. Rwanda would have been a prime example, where a strike force capable of acting quickly could have gone in to stop the slaughter.

What do you think we just did, Junior? Or were you too busy doing stretching exercises and looking through the want ads for a new career to pay attention to world events for, say, the past month?

Go back to ballet, your “wife” and your cats. Leave the thinking and policy analysis to the grown-ups (or even your brother, Mike), you stupid fuck.

Thanks to PolitiBlog for pointing me toward the article.

Monday, April 21st, 2003, 12:21 pm   |   Blog bites  |  RSS feed Comments and pings are currently closed.