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BEDTIME FOR BONZO; REAGAN GOES NOISILY

The passing of former President Ronald Reagan last week triggered an outpouring of emotion, particularly from partisan Republicans eager to make voters remember a time when their party produced a president capable of speaking in complete sentences and pronouncing most words correctly.

The media eagerly complied in the week-long campaign event, quickly replacing coverage of the investigation into the Bush administration's approval of the use of torture on Iraqi prisoners, or the president's plummeting approval ratings, with glowing tributes to the Great Communicator.

Reportedly, Reagan single-handedly toppled Communism, pared the federal bureaucracy into the lean, mean governing machine it is today and rescued the American psyche from the sinister clutches of Jimmy "Malaise" Carter.

But by the time Friday's multi-billion-dollar National Day of Mourning rolled around, GOP operatives were demanding that Reagan's face replace Franklin Roosevelt's on the dime, Alexander Hamilton's on the $10 bill, and/or Andrew Jackson's on the $20.

The great Jimmy Breslin noted last week that it only took half the time to bury George Washington and suggested that Reagan was such a phony his picture should be reserved for the $3 bill.

We here at the Reporter would like to honor what we believe to be Reagan's greatest accomplishments, ones that were largely overlooked during last week's hanky-wringing:

He helped us stop worrying so much about things like monumental deficits. Early in Reagan's first term, the national debt hit $1 trillion for the first time. By the end of the second, it had tripled. He busted unions, sold missiles to our sworn enemy, the Ayatollah Khomeini, and used the money to fund a gang of dope-dealing thugs known as the Contras in Nicaragua. Who can forget his taking the time to honor war dead -- those of the dreaded Nazi SS buried in Bittburg, Germany?

He turned tail and ran after a company of Marines were killed in a single attack in Beirut, and then salved his wounded pride by invading Grenada, where a bunch of Cubans building an airport paid the price.

Best of all, he lowered our expectations for our elected leaders to the point where someone like George W. Bush can hold the highest office in the land without triggering widespread panic. Who needs vision, or even understanding, in a president if he seems like kind of a nice guy?

The week-long grieve-athon leaves us with one question, though: When is the National Day of Mourning for Ray Charles?


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Niagara Falls Reporter www.niagarafallsreporter.com June 15 2004