Not Even A Hedgehog: The Stupidity of Ronald Reagan

Slate ^ | 6-7-2004 | Christopher "Loved By So Many on FR" Hitchens

[LincolnLover]

*Excerpt*

"...only saw him once up close, which happened to be when he got a question he didn't like. Was it true that his staff in the 1980 debates had stolen President Carter's briefing book? (They had.) The famously genial grin turned into a rictus of senile fury: I was looking at a cruel and stupid lizard..."

[Nonstatist]

Although all evidence is that the divorce was definitely not his idea

Yea, his career was in the crapper and she had just won the Oscar. It'd be hard to believe it was his idea..

I mean, for Hitchens to suggest that being "the man to see" is suggestive of his "meanness" is typical lefty talk. On the one hand, he writes of Iraq and Clinton corruption with (what I see as ) rationality, and then its back to Mother Jones class warfare. Inscrutable.

[FrankR]

It really doesn't matter what Hitchens, or Pelosi, or DU, or Slate, or any of the other hate-filled liberals say about Ronald Reagan, not at all.

Watch all this week at the ceremonies surrounding President Reagan's death; you will see America's best, and her worst.

It's no secret that liberal think in terms of "groups"...everything has to be "grouped" for them to understand it; or in clinton's case "groped".

Anyway, the liberals' "group" talking points are in play, not so much to demean Reagan directly, but to bash conservatism in general. The left KNOWS that President Reagan garnered love and admiration from both the left and the right.

The democRATs are afraid that a new generation might hear the things, again, that made Ronald Reagan great...and the new generation might have their eyes opened to the truth. And here with lord eff'n of Ketchup is fighting for his political life, they don't want any positives showing on the right.

But as we watch the solemn proceedings this week, we will see the outpouring of grief, admiration, and respect that will be shown to a great man, by ordinary American people...that's what counts.

It's not the slings and barb's thrown by liberals in liberal soundbites on liberal networks and newspapers...it's the average American. That's who Ronald Reagan appealed to, and that's who really counts.

Like a shunned schoolgirl, idiots like Nancy Pelosi can't abide the right getting attention or credit for anything, and like a scared schoolgirl being chaired by a mouse, she swats at everything that doesn't look like her.

This guy, Hitchens; well, reading his stuff he is seething with hatred; there is no intelligence, no insight, and no talent as a journalist showing there...only hatred. The very thing that the left accuses the right of constantly - hatred - exudes from their every being each time they speak.

Whether or not Nancy Pelosi, Hitchens or any other of the hate-filled leftists drop their flag at half-mast - while shameful and unpatriotic - is of no consequence to me...BUT I AM LOWERING MY FLAG TO HALF MAST, along with millions of other everyday Americans...Republican and DemocRAT alike.

What is astounding is, if President Reagan were still alive, and President, he would have been most polite, and gracious to Ms. Pelosi. Liberals have no class, no couth, and no upbringing.

[skeeter]

As good an analysis as any. I guess it is gratifying (in an odd way) that Hitchen's criticism of Reagan always lacked the substance that his criticism of Clinton, & more recently the anti-war left, has had.

[Tallguy]

intercontinental ballistic missiles (not that there are any non-ballistic missiles—a corruption of language that isn't his fault)

Excuse me?

My understanding is that a ballistic missile's path is determined strictly by ballistics - weight, firing time, firing angle, engine power, etc.

I think he might be referring to RANGE. While there ARE some truly longrange cruise missiles, so far as we know only ballistic missiles fall into the INTERCONTINENTAL range category.

This is a bit of a quibble, but I think that's what he meant.

[Calvin Locke]

Hitchens is a flaky character ...

I go hot and cold on him. I find it hard to believe that one guy could write the extremely divergent pieces that he produces.

Doesn't Laura Ingraham have him on a lot? As a friend rather than a foil?

[Izzy Dunne]

Ahhh.

If he had said "not that there are any non-ballistic intercontinental missiles", then he would have been correct?

[davisfh]

"Hitchens is a mean drunk."

You may be on to something here. Hitchens may, at this moment, be asking himself the question, "Could I really have been drunk enough to say something this stupid?"

[martin_fierro]

Drink --> Regret --> Pain --> Drink more to kill the pain --> repeat

[Tallguy]

Maybe, maybe not. The only thing that limits the range of cruise missiles is fuel capacity & (more importantly) international treaties. I think the ALCM's that were carried aloft by B52's had their range limited relative to their original spec by SALT II.

I think that the same applied to the submarine and ship launched tomahawks. The strategic arms treaties at the time counted launch platforms. Imagine the confusion if every ship & sub suddenly, overnight became a nuke launcher!

It's been a long time, so I might be wrong about this.

[Stone Mountain]

Having actually read his book about Mother Teresa, i'd say he made a pretty good argument against her canonization.

I completely agree. I have yet to meet anyone who read that book who hasn't at least reconsidered MT in a new light.

In fact, the Catholic church asked him to be devil's advocate.

Hadn't heard about that - very interesting...

[Eric in the Ozarks]

The Gipper didn't need Carter's briefing book. He had Carter's record of the previous 4 years.

[ClintonBeGone]

Eventually liberals return to their natural state. Hitchens was good for a few years when he bashed Clinton. Let him go back to the bottle. I wonder how many defenders he still has on this site.

[whattajoke]

Hitchens loves one thing: Hitchens. I find it mildly entertaining at times and even somewhat informative once in a while (a recent Vanity Fair article about the simmering cauldron that is Indonesia, for one).

BUT, I also know going in that he is an angry, drunken, megalomaniac. He criticizes everyone and everything, b/c it sells.

[VisualizeSmallerGovernment]

Ronald Reagan professed to be annoyed when people called it "Star Wars," even though he had ended his speech on the subject with the lame quip, "May the force be with you."

Well THAT certainly was worth obsessing over for 20 years.

[evad]

Looks like a friendly enough fellow to me.

[Bluntpoint]

Hitchen markets and sells a lot of bile.

His words come from a dark, sad place where he is enslaved by his own intellect.

He is not worth getting angry at.

If you really want to perturb him, after reading one of his diatribes, give your kids a hug.

Smoke will come from his ears.

[Freemyland]

"The man is not even in the grave yet and liberals like Hitchens fail miserably to have any respect for the dead."

It appears Slate is in full Reagan slam mode today.

[cksharks]

I pay the same amount of attention to you and hitchens (0).

[beckett]

Hitchens: In the Oval Office, Ronald Reagan told Yitzhak Shamir and Simon Wiesenthal, on two separate occasions, that he himself had assisted personally at the liberation of the Nazi death camps.

xm177e2: This is pretty pathetic, if true.

Almost certainly untrue. Wiesenthal cannot be trusted and if Shamir had been told anything so easily shown to be false we would have heard of it long before now. My guess is Hitchens has embellished a remark Reagan made that was open to several interpretations. Notice he offers no quotation marks.

Hitchens wrote the whole piece looking for nasty things to say about Reagan. That he had to reach for something as silly as this shows he had slim pickings to draw from.

[RAY]

President Reagan would forgive Hitchens, but I will not!

I would really like to kick his rear - displacing it to somewhere between his ears.