Posted on 11/12/2015 1:38:46 PM PST by xzins
The rejection of O’Reilly’s book “Killing Reagan” appears to be universal from those who actually knew and worked for the man.
For my part, I remember what I saw, and the old man did not have anyone controlling his voice in those debates. He was pretty nimble, as I recall. And he went on to bury his opposition in the elections.
If that was an impaired Reagan, then imagine what else he would have accomplished if fully functioning. China probably would have surrendered, and the democrat party would have disbanded.
O’Reilly is a populist and the number 1 RATINGS whore in the MSM. I despised him when I turned him off for the last time a dozen years ago. I worked for Reagan, and he was personable in public, but tough as nails if you crossed him, or tried to marginalize his proposals. Ole Bob Dole found this out the hard way, as did others.
O’Reilly’s ghost writer really screwed this one up, eh?
He was my commander in chief during part of my many years in the Army. So, in that sense, I worked for him, too. My eyes dripped when he left. We never had another like him, nor before. He was a beloved president, by those of us in the military.
Back in the day, when George Will was the ONLY conservative voice on any major network, and that only for a few minutes a week, I never missed him. Since then, the conservative movement has passed him by.
But his memory of Reagan isn’t analysis, it’s first hand. It’s like O’Reilly arguing with someone about the true identity of their own great-uncle.
He should have just shut up.
Moreover, he should have stuck with people who’d been dead a while and really had been killed.
Me too! He was the first president I voted for. It was during his admin that I got my first job. As someone who works for the DOD I totally agree with you.
” My eyes dripped when he left.”
Mine too. Reagan had a profound respect for our military.
He hated to lose even one soldier.
“... he went on to bury his opposition in the elections, and later the US commercial fishing Industry ...
I was months away from going to an assignment at Ft Campbell, home of the Screaming Eagles, when the Sinai Peace Keeping force returning from Egypt to Ft Campbell went down in Gander, Newfoundland with all on the plane killed.
I recall watching the president speak on TV, I saw him walk among the grieving families and soldiers, and I saw huge shoulders for them to lean on.
I’ll never forget that. I was SO proud of that man!
Just one tidbit from my ongoing Reagan bio: I interviewed his secretary of Commerce Bill Verity, who himself was not a spring chicken when he took the job. Verity was astonished at Reagan’s energy, saying they had cabinet meetings every morning at 8 . . . AFTER Reagan had already had his national security briefing. Verity said Reagan had unbelievable energy, and he even asked him his secret. “Bee pollen,” the Gipper answered.
Big ships
Think I’ll go get some bee pollen. :>)
Didn’t work for me. I tried it after he said that. Reagan is one of those people with uncanny amounts of energy. As a student, the amount of stuff he did (football team, drama club, busing tables for his tuition, class president, on and on) wears me out just reading about it.
He was a true leader. He wanted freedom and opportunity for all of us. He was the antithesis of an elitist. He was what Norman Rockwell painted.
O’Reilly is a pompous egoistical blowhard.
A great book is “Reagan in His Own Hand”.
Did you know that Ronald Reagan was one of the first people in America to wear contact lenses? When he gave speeches he used notes on index cards. Before a speech he would pop out one contact so he could read off the cards with one eye and look at the audience with the other.
Reagan was a real American. Someday the current POTUS will leave this great Earth. There will not be people standing on the side of the road for miles as his hearse passes by like there was for the Gipper.
What I’m not sure is why Bill O’Reilly wrote this book. I think he wants to increase his audience on the left by tearing down our most admired President. It seems like Fox News is making a change to the left after building up their audience with conservatives. I guess they think conservatives don’t have anywhere else to go, but we have the Internet, at least for now.
I watched a dvr of the O’Reilly/Will confrontation. My one concession to O’Reilly is, if Will had told some Fox bigwig that he’d talk to O’Reilly before his piece was published in the Washington Post, and it seems reasonable to think Will was asked to do just that, then I can see O’Reilly’s upset at being blind-sided by a member of his own company. It seems entirely reasonable to me that these people in the same company are expected to keep other informed, and especially if it’s as cutting and critical as Will’s article was of O’Reilly. I can see why O’Reilly was upset.
However, that doesn’t mean that O’Reilly’s book is good history. Evidently, it is not. And that is not just something I’m parroting. It is the consensus of every former associate of Reagan who is yet living. I read Ed Meece’s article and it, too, was scathing.
O’Reilly should have stuck with long-time dead people.
And his ability to speak and to paint EMOTIONS with words was unequaled. I do not believe a deficient human being could have done that. As a pastor, I speak a lot, obviously. I think I know when someone knows what he’s doing in that area. Reagan was a master’s master.
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