Fri, June 11, 2004

Okay, let's dispense with the formalities up front. Yes, a fit of soul-crushing depression (and the associated writer's block) unparalleled in my short but miserable history. So deep, in fact, that it has taken no less than the joined forces of the Republican party and the TV news media to bring me back out of it! Yes, an inability to find inspiration even in topics I desperately wanted to write about. Yes, a near-total loss of readership. Can I bounce back? Would I even know it if I did? We can hope. We can hope...

Between travel, depression, and the Sisyphean task of attempting to complete all the site upgrades that I started back in April (and I do put the "sissy" in Sisyphean), it's been hard to find the time lately to work on the longer-form columns. Once, they were this site's claim to fame. Then the blog-style mini-entries came in. I told everyone not to worry; I had things under control. But those little buggers start multiplying, and I only have two hands! I can't control them all! You should see what one of them did to my brand new putter! Some Father's Day that turned out to be. But, checks & balances, folks. Checks & balances. The pendulum will swing back the other way. I'll get it all under control, I promise. (And I do appreciate the indulgence; by pretending that it's my readers – yeah, like I have readers – who pressure me to do better, I can imagine that it's not just my expectations that I'm failing to live up to, and somehow that makes it better.)

Okay, better get off this subject and onto the real subject before someone stages a damned intervention. I had debated whether to devote space at the top of this column to this temporary stuff, since all of these columns spend a lot more time in the archives than they do on the home page, so future readers might be confused. The columns are meant to be self-contained – not referring to other columns, or worse, referring to the absence of them. Would it make sense to have a few paragraphs about the weeks of silence, just floating at the top of an unrelated column about a dead president? (Answer: yes. It will be a record of something that happened, and that's okay. Even if there's no extended silence leading up to the (future) moment at which someone reads this column, there was a silence leading up to its initial publication – and why shouldn't that be chronicled? After all, that's all any of this is, isn't it? A record of things that happened, thoughts that occurred.)

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Former President Ronald Reagan died here in town last Saturday. As callous and hard-hearted as I can be, especially toward Republicans, especially toward evil Republicans, I take no delight in this occurrence. I'm not excited about it; I'm not glad. But – and this is key – neither am I surprised. This isn't Clinton, a former president who's walking around, looking sexy at Memorial Day functions, and writing massive books. It's not Carter, it's not even Ford. This is someone who's been functionally dead to most of us for about a decade. Now, Alzheimer's is very sad, and I'm not belittling that or making fun of it (although it turned Nancy around on the stem-cell issue, which must be considered a silver lining) – the point is that this was neither sudden nor shocking. It is not a week-long news story.

Now, I'll grant that I'm a little sensitive to the current "stretch it to fill the time" overanxious approach by the television "news" outlets. But I'm not the only one who thinks this has been overdone. Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw have gone on record saying the media overplayed its hand this week. It took them until Wednesday to figure it out. I knew on Saturday. CNN's coverage was on at Andy's house because his office pretends to be a news organization in order to sell kids Nikes and force them to watch Kill Bill, Volume II, so he was busy posting the story to the Internet. Within a few hours of the story breaking, CNN already had some pundits on to gloss over the last twenty years of American history and hail Reagan as the best president – nay, best human – ever to walk the face of planet Earth. I'm all for remembering the man fondly, but don't make stuff up. The guy on CNN on Saturday was saying (paraphrased), "Reagan came into the office when the country was facing a lot of trouble. He had some new ideas which were unpopular at the time, but now we can see that he was right." What?! It's been categorically proven that Reaganomics – the birthplace of the trickle-down theory – constitute the worst presidential legacy of the 20th century. I was young then. I wasn't paying attention, and I'm certainly no presidential historian – although if I were, I could certainly be racking up some serious TV time right now; Doris Kearns Goodwin really looks like she could use a night off! – so I don't know everything. I remember very little about Iran-Contra; probably less than anyone else, except maybe Reagan himself. But I know that his administration was far from perfect. (Even by today's redefined standards of imperfect administrations.)

One thing that I always think about regarding Reagan is a story called Young Zaphod Plays It Safe by the late Douglas Adams. In it, a cleanup crew has been dispatched to the crash of a spacecraft that was transporting hazardous materials out of the universe. The crew worries little about the possible release of chemical weapons or radioactive waste – if those got out, nobody would be crazy enough to use them. They're concerned about a particular capsule, which contained the dangerous by-products of an experiment in creating synthetic personalities. The experiment had created a personality so affable that it never aroused the suspicions of others, no matter what it did. Explains one worker:

"They are not evil, in fact they are rather simple and charming. But they are the most dangerous creatures that ever lived because there is nothing they will not do if allowed, and nothing they will not be allowed to do..."

At the end of the story, it turns out that one of the capsules is missing. The missing capsule is headed for Earth, to wreak untold devastation. "The missing capsule contained a 'Reagan.'" It's an interesting perspective (the story was originally published in 1986, I think) – and all the talk of Reagan made me think of it, although I often reflect on it when watching George W. Bush at work.

So, it's sort of irritating that, right after some factions of the media expressed contrition for accentuating the positive in their Iraq coverage, a similar rosy-glassed technique is being applied to the Reagan story. Also, I think it should be noted that he's our only actor president to have never been nominated for an Academy Award. See? He's not so great.

More than the type of coverage, however, I'm irked by the sheer volume of coverage. (Wonkette beat me to the witty if obvious "Mourning in America," so I'm calling it "Grieftime, USA." Wonkette has since moved onto the inspired "Gipperporn.") On Saturday, it was already too much. The frenzy was so great that we heard CNN speculate twenty times in fifteen minutes about whether Reagan's death would change Bush's travel plans in Europe for the D-Day memorial. (One of my least favorite things about the current state of TV news is the way they'll tell us what the story should be even if that isn't what the story is. John King kept repeating that the White House had said they wouldn't be changing their travel plans, but he would keep us updated if that changed. They said no, John! Do you think you can convince them if you keep saying it?) They were still calling it Breaking News five hours later; they were interrupting desk anchors to go "live to the scene" to show another family member showing up. They followed the procession of the hearse as though it were a police chase – helicopters and all. By Monday, after thirty-six straight hours of coverage, it was getting crazy. But I was still just doing my best to ignore it. Then, on Tuesday, the last straw. I flipped on TiVo in the morning to make sure it was set to record Last Comic Standing in case I got home late, and the CBS Early Show was interviewing Rich Little via satellite from Hollywood. This means that he had to get up around 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning out here just so he could be interviewed about what it was like to DO AN IMPRESSION of Reagan. What?! If not for the fact that season 3 of Alias is on there, I'd have broken my TiVo over my knee, thrown it out the window, and run howling into the woods, tearing at my clothing and flailing my limbs. (Once again, Jennifer Garner saves the day.) This is insanity. These people must be stopped.

No sign of that, though. Last night, Wolf Blitzer was talking over footage of Air Force One landing, bringing Bush back from his island G8 getaway to eulogize Reagan. Blitzer, on panel with a former Reagan aide, was waxing poetic about the historic grandeur of AF1 landing to bring Bush here to mourn Reagan, then – there was time to fill, people! – asked the staffer about his thoughts. "It just reminds me of every time that plane landed with Reagan on it." Egad. Today is also a state holiday here in California. The Reaganmania has escalated to such a degree that it's affecting my mail delivery. For crying out loud.

***

Update: "gipperporn" makes it into the parlance. All hail Wonkette!

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