Nonstop Praise of Reagan

If he'd been alive, Ronald Reagan would have turned 100 on Sunday, February 6th. Starting on the morning of February 3rd, NPR began running numerous stories on Reagan's legacy. Listen to the first six stories and - aside from two brief mentions of the Iran-Contra scandal and one mention of the Beirut barracks bombing as a "failure" - you will hear no criticisms of the Reagan presidency. A couple of the stories (e.g. 2-4-11 ME & 2-5 WE Saturday) - positively framing Reagan as a pragmatist - noted that contrary to popular beliefs, Reagan did raise taxes and deficits - and did negotiate with the Soviets.

Only in the seventh and final piece, Sunday's ATC interview, is any pejorative assessment of Reagan voiced; the director of an HBO Reagan documentary, after noting many positive aspects of Reagan, states that Reagan "came in many ways to betray that [small town] America...hurt the very America that I know he identified with." This one critique is lost in the flood of praise heaped on Reagan:

2-3-11 ME

• (Tom Brokaw) "A pure product of Main Street, Heartland America...People were comfortable with him from the start."
• (Pete Wilson) "Brilliant."
• (Jaffe) "If there was any disagreement...it was over where Ronald Reagan ranked in the pantheon of American presidents."

2-4-11 ATC -

• (Liasson) "...upbeat, forward-looking and self-consciously optimistic - the definition of Reaganesque."
• (Lou Cannon) "The American people aren't fools. Reagan was able to run on Morning in America because for millions of Americans, it was morning in America."
• (Liasson) "Doug Brinkley says President Obama is wise to identify himself any way he can with the 40th president."
• (Doug Brinkley) "Reagan...He's in the DNA of America at the moment. He is beloved by the American people."

2-5-11 ATC

• (Wertheimer) "Ronald Reagan...was part of almost every campaign, mostly invoked by Republicans, but also occasionally by Democrats and sometimes by President Obama." (Fallows) "You could take this as a good sign of the possible harmony and unity in American history that....representatives of all political parties and all political heritages find things in this background, of this tradition they want to align themselves with."

2-6 WE Sun

• (Reagan hometown local) "Nice man. Good person."

2-6 WE Sun

• (Hansen) "...his stature has continued to rise among conservatives...as well as with the general public."

Somehow, NPR inadvertently left out a few details regarding that "upbeat, forward-looking" "nice man" who was Ronald Reagan: his disastrous War on Drugs, his deadly lack of action on AIDS, his promotion of terror, war and torture in Central America and Africa, his riddled-with-criminals administration, his assault on the environment, his crushing of wages and war on unions, and his success in creating a sophisticated, murderous organization of Islamic extremists. Other than that, it was a very fair and very balanced assessment of the Reagan years.

Morning Edition in America

Like Obama, Reagan Faced Harsh Economic Times

Squeezably Soft

Did you know that "in the past the United States has been particularly good at exporting hope"? Those were the words of Joseph Nye (intellectual from Harvard) and inventor of the concept of "Smart Power." Yes indeed, millions of civilians from Haiti, Iran, Vietnam, Angola, Mozambique, Guatemala, etc....are resting in peace from all that hope that the US brought them.

People often confuse NPR's occasional critique's of the Bush extremist imperialism with a leftist critique of imperialism in general - it is a fatal mistake. See this earlier post for how devoted NPR is to the US imperial role in the world. Of course to sell this requires some serious distortions of history and fact as the quote from Nye above reveals.

On Thanksgiving morning, as part of NPR's series on American Power, Renee Montagne reveals a lot about how distorted history can get on NPR. After Nye critiques Bush foreign policy for relying far too much on the use of force, and contrasts it with the "soft" power of past years, she says, "So you're saying under, in at least the last few years under the Reagan Administration that there was a nice balance between hard and soft power?"

Holy crap! So the criminals of the Reagan years spreading civil war, torture, rape and genocide thoughout Africa and Latin America had found "a nice balance." Nye, agrees that Reagan was "very adept at combining hard and soft power."

Montagne isn't through though. She then goes on to contrast the evil Chinese with the saintly US efforts around the world:

"China...engaging in Latin America, in Africa, in the Middle East. New markets, oil deals, forgiving debt....its soft power depends to some extent on its willingness and ability in the world to act functionally without morals, not put any conditions on its aid or make demands about human rights when it comes in with its products."

Honestly, as I type this transcription I almost can't believe that I'm not making it up; it's that profoundly dishonest and ridiculous. But Nye can only concur, with "That's true."

Reagaphilia

Here's a little challenge to any die-hard believers in NPR's liberal (or even balanced) credentials: Find just one progressive, critical piece on the presidency of Ronald Reagan aired on NPR News in the last 5 years.

Tonight on ATC I had to fight the gag-reflex as NPR aired an adoring commentary on Reagan by Rich Lowry, editor of The National Review. The commentary focuses on Reagan's staged "tear down this wall" speech in Berlin. Michele Norris introduces it by noting that "Lowry says if those words don’t give you goosebumps..."

Then Lowry tells us that "beneath Reagan’s sunny exterior was a stern determination and a hatred of Marxism…conflicts with communist-infiltrated unions in his days in Hollywood." He might have also mentioned that beneath that "sunny exterior" was one of the the most dishonest, corrupt, death-squad loving presidents we've had until - well until now! Lowry is also out to conflate revolutionaries like Che Guevara with mass murderers like Stalin by lumping them all under the label of "communism." He tells us about the "tens of millions of dead bodies in the twentieth century" that Communism left in its wake, but nothing about the millions of corpses left by just the US alone.

Well, it's one thing to give airtime to a Reagaphile like Lowry so that he can pretend that Reagan was worthy of anything but disgust or prison, but one has to wonder where any countervailing opinion is? It clearly is not on NPR.

One interesting little exercise is to search "Richard Lowry" on NPR's site (16 hits) or "Rich Lowry" (25 hits) and then search Katrina Vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation (what do you know, 1 hit!). Twenty-five to one - sounds like a liberal bias to me! Even add in the editor of The Progressive, Matthew Rothschild (3 hits) and you still get a 25 to 4 hit return. I think NPR is trying to make a Bonzo out of all of us...

Towering Lies

Here was a stunner on Weekend Edition Sunday today: "Ronald Reagan was deep in the Iran-Contra scandal, was accused of having countenanced a plan to trade arms for hostages and diverting the proceeds illegally to freedom fighters in Central America." Freedom fighters! So says historian Michael Beschloss during a report today on high-profile US government commissions. That there is anyone who still can call the torture loving, murderous, drug-running Contras freedom fighters with a straight face is unbelievable--and that the reporter doesn't question it is a shame.

Speaking of the sham Tower Commission that saved Reagan's political career at the cost of weakening the constitutional separation of powers, Beschloss describes it as "one that actually worked." Yes, if you are a fan of executive power running roughshod over constitutional limitations--or if you believe the Contras were the "moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers."