Monday, June 7, 2004

I Hate Morning In America

Memo to the media: HURRY UP.
Let's just get it over with quickly, since we can't escape it. After all, when Nixon died, all of a sudden he was some kind of great statesman, instead of the drunken racist filthy crook that all those pesky facts pointed to. So now Ronnie has finally kicked it, and I know you're all lining up to jerk off his corpse and display your Photoshopped soft-focus portraits with the waving flag behind them, but move through it as quickly as you can, because I just ate.
In one sense, it was like God thought this weekend was my birthday, because first Creed broke up, and then Reagan died. But if there's one thing Ronald Reagan and an Islamic militant have in common, it's that they were both of more use to me drooling in a house somewhere than actually dead, because death makes them martyrs.
I can't even imagine what kind of cathartic apotheosis must have been happening on Fox News this weekend. Unclean worship of Reagan is one of those freakish arch-conservative points of view that they've managed to mainstream to the point where if you don't love "The Gipper", you're a commie. Just ask CBS.
And that's another thing. Ronald Reagan wasn't the fucking Gipper. George Gipp was the fucking Gipper. How rude is that, anyway, to just up and assume the fucking persona of someone in the real world who you happened to play in a movie? I bet all those Young Republicans out there weeping in their Coors this morning would have a fucking embolism if James Brolin started calling himself the "Great Communicator".
Reagan was the reason my generation shit itself when they ran "The Day After". "The Day After" does not hold up well. It's not actually a particularly good movie. But with Ronnie and his fucking plastic hair running things, there was a palpable sense in the air that at any moment, he could have some kind of communist hallucination, or press the wrong button, and rain nuclear fire down upon us all.
I mean, we were terrified of STEVE FUCKING GUTTENBERG walking around on a soundstage full of the simulated styrofoam rubble of 80's civilization. How the hell can you deify the man most responsible for an entire nation being freaked out by STEVE GUTTENBERG? I mean, as bad as Iran-Contra was, as bad as the October Surprise was, as bad as Reaganomics was, that's the most chilling indictment of the Reagan years right there. We were so fucked up as a country under Reagan that Steve Guttenberg TV-movies were giving children legitimate nightmares.
Bet they don't mention THAT in any of the four thousand retrospectives you're gonna see in the next two months.
Luckily, unlike Reagan, the death of Creed has NO DOWNSIDE WHATSOEVER. So even while Dan Rather waxes poetic over slow-mo footage of that evil retard president (the dead one) smiling, we too can maybe smile, just a little. Because as horrible as the wor