I do not share their opinion, but the elite media in America is going nuts at the nation’s reaction to Ronald Reagan. From primetime TV news anchors to op-ed writers, the antagonism of listening to Reagan’s accomplishments and the thousands of ways he personally touched people’s lives has driven them crazy.
I’m not speaking of the far-left “loonies.” People on websites like the Democratic Underground have the anonymity to be much more bold and ugly in their reaction. Occasionally, one in their ranks will break out in a public statement. But Tedd Rall saying he imagined Reagan “turning crispy brown” a day after his passing is not the official line of “the mainstream left.”
But they have still been fidgety.
According to the New York Post, Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw – the big-hearted, fair-minded people that they are – said the coverage of Reagan had been “excessive,” and that it was taking coverage away from important news items. Sorry gentlemen, your agenda-driven “Get Kerry Elected” coverage or the 3,000th follow up on Kobe or Scott Peterson will just have to wait. (I mean it’s not like you’re just jumping up and down waiting to tell the American people about George Bush’s slam dunk in the United Nations this week.)
Eric Zorn, of the Chicago Tribune, wrote on Wednesday that “too much” had been made of the idea of “Mourning in America.” He felt it was unnecessary to call what the nation has been through as “mourning.” His justification? Because he had once lost a grandmother whose funeral he did not cry at. In his mind, no tears, no mourning. So Zorn doesn’t cry at sad moments – does that mean the rest of us are wired that way?
Of course that doesn’t represent the hundreds of unsolicited e-mails I’ve received this week – testimonies to Reagan and telling of the tears and sadness that Americans are feeling.
And Anne Kornblut of the Boston Globe wrote on Wednesday about the biggest indignity of all: the Bush campaign actually memorializing Reagan in a way that benefits President Bush (Oh, the inhumanity). Kornblut noted that – gasp! – the Bush website had made actual changes – double gasp! – to incorporate an online memorial to President Reagan.
Kornblut continued to note that Republicans were trying to exploit the idea that President Bush was much like Reagan, and that Democrats were “pointing out” he was very different from the 40th president. Kornblut says in one place that Bush has long tried to “portray himself” as “Reagan’s ideological heir.”
As if no one else on the planet could see any similarities … President Bush was trying to trick us all into believing that he was a lot like Reagan when in reality he isn’t? According to liberals, Democrats and leftists, the answer is yes.
Kerry on a campaign stop this week attempted to portray Reagan as different from Bush because of bitter partisanship. Maybe it is Kerry whose memory is not so good, given the fact he bitterly opposed Reagan on just about everything Reagan ever did.
The truth is media elites like Rather, Brokaw, Zorn and Kornblut are having trouble squaring what they have been telling others to believe about Reagan all these years and the reality that few people listened to them. When President Clinton passes away someday, they will be incensed if someone even dares to think that less than a full week of coverage should be granted to the Democrats “two-termer” of recent memory.
But the truth also is that it is America that is getting to speak right now. America is paying tribute to a president who won 95 out of a possible 100 states. America is honoring the president who broke the spine of the Soviets, who brought freedom to millions of oppressed people, and who single-handedly turned more people’s financial futures around in America than any other president in our lifetime. America is saying goodbye to its hero.
As the thousands came to see Reagan’s casket in California – some taking up to 12 hours to do so – and as many more thousands gathered and waited on the national mall outside the Capital Rotunda on Wednesday, it is obvious to all that America loved Reagan.
And for the media elites who still rage with hatred for him, America has told you: “Go eat sand!”
For right now, America mourns.
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