Presto, Change-o!

The more things change...

Ever since Reagan, we've been handed an Establishment consensus that opposition to supply side economics is class warfare, and that government doesn't work—though it just might, if only Democrats were more accommodating.

As government haters have hastened over the last thirty years to grab control of said government, racism has been the name of the game in reaching their voters.

The tactic was elevated to the national stage by Nixon and refined by Reagan.

Driftglass has written powerfully about this for years; sadly, the trick never changes.

Here he is a couple of days ago, on the psychology of the party's rank and file.

And about the GOP since Reagan, Driftglass observes here "how a party-line change happens in a totalizing cult like North Korea or the GOP."

Hitting The Road

Dorothea Lange, Library of Congress

"Just remember, for every person who is out of work, there are nine of us with jobs."
—President Reagan on the unemployment rate

Capturing the FYIGM essence of his party; quoted by Paul Slansky, The Clothes Have No Emperor.

Another quote from Slansky: Roger Wilkins on the man who would depart the White House in January 1989—

"A high-powered cheerleader for our worst instincts, a nasty man whose major talent is to make us feel good about being creepy and who lets us pretend that tomorrow will never come."

Tools

If not the sharpest in the drawer, they served their purpose fully.

As the guy on the left will continue to, what with the PR machine endowed in perpetuity.

The 61st Anniversary Of His 39th Birthday

If there had to have a Reagan centenary, one thing about it was good: Paul Slansky's book became available again.


The book covers politics—and what passed for culture—in the 1980s. And contains a page of listings under "Reagan, Ronald Wilson," including such subheads as "ignorance defense employed by"; "inability to answer questions of"; "respects paid to dead Nazis by"; "disbelief by public of."

Ronald Reagan may not have been able to pronounce it—

7/28 [1987] A careless speech writer includes the word "paradigm" in President Reagan's speech on superconductivity. Yes, he pronounces it "paradijum."

—but he certainly left us one.

After the federal deficit had reached its first trillion in October 1981—

11/23 President Reagan vetoes a stopgap spending bill, thus forcing the federal government—for the first time in history—to temporarily shut down. Says House Speaker Tip O'Neill, "He knows less about the budget than any president in my lifetime. He can't even carry on a conversation about the budget. It's an absolute and utter disgrace."

And there was the constant abetting by certain witnesses—

6/14 [1984] At his 25th press conference, President Reagan claims that his tax policies—which have produced a windfall for the wealthy—"have been more beneficial" to the poor "than to anyone else." Though this would seem to be a difficult claim to get away with, no one challenges him."

Speaking of which, I didn't notice much media play for the anniversary. Another good thing, although it may only reflect how settled a place Reagan has in mainstream narrative.

This year it's mainly been left to the presidential hopefuls of Reagan's party to invoke his name—over, and over, and over...

Pygmies those candidates might be, but they are not so different from their idol—just less slick and (so far) less well stage-managed. A Herman Cain on foreign policy; a Rick Perry on governance; they and the rest have sounded little more moronic than the original, considering how low the bar was for The Great Communicator.

In his typical press conferences, Reagan deflected questions or referred them to any convenient official present. More than once, he was seen turning to Nancy for a whispered cue.

Of Reagan's diligence in office, just a few of Slansky's assorted examples—

8/19 [1981] Ed Meese sees no need to wake President Reagan just to tell him the Navy has shot down two Libyan jets. Defending Meese's decision, Reagan explains, "If our planes are shot down, yes, they'd wake me up right away. If the other fellows were shot down, why wake me up?"

8/31 [1981] "He acted like there was nothing else in the world he had to do, nothing else on his mind."
—Former movie actor Rex Allen, who spent 45 minutes with President Reagan after presenting him with four pairs of free boots

"There are times when you really need him to do some work, and all he wants to do is tell stories about his movie days."
—Unnamed White House aide on President Reagan's detachment from his job

9/1 A Soviet fighter mistakenly shoots down Korean Air Lines Flight 007 after it strays into Soviet airspace, killing 269, including right-wing congressman Larry McDonald (D-GA). George Shultz calls Tip O'Neill to tell him about the incident.

"What does the President think about this?" asks O'Neill.

"We'll tell him when he wakes up," says Shultz.

Dan Rather returns instantly from his vacation upon hearing the news and—after CBS shows him on horseback at the ranch as the crisis unfolds—so does President Reagan.

6/7 "It was really funny. I was sitting there so worried about throw weight, and Reagan suddenly asks us if we've seen War Games."
—Unnamed congressman describing a White House meeting about arms control at which the President revealed that averting a movie nuclear catastrophe was far more interesting to him than the nuts and bolts of preventing a real-life one

10/2 [1984] At a White House briefing with Caspar Weinberger, President Reagan is asked how his MX missiles will be deployed. "I don't know but what maybe you haven't gotten into the area that I'm gonna turn over to the, heh heh, to the Secretary of Defense," he says sheepishly.

"The silos will be hardened," Weinberger says, then nods approvingly as Reagan volunteers, "Yes, I could say this. The plan also includes the hardening of silos."

10/5 [1985] Larry Speakes is asked if President Reagan has read the House report on the latest Beirut truck bombing. "I don't think he's read the report in detail," he says. "It's five-and-a-half pages, double-spaced."

2/4 [1985] Addressing a convention of religious broadcasters, President Reagan defends his arms build-up, citing Luke 14:31 to verify that "the scriptures are on our side in this." Then, for the benefit of the Jews in the audience, he describes how much he liked looking out over Lafayette Park at "the huge menorah, celebrating the Passover season."

9/1 [1986] "Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don't interfere."
—President Ragan, as quoted in a Fortune interview for its cover story "What Managers Can Learn from Manager Reagan"

Pitchman For The Ages

Before hawking the GOP Southern Strategy and trickle-down economics, he pushed other product—


And what should never be forgotten—

From Paul Slansky's The Clothes Have No Emperor—

THE [1984] REAGAN CAMPAIGN TALKS ABOUT ITS ADS

"I heard you were selling soap so I thought you might like to meet the bar."
—President Reagan to his advertising team.

"It's warm and fuzzy. Warm and fuzzy—but a good kind of fuzzy."
—Ron Travisano on his Reagan foreign policy spot, which features kids getting haircuts

We'll have this nice couple in an ordinary house. Something good will happen to them, and the guy will say, 'Hey honey, now that we've got so much money, let's go out for a steak.' But in the Hispanic version, we'll have the guy say, 'Let's go out for a taco.'"
—Media adviser Doug Watts explaining Reagan ethnic ad strategy

1987: What's News?

March 4: Reagan delivers his "my heart tells me I didn't do it" Iran-Contra speech.

On March 5, Congressman Henry Gonzalez introduces an impeachment resolution.

The resolution, writes Mark Hertsgaard in On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency, was—

...ignored by major news organizations, apparently because few other members of Congress endorsed it. "We were aware of it, and we watched to see how much support it got and whether it was going someplace, but it didn't," explained CBS' [Evening News executive producer Tom] Bettag. (1988, page 334)

Hertsgaard precedes this by noting had been the media attitude toward impeachment: that, in the words of NYT reporter Joel Brinkley, "public sentiment wasn't there to impeach Ronald Reagan."

That was not clear, says Hertsgaard, and he notes how various polls showed one-third to one-half of respondents believing Reagan should resign if found to have known about arms sales; in one poll, 57% thought Reagan was lying.

Of the media's insistence that there was no story, Hertsgaard notes the most question is—

How could the public be expected to develop an opinion on a given issue unless that issue was posed for their consideration. In the American system, that was the responsibility of the press. Yet the modern ethic of objectivity precluded such journalism. Only if members of the political elite, in this case the Congress actually did something about impeachment would it become "news"... (In fact, the fullest and virtually the only expositions of the impeachment question to appear in The New York Times and The Washington Post during the scandal were opinion articles, one in each newspaper, explaining why Congress was unlikely to pursue impeachment.) As New York Times Washington bureau Chief Craig Whitney explained, "The press is a captive of things as they happen."

Henry Gonzalez actually "did something"—as he throughout his life stood up for justice being done.

And it was something that could only be met by silence, being just the wrong something for those awed by Reagan's "popularity."

What To Tell The Children?

Baraboo, Wisconsin; pass the smelling salts—

...people with kids are driving by... little kids who are old enough to be able to read and might say, 'Mommy, what does that mean?' said Andrea Lombard, a Sauk County supervisor and first vice chairwoman of the Republican Party of Sauk County. "Well, how does Mommy explain that? I'm not sure."

For this bit of handwringing, Mr. Pierce has excellent advice—

"Actually, children, Mommy is a prominent local Republican and, therefore, Mommy is accessorial to the goggle-eyed Kochsucker in question. Mommy is part of the reason that nice Mrs. Pulaskiewicz isn't teaching you music any more and is now pumping gas in Pewaukee. Mommy should be placed in the stocks on the lawn of the state capitol in Madison with all the rest of them until the situation improves and the goggle-eyed Kochsucker in question is removed from the people's house and drop-kicked over the line into Illinois."

Simple.

The thing about this picture that really should be noticed is exactly the one to which the Kochsucker and allies turn blind eyes: green grass in Wisconsin, at this time of year?

What to tell the children, indeed.

1983: Hollywood Holiday

At this moment in 2011, the wingnuts froth about an Obama Christmas card clearly meant to signal cosiness, neutrality, and (no doubt) bipartisanship...

On the other hand, the image from a Republican in the White House could only feature "family, faith and freedom" (not pets); therefore, there was no 2005 White House card.

1988: Let Them Eat...

Be sure to reach for the Reagan fundie pal brand...

Quotes from Paul Slansky, The Clothes Have No Emperor—

12/13 With five weeks left in office, President Reagan delivers his farewell address on domestic policy, in which he continues to deny that his defense spending increases and tax cuts were in any way responsible for the $155 billion deficit, blaming instead an "iron triangle" of congressmen, lobbyists and journalists.

12/22 President Reagan—whose tenure has coincided with a huge increase in the homeless population—uses his last interview with David Brinkley to again claim that many of these unfortunates are homeless "by their own choice," as must be many of the jobless, since he again points out that the Sunday papers are full of want ads.

Holiday Spirit, 1980s-2011

Mr. Dickens......meet Mr. Meese.

Some 1983 quotes, from Paul Slansky's The Clothes Have No Emperor—

12/8 Continuing his tradition of holiday season insensitivity, a well-fed Ed Meese scoffs at the notion that the administration's policies are unnecessarily cruel to the poor. "I don't know of any authoritative figures that there are hungry children," he declares. "I've heard a lot of anecdotal stuff, but I haven't heard any authoritative figures.... I think some people are going to soup kitchens voluntarily. I know we've had considerable information that people go to soup kitchens because the food is free and that that's easier than paying for it. ... I think that they have money."

12/15 Ed Meese tells the National Press Club that literature's classic miser, Ebenezer Scrooge, to whom he has recently been compared, suffered from "bad press in his time. If you really look at the facts, he didn't exploit Bob Cratchit." Explains Meese, "Bob Cratchit was paid 10 shillings a week, which was a very good wage at the time.... Bob, in fact, had good cause to be happy with his situation. He lived in a house, not a tenement. His wife didn't have to work.... He was able to afford the traditional Christmas dinner of roast goose and plum pudding.... So let's be fair to Scrooge. He had his faults, but he wasn't unfair to anyone."

12/16 "Did he really say that? I can't believe he said that. ... Dickens is saying that the poor deserve to live not on the margins, but with comfort and love and with freedom and medical attention. I mean, isn't that the very point about Tiny Tim? ...He desperately needs a doctor and can't get to one because his family is so poor....He's dying because he can't get medical care....Boy, I'm really getting angry now. I can't believe these people."
—University of Pennsylvania Victorian literature scholar Nina Auerbach on the Meese interpretation of A Christmas Carol

You almost have to feel for Ed Meese, what with his having to work so hard to spread the word. After all, this was decades before the bipartisan consensus would be that the poor are bankrupting us. Just one recent sign of the latter: scams involving food stamps—instead of chicanery by, say, Wall Street —would seem to be the only fraud worthy of prosecution by the Feds.

Reagan demonized the poor for political gain. On landing in White House, he and his administration found it more advisable to pretend U.S. levels of poverty and hunger were exaggerated.

The percentage of the population in poverty continues a staggering (if not surprising) rise, in the decades since Reaganite policies won.

But not to worry: the noise machine is there to make sure the public knows the poor have phones and TVs; ergo, there's no poverty. This (and its corollary: poor people are fat, so they are not poor), are trotted out around this time of year, just as the public might be most susceptible to feeling charitable.

With the ranks of the permanently unemployed rising—and middle-class security an illusion—making the unemployed into Welfare Queens in need of drug testing is just one of the newest fronts in the war on the 99 Percent.

Holiday season 2011: the head of Republican Party—like Meese, a vastly overstuffed sort—calls hungry children in need of school meals year-round "wanton little waifs and serfs dependent on the state."

Even if not widely reported, reality—which can include the emotional disturbance brought on by despair—sometimes intrudes.

The Dear Leader of the post-Reagan Revolution has been back in the headlines, and proposing child labor for the poor.

Mere recycled shtick, consistent with Gingrich's 1994 proposal to put the children of the poor in orphanages.

Looking back brings up the way the whole dynamic operates. Although those of us who lived through the period remember the ridicule heaped on Gingrich, once the Big Idea was put On The Table it became an issue in need of consensus from Serious People.

Reagan Era: On The Trail Of A Tale

The 1980s did not completely lack detectives willing to take a close look at Reagan's unsourced anecdotes.

Political scientist Michael Paul Rogin, for one. His book Ronald Reagan: The Movie examines political mythologies and their use in demonizing the "other" throughout US history. His analysis of how Reagan transformed movie scripts into personal myth, and their use in his political career forms one chapter.

Rogin's 1985 appearance on 60 Minutes—to popular non-acclaim—was at least an effort at truth-telling.

And at least one real journalist, Lars-Erik Nelson, went after the source of a treasured Reagan tale; recounted by Paul Slansky in The Clothes Have No Emperor—

12/12 [1983] "A B-17 coming back across the channel from a raid over Europe, badly shot up by aircraft...The young ball-turret gunner was wounded, and they couldn't get him out of the turret there while flying.

"But over the channel, the plane began to lose altitude, and the commander had to order his men to bail out. As the men started to leave the plane, the last one to leave—the boy, understandably, knowing he was being left behind to go down with the plane, cried out in terror—the last man to leave the plane saw the commander sit down on the floor. He took the boy's hand and said, 'Never mind, son, we'll ride it down together.' Congressional Medal of Honor posthumously awarded."
—President Reagan addressing the Congressional Medal of Honor Society

By 12/16, says Slansky,

Columnist Lars-Erik Nelson, after examining the citations of all 434 Congressional Medals of Honor awarded during World War II—reveals that not one of them matches the story President Reagan told the other day. "It's not true," writes Nelson. "It didn't happen. It's a Reagan story....The President of the United States went before an audience of 300 real Congressional Medal of Honor winners and told them about a make-believe Congressional Medal of Honor winner."

Responds Larry Speakes, "If you tell the same story five times, it's true."

And Nelson stayed with the story—

12/28 Lars-Erik Nelson reports that a reader saw a scene very similar to President Reagan's Medal of Honor story in the 1944 movie Wing and a Prayer. "Adding to the confusion," writes Nelson, "Dana Andrews at one point reprimands a glory-seeking young pilot with the words, 'This isn't Hollywood.' ...You could understand that some in the audience might confuse reality with fiction.

And on to 1984—

1/11 ...Nelson suggests another source for the Medal of Honor story: an apochrypal item in the April 1944 issue of Reader's Digest, a magazine known to be a life-long Reagan favorite. "The bomber had been almost ripped apart by German cannon," it read. "The ball turret gunner was badly wounded and stuck in the blister on the underside of the fuselage. Crewmen worked frantically to extricate the youngster, but there was nothing they could do. They began to jump. The terror-stricken lad screamed in fear as he saw what was happening. The last man to jump heard the remaining crewman, a gunner, say, 'Take it easy, kid. We'll take this ride together.'"

But Nelson was an honest-to-god journalist; from the New York Observer's November 2000 Nelson obit—

A friend of his noted that a rare foray into television - an appearance on Meet the Press in 1998 during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, along with Steven Brill, Fred Barnes of The Weekly Standard and Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post - left Mr. Nelson so infuriated by the grandstanding of Tim Russert that he took to calling the show "Me the Press."

"He did not have any appetite for those yelling shows, or what he called the 'theater criticism' mode of analyzing politics," Mr. Dwyer said. "I don't know why people called him old-school, because the old school is the only school-everything else is fake."

Simply put, Mr. Dwyer said, "he was a no-bullshit guy."

Nelson died of a stoke on November 20— after weeks of monitoring the Florida recount shenanigans, post-presidential election. I can't remember who said it—and can't find a citation—but sometime after 2000 some writer or other called Lars-Erik Nelson "the first casualty of the Bush Administration."

The Reagan Era: Gifts That Keep Giving (II)

The sponsors—and their Spokesman—reached new frontiers for pushing product.

The index of Paul Slansky's The Clothes Have No Emperor includes, among other sub-heads to the "Reagan, Ronald Wilson"—the category, "improbable letters of support cited by"—

11/30 [1981]
President Reagan tells a $2,500-per-ticket GOP fundraiser in Cincinnati about a letter from a blind supporter. "He wrote in Braille… to tell me that if cutting his pension would help get this country back on its feet, he'd like to have me cut his pension." The altruistic soul's identity is never revealed.

1/14 [1982] President Reagan tells a business luncheon in New York about a Massachusetts resident in his 80s who supposedly sent in his Social Security check "to be used for reducing the national debt." As usual, no proof is offered.

6/27 [1984] "Your policies are not in the least anti-black or anti-poor. As a matter of fact, it's my opinion that your fight against inflation, your war on the drug traffic, your tough stand against street crime, you effort in revitalizing the nation's economy, are all of great importance to us poor people and us black people in America."
—Letter allegedly received by President Reagan from a 39-year old black man whose identity, as is so often the case with these epistles of unsolicited support, goes unrevealed

One of the innovations of Reagan's PR forces was to introduce to a mass audience the spurious rumor and unattributed anecdote so beloved by the ultra-Right. "Welfare queen" registered with those for whom it was intended, even as it was absurd to anyone the least connected to real American life.

Despite a largely compliant media, there still was a certain amount of skepticism toward Reagan and his stories. But this was years before Faux News would make it so easy to create and promote myths in service of the agenda—from "frivolous lawsuits" to "union thugs protest in Madison"—and on to whatever fake anecdotes will be used to determine future "public discourse."

The Reagan Era: Gifts That Keep Giving (I)

In The Man Who Sold the World: Ronald Reagan and the Betrayal of Main Street America, William Kleinknecht covers, in a chapter entitled "The Looting of America," the Reagan blitz to deregulate everything.

Following the gory details of how oversight was removed or subverted for financial institutions, workplace safety, airlines and pretty much all consumer goods and services, Kleinknecht adds special mention of Mark Fowler, Reagan's head of the Federal Communications Commission.

Of course the appointment was consistent with the administration's MO: just install a sworn opponent of an agency to subvert its function from the top. [See, for example, James Watt.]

Fowler's take on broadcasting and the public interest: "Television is just another appliance. It's a toaster with pictures."

More from Kleinknecht—

Mark Fowler, Reagan's first chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, was the spiritual father of broadcast deregulation. He came into office with a profound disdain for the notion that television and radio airwaves were owned by the public, a concept that had been the cornerstone of communications law since 1934. He felt the airwaves should be the province of corporations, whose competition in the free market would be enough to serve the public interest. "It's time to move away from thinking of broadcasters as trustees and time to treat them the way that everyone else in this society does, that is, as a business," he said. "Television is just another appliance. It's a toaster with pictures." Fowler said he took it as an "article of faith that any successful businessman is meeting a public need." He was fond of cloaking himself in the mantle of Ronald Reagan, once boasting that he was "not the captive of any industry or industry in general. I am a captive of a philosophy of government we call Reaganism."

These were not just idle words. In Fowler's six-year tenure as chairman, the FCC reviewed or abolished 89 percent of the regulations governing broadcasting. By 1987, the commission had done away with the fairness doctrine, which required broadcast outlets to cover both sides of public issues; the provision that required broadcasters to allow public figures equal time to respond to attacks; the requirement that politicians be given airtime around elections; and the rule that stations keep a file of all their complaints from the public. Fowler also dropped the FCC's enforcement of misconduct on the part of broadcasting license holders.

Fowler's "most important contribution to the homogenization of news and entertainment," notes Kleinknecht, was in loosening limits to company ownership of multiple media outlets.

When Fowler took over, a single entity was restricted to owning no more than seven each for TV, AM and FM radio stations. That number was increased to twelve, and the rule that a station be held for three years before sale was abolished. Those changes alone were—

enough to set off a round of mergers in the broadcasting industry, including Capital Cities' acquisition of the American Broadcasting Corporation, the first sale of a major television network. Radio and television stations were soon being traded like any other commodity, making a mockery of their status as trustees of the nation's airwaves.

Subsequent money poured into lobbying of (and "donations" to) Congress members would set the stage for passing the Telecommunications Act of 1996—

The result was that a bill profoundly skewed toward powerful interests was passd with hardly any public debate...

Sponsors of the law estimated that deregulation of the cable and telephone industries would save consumers $550 billion over a decade-$333 billion in lower long-distance rates, $32 billion in lower local phone rates, and $78 billion in lower cable bills. Instead, cable rates went up by about 50 percent and local phone rates by more than 20 percent, according to a 2005 study by Common Cause.

Even more devastating for our culture and national discourse was the further evisceration of limits on multiple ownership of broadcast stations. Companies had been limited to owning forty radio stations; the law removed any limits, enabling a company like Clear Channel Communications to own twelve hundred stations around the country. The Common Cause study found that $700 million worth of buying and selling of radio stations occurred the first week after the act became law.

Need the author add? "Higher telephone and cable TV rates, vastly increased concentration of the media, the death of local radio, the homogenization and dumbing down of programming, less broadcast coverage of news—all these emerged from the movement begun by Ronald Reagan, the man they called the Great Communicator."

Just as taking corporate oversight from government would prove "government doesn't work"—and would make sure the government haters stay in charge.

December 2011: Already Under The Tree

This week's done deals:

Continued congressional hostage taking; over basics like unemployment compensation, and with the obligatory "compromise" to be made by Democrats.

"Even a liberal Democrat" endorses pushing Granny and her Medicare over a cliff.

And this development ininstitutionalizing the police state—on the 220th anniversary of the Bill of Rights, no less.

Ebeneezer Scrooge 2011 has the face of Gingrich, Limbaugh, or any prominent Republican. But such greed and sociopathy will not be hindered by a paltry Ghost of Marley. Instead, Idea Man Gingrich can breezily propose child labor for the poor, and Limbaugh can deem hungry children in need of school meals year-round "wanton little waifs and serfs dependent on the state."

And the other team? They went all out, on what Charles Pierce called "National Sellout Day"—

The Democratic party certainly has gone to great lengths... They have made great preparation. They have cooked the goose (their own, naturellement, and ours) and placed it on the table in the traditional manner, with a knife stuck in its back... They have filled the wassail bowl to overflowing with the customary holiday libation, Hot Mulled Blood of Constituent. And later, we will all gather around the fire while our party elders read the famous story. I particularly like the part at the end when Scrooge realizes that reformation has its limits and sells the Cratchit children into indentured servitude so that the other men of the Exchange won't think him weak, or mired in the past.

Pierce also says it: what Americans really want are only the most basic protections—items Not On The Table, much less under the tree—

The American people are not angry at government because people yell at each other and nothing ever gets done. The American people are angry because people yell at each other and nothing the American people really want ever gets done. They want higher taxes on billionnaires. They want Medicare kept out of the hands of the vandals. If they think about it a little, they even like their jurisprudence with a little habeas corpus sprinkled on top. Instead, they get endless platitudes, and the steady, futile placating of an insatiable political opposition.

A Gift For All Seasons

Mr. Charles P. Pierce: not only is he blogging regularly as of late, but he seems to be doing it quite continuously.

This—on Scott Walker and the Wisconsin recall drive—really needs to be read in whole, not quoted.

...But it's too hard to resist a sample; on December 2—

There were new rules in the state capitol that morning. There are new rules in the state capitol of Wisconsin on almost every morning these days. You see, ever since last winter, when Walker rammed through his assault on the state's public workers, touching off a general uprising all over the state, and a specific one outside on his front lawn, many of his fellow citizens have taken to expressing in imaginative ways how much of a walking pustulation they believe their governor is, both inside and outside the capitol building. So, in the interest of not being told to his face what a walking pustulation he is, Walker and his Department of Administration have concocted a veritable symphony of pettiness to drown out the noise....

And this, on Obama's pretty words in Kansas vs. the reality of the 99%—

...In the middle of his lucid exposition of how we of how we got into this mess — and, more important, who got us into this mess — Obama felt obligated to say...

"I believe that this country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share, when everyone plays by the same rules. These aren't Democratic values or Republican values. These aren't 1% values or 99% values. They're American values."

Because, among all that's wrong with that picture, "The Republican party gave up on these 'values' the first time they let Arthur Laffer into their corridors of power without handing him a mop and a bucket," Pierce continues—

I regret to inform the president that these actions are necessary specifically because the Republicans — and, alas, too goddamn many Democrats — do not accept the fact that "this country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share, when everyone plays by the same rules." I regret to inform the president that, up until recently, not enough Americans believed in those "American values" to get their sorry asses to the polls and elect enough people put those "American values" into action. The people most clearly doing the latter are the people doing it in the streets today.

"You Are America"

1985 item from Paul Slansky, The Clothes Have No Emperor—

12/1 President Reagan is honored by friends in the entertainment industry at a black tie event at an NBC studio. Among those paying tribute are Burt Reynolds, Dean Martin, Emmanuel Lewis and Charlton Heston, who tells the President, "To the world, you are America." Reagan reveals his "dream Cabinet," which would have included Secretary of State John Wayne, Defense Secretary Clint Eastwood and Treasury Secretary Jack Benny.

What, no nutrition post for a Hollywood fundie pal?

Later that month—

12/15 60 Minutes interviews Berkeley professor Michael Rogin, who posits the theory that the President honestly can't tell the difference between movies and reality. The evolution of a Reagan anecdote* is traced from the point where he credits it as a movie scene to the point where he tells it as if it really happened. Viewer response proves this to be one of the least popular segments in the program's 17-year history.

*Some quotes from the show in this 12/85 LA Times review.

Sandwiched between those two bits of media news—

12/9 [Former Reagan employer] General Electric buys RCA (and with it, NBC) for $6.3 billion.

Keeping Folks Occupied...

That they do, the representatives of the one percent.

They provide opportunities for camping out in a patriotic manner—

(NYT "Black Friday" coverage, via Bag News Notes.)

Meanwhile, they're also busy having the wrong kind of campers evicted... Nearly three hundred arrests after midnight yesterday, as LA police broke up the Occupy site at City Hall.

Bag News again—on the LAPD's bringing in "embedded media" to cover the action—while keeping out independent reporting.

Writer Tina Dupuy was on the scene. Talking today with Sam Seder (segment starting at 33:00), she had a lot to say about the media who were let in, and about the meme that the encampment was dangerous and unsanitary—the story line used by authorities around the country as the for-public-consumption reason to break up Occupy camps.

Touching on actual threats to public safety is Joshua Holland—on the connections among OWS, the gutting of social services, and militarized police forces.

In Britain today, public sector workers took to the streets, in protest against the austerity scam their government has created.

So much happening; now, if only we had a news media...

Though, after suing the Fed for access to its records, Bloomberg News reports how Secret Fed Loans Gave Banks $13 Billion Undisclosed to Congress.

It sure would be nice to see a bit of media (and prosecutorial) interest in an insider scam on a very grand scale—for the benefit of insiders so grand, they can only be a micro-percent, next to whom others of the One Percent are mere hoi polloi.

It would also be nice to see interest in the "sideshow created to distract everyone from what the Fed was up to."

Witnessing and Reporting

The death of Tom Wicker on November 25 is slightly old news, but a reminder of a (sometimes) better era of journalism.

The media being "professional" as it is, coverage focused on shop talk—along the lines of, "reporting the Kennedy assasination made his career."

Less prominent was the fact that Wicker's career at the NYT included taking stands on issues. Among those mentioned by Robert D. McFadden, in the Times' obituary—

He denounced President Richard M. Nixon for covertly bombing Cambodia, and in the Watergate scandal accused him of creating the "beginnings of a police state."

...

...Speaking at a 1971 "teach-in" at Harvard, he urged students to "engage in civil disobedience" in protesting the war in Vietnam. "We got one president out," he told the cheering crowd, "and perhaps we can do it again."

He was among the observers who tried to mediate during the Attica uprising, before New York governor Nelson Rockefeller ordered the fatal storming of the prison.

His writings on civil rights reflected a topic of deep concern to the North Carolina native.

McFadden notes another subject among Wicker's books—

"On Press" (1978) enlarged on complaints he had made for years: the myth of objectivity, reliance on official and anonymous sources. Far from being robust and uninhibited, he wrote, the press was often a toady to government and business.

And Wicker noted the central Reagan scam; Thom Hartmann often cites this 1985 column—

... it now appears the deficit was deliberately created by Mr. Reagan in order to do away with Democratic social programs dating back to the New Deal.

Who says so? David Stockman, the departing Budget Director, at second hand, and Friedrich von Hayek directly. He's the Nobel Prize-winning economist who's been a guru of Reaganomics.

Wicker's warning still rings horribly true—"Congressional Democrats should realize the source of the pressure they're under to sell their political birthright."

Now, that could have been written yesterday—to fall again on predominately deaf ears.

Thanksgiving á Lá Ronnie

From Paul Slansky's The Clothes Have No Emperor: for the season, two facets of Reagan's shtick.

One was to play what seemed his preferred role: America's avuncular (if forgetful) Master of Ceremonies—

11/18 [1981] President Reagan receives the annual White House turkey, which upstages him by squawking and flapping its wings madly. Not to be outdone, the President recalls a Thanksgiving
long ago: he was carving a turkey, noticed what seemed to be blood oozing from it, assumed the bird was undercooked, then realized he had sliced open this thumb. Everyone laughs

11/23 [1982] The annual White House turkey is presented to President Reagan. As it did last year, this reminds him of the time he gashed his thumb while carving a similar bird, and he does not hesitate to tell the story again.

The other pole of his "charm"—jibing at one of the Right's favorite scapegoat—

11/21 [1983] President Reagan receives the annual White House turkey. "You're looking at the press a lot like I do sometimes," he says to the bird,"with your mouth wide open and a total misunderstanding of everything they're asking."

11/25 [1985] "Go ahead! Atta boy, Wilfred. You tell 'em Wilfred. Yes, sir, Wilfred, you let 'em have it!"
—President Reagan, saved from having to answer reporters' questions by the screams of the annual White House turkey, this year named Wilfred

In the 1980s even St. Ronnie's "charm" failed at convincing the majority of people that his administration didn't hurt the poor.

Since then, the propaganda machine has made sure to include among its campaigns a war on empathy.

Holidays are the usual time to bring out those themes; a couple of Thanksgivings ago but typical is this column—published in a once upon a time respectable Washington Post—

If there is anything viler than a plump, well-fed, rosy-cheeked white guy getting all huffy about a USDA study on food insecurity because he sees poor people who are fat...

Charles Lane, who took refuge at Freddie Hiatt's House of Horrors after his unsuccessful stint at the New Republic as the editor for Stephen Glass, has decided that his effort to make the world a better place as we approach the Thanksgiving holiday is to argue that poor people need less food, not more.

The photo of Lane* accompanying Tintin's post is of a smug (and yes, very well-fed) face.

*Not to be confused with the great (and skinny) Charles Lane.

And thirty years after Reagan, there are so many poor people to be blamed for their condition.

The policies that got us here have been bi-partisan, to be sure. Ending Welfare As We Know It played its part; it was during the Clinton administration that Barbara Ehrenreich researched this.

Add eight years of Junior in the White House—by this year's tenth anniversary of Nickel and Dimed's original publication, Ehrenreich says—

In 2000, I had been able to walk into a number of jobs pretty much off the street. Less than a decade later, many of these jobs had disappeared and there was stiff competition for those that remained.
...

The most shocking thing I learned from my [2008-9] research on the fate of the working poor in the recession was the extent to which poverty has indeed been criminalized in America.

Perhaps the constant suspicions of drug use and theft that I encountered in low-wage workplaces should have alerted me to the fact that, when you leave the relative safety of the middle class, you might as well have given up your citizenship and taken residence in a hostile nation.
...

So what is the solution to the poverty of so many of America's working people? Ten years ago, when Nickel and Dimed first came out, I often responded with the standard liberal wish list -- a higher minimum wage, universal health care, affordable housing, good schools, reliable public transportation, and all the other things we, uniquely among the developed nations, have neglected to do.

Today, the answer seems both more modest and more challenging: if we want to reduce poverty, we have to stop doing the things that make people poor and keep them that way. Stop underpaying people for the jobs they do. Stop treating working people as potential criminals and let them have the right to organize for better wages and working conditions.

Stop the institutional harassment of those who turn to the government for help or find themselves destitute in the streets. Maybe, as so many Americans seem to believe today, we can’t afford the kinds of public programs that would genuinely alleviate poverty -- though I would argue otherwise. But at least we should decide, as a bare minimum principle, to stop kicking people when they’re down.

Golden Calf: My, How You've Grown

Water Tiger: "You shall not make for yourself a graven image..."

She also observes—

So nice to know that the safety of this statue is more important than the safety of First Amendment rights.

Note handed to Obama—just in case he might care that "Banks got bailed out. We got sold out."

The note math has Occupy arrests at 4000.

Which leaves out mention of the level of police reaction in scenes like this.

Or this...

Any sound from the fetus lovers will be to condemn a pregnant woman for being in a place where out of control authority could decide to assault her.

Setting Examples

Portland— Natalie Behring/Getty Images
caption: Police in riot gear work to remove remaining protesters from the streets around the Occupy Portland encampment November 13, 2011 in Portland, Oregon. Portland police have reclaimed the two parks in which occupiers have been camping after a night of brinksmanship with protesting crowds of several thousands.

Not Portland—another image from Bag News Notes, where Michael Shaw compares the two— Khalil Hamra/AP
caption: Egyptian riot police beat a protester during clashes in Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt, Saturday, Nov. 19, 2011. Thousands of police clashed with protesters for control of downtown Cairo's Tahrir Square on Saturday after security forces tried to stop activists from staging a long-term sit-in there. The violence took place just nine days before Egypt's first elections since the ouster of longtime President Hosni Mubarak in February.

Word is out today; here via David Atkins—

Two people were killed in Cairo and Alexandria this weekend as Egyptian activists took the streets to protest the military's attempts to maintain its grip on power. And guess how the state is justifying its deadly crackdown.

"We saw the firm stance the US took against OWS people & the German govt against green protesters to secure the state," an Egyptian state television anchor said yesterday...

And why would they not draw that conclusion? Stopping the lower orders by whatever means is the goal of the owners everywhere, so the message is dutifully promoted by their media servants.

Our superstar versions of the latter are so very well cared for: defaming activists is all in a day's fabulously overpaid work for them, as they ignore or excuse police brutality and use of "pain compliance" against peaceful protestors. Demonizing protest applies to US streets, at least; similar demonstrations abroad may get better PR, depending on a regime's current branding by the owners.

Yet world-wide austerity for the 99% is a sacred cow of the pundit class.

Again: why not? It's a mere abstraction, this drive to destroy what little is left of a safety net not needed by anyone they will ever have to know.

99% Reason For Thanks

Some reasons to be thankful, right now: Scott Olsen's continued improvement, since the October 25 police attack on Oakland occupiers.

And for the many committed and ingenious participants who have brought OWS this far.

That's in only two months, and in the face of stepped-up brutality around the country, as the owners and their "public servants" lose patience with the movement's continued growth.

Matt Taibbi hits a few key points about the powerful motives for OWS, despite demonstrators' alleged lack of focus on issues—

... Occupy Wall Street was always about something much bigger than a movement against big banks and modern finance. It's about providing a forum for people to show how tired they are not just of Wall Street, but everything. This is a visceral, impassioned, deep-seated rejection of the entire direction of our society, a refusal to take even one more step forward into the shallow commercial abyss of phoniness, short-term calculation, withered idealism and intellectual bankruptcy that American mass society has become. If there is such a thing as going on strike from one's own culture, this is it. And by being so broad in scope and so elemental in its motivation, it's flown over the heads of many on both the right and the left.

...

What both sides missed is that OWS is tired of all of this. They don't care what we think they're about, or should be about. They just want something different.

We're all born wanting the freedom to imagine a better and more beautiful future. But modern America has become a place so drearily confining and predictable that it chokes the life out of that built-in desire. Everything from our pop culture to our economy to our politics feels oppressive and unresponsive. We see 10 million commercials a day, and every day is the same life-killing chase for money, money and more money; the only thing that changes from minute to minute is that every tick of the clock brings with it another space-age vendor dreaming up some new way to try to sell you something or reach into your pocket. The relentless sameness of the two-party political system is beginning to feel like a Jacob's Ladder nightmare with no end; we're entering another turn on the four-year merry-go-round, and the thought of having to try to get excited about yet another minor quadrennial shift in the direction of one or the other pole of alienating corporate full-of-shitness is enough to make anyone want to smash his own hand flat with a hammer.

...

There was a lot of snickering in media circles, even by me, when I heard the protesters talking about how Liberty Square was offering a model for a new society, with free food and health care and so on. Obviously, a bunch of kids taking donations and giving away free food is not a long-term model for a new economic system.

But now, I get it. People want to go someplace for at least five minutes where no one is trying to bleed you or sell you something. It may not be a real model for anything, but it's at least a place where people are free to dream of some other way for human beings to get along, beyond auctioned "democracy," tyrannical commerce and the bottom line.

Photo: Sarah Seltzer, Alternet

Taibbi's piece in the new Rolling Stone was online a week or two ago; it was before the heightened police violence of November 17 that Taibbi wrote—

And here's one more thing I was wrong about: I originally was very uncomfortable with the way the protesters were focusing on the NYPD as symbols of the system. After all, I thought, these are just working-class guys from the Bronx and Staten Island who have never seen the inside of a Wall Street investment firm, much less had anything to do with the corruption of our financial system.

But I was wrong. The police in their own way are symbols of the problem. All over the country, thousands of armed cops have been deployed to stand around and surveil and even assault the polite crowds of Occupy protesters. This deployment of law-enforcement resources already dwarfs the amount of money and manpower that the government "committed" to fighting crime and corruption during the financial crisis. One OWS protester steps in the wrong place, and she immediately has police roping her off like wayward cattle. But in the skyscrapers above the protests, anything goes.

This is a profound statement about who law enforcement works for in this country. What happened on Wall Street over the past decade was an unparalleled crime wave. Yet at most, maybe 1,500 federal agents were policing that beat – and that little group of financial cops barely made any cases at all. Yet when thousands of ordinary people hit the streets with the express purpose of obeying the law and demonstrating their patriotism through peaceful protest, the police response is immediate and massive. There have already been hundreds of arrests, which is hundreds more than we ever saw during the years when Wall Street bankers were stealing billions of dollars from retirees and mutual-fund holders and carpenters unions through the mass sales of fraudulent mortgage-backed securities.

It's not that the cops outside the protests are doing wrong, per se, by patrolling the parks and sidewalks. It's that they should be somewhere else. They should be heading up into those skyscrapers and going through the file cabinets to figure out who stole what, and from whom. They should be helping people get their money back. Instead, they're out on the street, helping the Blankfeins of the world avoid having to answer to the people they ripped off.

Photo: sirmitchell

Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images, via Bag News Notes

Same as it ever was—

The Feast of Pure Reason (193?)
Jack Levine
NYT: November 2010 obit and slide show

The Day After

New York, yesterday:

Last night:
"99%" was among the slogans projected on the side of the Verizon building. Boing Boing has stunning pictures accompanying an interview on how it was pulled off; including this background—

Opposite the Verizon building, there is a bunch of city housing. Subsidized, rent-controlled. There's a lack of services, lights are out in the hallways, the housing feels like jails, like prisons. I walked around, and put up signs in there offering money to rent out an apartment for a few hours. I didn't say much more. I received surprisingly few calls, and most of them seemed not quite fully "there." But then I got a call from a person who sounded pretty sane. Her name was Denise Vega. She lived on the 16th floor. Single, working mom, mother of three.

I spoke with her on the phone, and a few days later went over and met her.

I told her what I wanted to do, and she was enthused. The more I described, the more excited she got.

Her parting words were, "let's do this."

She wouldn't take my money. That was the day of the eviction of Zuccotti, the same day. And she'd been listening to the news all day, she saw everything that had happened.

"I can't charge you money, this is for the people," she said.

She was born in the projects. She opened up her home to us.

She was in there tonight with her 3 daughters, 2 sisters. The NYPD started snooping around down on the ground while the projections were up, it was clear where we were projecting from, and inside it was festive.

"If they want to come up they're gonna need a warrant!," her family was saying. "If they ask us, well, we don't know what they are talking about!" They were really brave and cool.

Alternet has reports and crowd estimates (Foley Square last night at over 30,000). Coverage of police actions includes this—

One protester, however, had a hard time getting the NYPD to take him into custody. Retired Philadelphia police captain Ray Lewis, in full dress uniform, was almost begging to be arrested -- kneeling in front of a line of cops, with his hands behind his back at the southwest corner of Nassau and Pine --as he decried corporate exploitation. The police made feints at arresting him for a time, almost toying with the retired cop, but wouldn't actually do it -- at first. After he moved back through the crowd and up toward Broadway, they pounced, turning Lewis into a full-fledged OWS folk hero. Walking ramrod straight with his hands behind his back, the retired police captain was led by two NYPD officers through the intersection to the whoops, whistles and applause of the crowd.

Lewis definitely is a new hero of mine; along with Denise Vega, and thousands of people whose names I don't know.

Michael Shaw presents these juxtapositions: pretty Madison Avenue imagery versus the brutality of our militarized police forces.

In all the rush of events, we can't forget about the political shell game being played by the servants to the 1%.

As Digby offered in this morning's entry in her pretty much daily posts on the subject: "Super Committee"; Super Trouble

99%; Devotion, 100%

Via Digby—

"100% American," those Three Rs might sound.

But they inspire the kind of response the authorities never deem necessary for a crowd like those 2009 tea partiers who threatened Democratic congress members' town halls.

This posted by Michael Shaw yesterday—

photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images.
caption: Retired Philadelphia Police Department Captain Ray Lewis (L) stands outside Zuccotti Park after police removed the Occupy Wall Street protesters from the park early in the morning on November 15, 2011 in New York City. Hundreds of protesters, who rallied against inequality in America, have slept in tents and under tarps since September 17 in Zuccotti Park, which has since become the epicenter of the global Occupy movement. The raid in New York City follows recent similar moves in Oakland, California, and Portland, Oregon.

More on Ray Lewis' participation in OWS.

Today—Ray Lewis Arrested—

"All the cops are just workers for the one percent, and they don't even realize they’re being exploited," Mr. Lewis said. "As soon as I’m let out of jail, I'll be right back here and they'll have to arrest me again."

Picture here.

Collective Actions

Even without the help of DHS or the FBI, a thorough 1932 job—

Soldiers guard leveled veterans' bonus march camp

David Atkins yesterday, on the NYPD clearance and media blackout—

Watching it unfold has had the same surreal feel as watching the early days of Tahrir Square. As big as the story of the clearing of the park is, one of the interesting side stories is also that all the major news networks, cable and otherwise, were silent...And as with Egypt, by far the best way to learn about events happening on the ground was via Twitter.

...

Media blackout? Check. Transportation shutdown? Check. Needless police brutality? Check. Mayor Mubarak is evidently in control of New York City, and pulled off this entire operation in early morning cover of darkness.

The reporting ban was eluded for a while by Josh Harkinson, who entered the park and reported for Mother Jones via twitter and video here and here.

With evictions going on in cities around the country, Digby quotes this, on Oakland mayor Jean Quan's apparent spilling the beans that city governments and federal authorities coordinated the bust-ups—

...Quan, speaking in an interview with the BBC ...casually mentioned that she was on a conference call with leaders of 18 US cities shortly before a wave of raids broke up Occupy Wall Street encampments across the country.

Over the past ten days, more than a dozen cities have moved to evict "Occupy" protesters from city parks and other public spaces. As was the case in last night's move in New York City, each of the police actions shares a number of characteristics. And according to one Justice official, each of those actions was coordinated with help from Homeland Security, the FBI and other federal police agencies.

Digby notes—

I don't have the answers. But I do know that the Federal, state and local police agencies have a tremendous amount of capability and I have no doubt they have been clamoring for the chance to use it.

Later updates from Digby: more on apparent DHS and FBI involvement.

Lynn Parramore lays out six questions about that involvement.

Michael Shaw at Bag News Notes posts this—

Lucas Jackson/Reuters

Shaw writes of this photo versus images from CNN—

Leading off this rough edit is last night's iconic photo of the White Shirts manhandling Occupier youth as Zuccotti was taken, along with eviction stills from CNN...

What we have here is a massive PR war — the battle for hearts and minds (and noses) —playing out between the protesters and the city in front of the media. So the question, when we get to the end of this 24-hour media cycle, will the Reuters photo win the action for Occupy? or, will the Mayor's gambit pay off? In other words, will more people sympathize with Bloomberg and the police action based on floods of grimy shots of NYC's sanitation force cleaning up the remains?

More Digby, about the role of the "culture war" media setup in deflating public approval of OWS—

...the "controversy" is a direct result of right wing lizard brain propaganda about Occupiers being sub-human beasts. The drumbeat has been loud and constant, particularly on local news, and it was almost inevitable that the notion would take hold among some people. Add to that the sight of heavily armed Robo Cops swarming all over our cities as if they were staging an assault on Falluja and people get nervous. That's not an accident either.

...this thing was bound to run along America's cultural fault line whether it set out to or not and in the end it will likely fall on one side of it... That doesn't mean it won't have the impact everyone seeks. It's just that the idea of the 99% vs the 1% is a great slogan and its certainly valid. But in our culture, we just don't divide that way. ...

Ronald Reagan: The Buck Stops... Anywhere Else

In the index to Paul Slansky's The Clothes Have No Emperor,
sub-entries below the heading "Reagan, Ronald Wilson" include—

blames Carter
blames Congress
blames the media
blames miscellaneous others

Republican acceptance of "personal responsibility" being what it is, Slansky has the quotes to fit those sub-heads.

After the Tower Report is issued by the administration's hand-picked Iran-Contra investigative committee, Reagan's March 4, 1987 public response includes this rhetorical construction—

A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not.

Slansky summarizes 12-minute speech and its use of the passive voice, whereby Reagan—

• Acknowledges that the Iran-Contra affair "happened on my watch"
• Says nobler aims of long-term peace "deteriorated…into trading arms for hostages"
• Calls the deal "a mistake" (though one that resulted from his excessive concern for the hostages).

As for his "management style," the problem was that "no one kept proper records of meetings or decisions," which led to his inability to recall approving the arms shipment. "I did approve it," says the President. "I just can't say specifically when." Lest anyone remain unnerved, he dads, "Rest assured, there's plenty of record-keeping now going on at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue."

The White House mode of damage control was to distance Reagan from events—which only made him sound as disengaged as he was.

And the Iran-Contra speech seems like an odd foreshadowing of Reagan's "I've been told I have Alzheimer's" letter, of November 1994.

[Don't] Watch My Lips

Men With No Lips (Ronald Reagan, Caspar Weinberger, Donald Regan, James Baker)
Robbie Conal

November 1986: the first reports reach US news media—and the White House makes its first public statements. From Paul Slansky, The Clothes Have No Emperor—

11/3 In Lebanon, the pro-Syrian magazine Al Shiraa reports that the US has secretly been pplying arms to Iran.

11/4 Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, speaker of the Iranian Parliament, says that former NSC adviser Robert McFarlane and four other Americans, carrying Irish passports and posing as members of a flight crew, recently tyraveled to Iran on a secret diplomatic mission to trade military equipment for Iran's help in curbing terrorism. Rafsanjani says the men brought a Bible signed by President Reagan and a cake in the shape a key, which was said to be "a key to open US-Iran relations."

11/13 "For 18 months now, we have had under way a secret diplomatic initiative to Iran. That initiative was undertaken for the simplest and best of reasons: to renew a relationship with tlle nation of Iran; to bring an honorable end to the bloody six-year war between Iran and Iraq; to eliminate state-sponsored terrorism and subversion, and to effect the safe return of all hostages."
—President Reagan addressing the nation on the Iran arms deal, hoping that if he mentions he hostages last, people won't think their release was the prime motivation for the deal

"Now, my fellow Americans, there is an old saying that nothing spreads so quickly as a rumor. So I thought it was time to speak with you directly-to tell you first-hand about our dealings with Iran. As Will Rogers once said, 'Rumor travels faster, but it don't stay put as long as truth.' So let's get to the facts."
—President Reagan preparing to embellish the truth

"During the course of our secret discussions, I authorized the transfer of small amounts of defensive weapons and spare parts for defensive systems to Iran.... These modest deliveries, taken together, could easily fit into a single cargo plane.... We did not—repeat—did not trade weapons or anything else for hostages, nor will we."
—President Reagan claiming that the arms for hostages swap wasn't really a swap because we didn't give them too much stuff, and besides, the stuff we did give them hardly counts as weapons

11/21 The shredding machine in White House aide Oliver North's office jams.

11/25 A grim President Reagan appears in the White House briefing room to say he "was not fully informed on the nature of one of the activities" undertaken as an off-shoot of the Iran arms deal. He announces that National Security Adviser John Poindexter has resigned and NSC staffer Oliver North has been fired, then introduces Ed Meese to explain why.

"Certain monies which were received in the transaction between representatives of Israel and representatives of Iran were taken and made available to the forces in Central America which are opposing the Sandinista government there," says Meese. "We don't know the exact amount yet. Our estimate is that it is somewhere between $10 and $30 million.... The President knew nothing about it."

As Meese talks, his head is positioned in front of the White House logo (THE WHITE HOUSE/ WASHINGTON) in such a way that the only letters that can be seen on TV spell out WHITE WASHING.

Later, Reagan calls North and tells him, "This is going to make a great movie one day."

11/26 "Does the bank president know whether a teller in the bank is fiddling around with the books? No."
—Donald Regan explaining why his total ignorance of the diversion of funds to the contras is completely justified

Then in 1987:

1/26 The Tower Commission interviews President Reagan... Though he is said by a source to lack a "highly detailed recollection," he acknowledges having authorized the sale of arms to Iran in August 1985. This corroborates Robert McFarlane's testimony and directly contradicts Donald Regan's.

2/11 President Reagan tells the Tower Commission that after discussing it with Donald Regan, he now remembers that he did not authorize the arms sale in advance. Commission members are disheartened when, while reciting his recollection from a staff-supplied memo, he mistakenly reads his stage directions aloud.

2/24 "I'd like to ask one question of everybody. Everybody that can remember what they were doing on August 8 of 1985, raise your hand. I think it's possible to forget. Nobody's raised any hands."
—President Reagan, who would have gotten a different response from reporters had he asked, more pertinently, "Everybody that would remember approving the sale of arms to an enemy nation, raise your hand"

3/10 Asked about the Iran-contra scandal at a photo opportunity, President Reagan feigns laryngitis. "I lost my voice," he says, grinning. "I can't talk."

3/11 Asked again about Iran-contra, President Reagan again feigns laryngitis. "I've lost my voice," he says. Explains [press secretary] Marlin Fitzwater, "This is a new tactic of his."