1984: The Ticket

Can't forget who was #2...
Art: Robbie Conal

Campaign quotes from Paul Slansky, The Clothes Have No Emperor—

9/10 Obviously irritated that his slippery position on abortion has become an issue, Bush refuses to answer any more questions on the subject, citing "my right as an Amerian to remain silent."

9/12 "There are an awful lot of things I don't remember."
—George Bush denying that his failure to recall his previous support for abortion poses a credibility problem

9/17 George Bush continues to respond testily to questions about abortion. "My position is like Ronald Reagan's," he says. "Put that down, mark that down. Good. You got it."

9/25 "Do you know what wins elections? It's who puts money into this and who takes money out. And the one good reason why Ronald Reagan is going to be re-elected is because he's putting something in here and the other people are taking money out."
—George Bush whipping out his wallet at a campaign rally

9/26 "I was up in New England the other day, campaigning in Vermont, and I said, 'It's nice to be here in Vermont when the sap is running,' and one of the pickets stood up and said, 'Stop talking about Mondale like that.' "
—George Bush campaigning in Indiana

10/3 Complaining that he'd been "singled out" and "taken to the cleaners," George Bush acknowledges that he recently paid $198,000 in back taxes and interest after an audit of his 1981 tax return. And why hadn't he revealed this before, especially in light of Ferraro's problems? "You didn't ask me about it."

10/4 "I'm legally and every other way, emotionally, entitled to be what I want to be and that's what I want to be and that's what I am."
—George Bush explaining why he considers himself a Texan even though he was born in Massachusetts, grew up in Connecticut, lives in Washington and pays taxes in Maine

10/10 "She's too bitchy."
–Bush aide Peter Teeley assessing the Ferraro personality

10/11 Geraldine Ferraro and George Bush debate in Philadelphia, with Ferraro putting on a surprisingly low-key performance and Bush an alarmingly animated one. Since the culture values noise and movement over quiet reason, the instant media analysis gives him the victory, though it's hard to find anything he said to earn it. Quite the contrary:

"Almost every place you can point, contrary to Mr. Mondale's... how he goes around just saying everything bad. If somebody sees a silver lining, he finds a big black cloud out there. I mean, right on, whine on, harvest moon!"
...

"Let me help you with the difference, Mrs. Ferraro, between Iran and the embassy in Lebanon We went to Lebanon to give peace a chance and we did. We saw the formation of a government of reconciliation and for somebody to suggest, as our two opponents have, that these men died in shame—they better not tell the parents of those young Marines."
—George Bush introducing the fatuous charge that Mondale and Ferraro have dishonored the memories of the slain Marines by attacking administration policies responsible for their deaths

"I don't think it's winnable. I was quoted wrong, obviously, 'cause I never thought that."
—George Bush denying that he told journalist Robert Scheer that he thought nuclear war is "winnable," though Scheer has him on a 1980 tape saying just that

10/18 Defending George Bush's assertion that Mondale and Ferraro had implied that the 241 Marines killed in Beirut had "died in shame," press secretary Peter Teeley says, "You can say anything you want during a debate, and 80 million people hear it." And what if he print media can prove that he lied? "So what? Maybe 200 people read it or 2,000 or 20,000."

11/2 "Under this President's strong and principled leadership, America is back with pride, patriotism and prosperity. We're Number One, and there's a lot of idiots who don't know that."
—George Bush responding to hecklers at a New Jersey rally

1984: Food, Wardrobe, Makeup

In quotes from Paul Slansky's The Clothes Have No Emperor, some things said and done during the campaign—

9/12 "The main difference between us and the other side is, we see an America where every day is the Fourth of July, and they see an America where every day is April 15th."
—President Reagan campaigning in New York

9/13 "The other side's promises are a little like Minnie Pearl's hat. They both have big price tags hanging from them."
—President Reagan campaigning at the Grand Ole Opry

9/19 "Only in 1984 could anyone who was part of Democrats for Nixon in 1960 go around parading himself as the new JFK."
—Ted Kennedy on President Reagan's constant quoting of President Kennedy

9/30 In an editorial signed by Walter H. Annenberg—at whose Palm Springs estate the Reagans have seen in the past quarter century—TV Guide urges its readers to re-elect the President.

10/7 In their first debate in Louisville, Walter Mondale clearly beats President Reagan, who terrifies viewers by demonstrating how he answers questions when his wife isn't standing next to him. In the course of 90 minutes, the President:

...
• Reprises his hit line, "There you go again," only to have it thrown back in his face by Mondale, who knows he won't be able to resist repeating it and is ready with a stinging rejoinder
...

• Claims that the increase in poverty "is a lower rate of increase than it was in the preceding years before we got here," though in fact it is higher

• Explains that a good bit of the defense budget goes for "food and wardrobe," becoming the first US President to so refer to military uniforms

• Admits, as he prepares to deliver his closing statement, ''I'm all confused now."

Afterward, a frantic Nancy Reagan confronts White House aides, demanding, "What have you done to Ronnie?"

10/9 "I'll challenge him to an arm wrestle any time."
—President Reagan attempting to shift the focus from his brain to his biceps

10/10 Still defensive about his debate performance, President Reagan says, "With regard to the age issue and everything, if I had as much makeup on as he did, I'd have looked younger, too." He goes on to make the surprising claim that he not only went makeup-free during the debate, but "I never did wear it. I didn't wear it when I was in pictures."

10/11 "Well, frankly, I know I made him up."
—G.E. Theater makeup artist Howard Smit, who, like Death Valley Days makeup man Del Acevedo, suggests that President Reagan misremembers the distant past

"He came by and shook hands afterward. It certainly looked like more than just a tan."
—Debate panelist James Weighart, suggesting that Reagan misremembers the immediate past

10/15 "What am I supposed to order?"
—President Reagan to an aide at a McDonald's campaign stop in Tuscaloosa

"Now, think about that for a minute. You fire the missiles. They come out of the submarine holes. They go through the water. They go through the air for several thousand miles. And then you decide you didn't want to fire them. So they stop. And then like a movie rolling backwards, the missile backs up, goes down through the water and back to the submarine holes." — Walter Mondale encouraging voters to contemplate the fact that the man with his finger on the button said nuclear missiles launched from submarines can be called back, though Reagan now claims he "never said any such thing"

10/21 At the second Reagan/Mondale debate in Kansas City, the President successfully delivers an obviously rehearsed one-liner—"I will not make age an issue in this campaign. I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience"—and thereby puts an end to fears about his recently displayed senility.

So determined are voters to ignore his flaws that not even his observation that Armageddon could come "the day after tomorrow" a comment that prompts Nancy to gasp, "Oh, no''') or his almost incoherent closing statement (something about a time capsule and a drive down the Pacific Coast Highway) can dissuade them.

1984: Head Of State

August 21, 1984: the Republican National Convention opens in Dallas.

August 20 quote from Paul Slansky's The Clothes Have No Emperor—

"It's a pain in the ass to explain.... No ERA, and no [abortion] exception for rape and incest. On women's issues, it's a stinkeroo."
—Sen. Lowell Weicker, the GOP's last liberal, bitching about the GOP platform

On August 22—

"Let's make it one more for the Gipper!"
—Nancy Reagan to the Convention, while a huge TV screen above the podium shows her husband in his hotel suite watching her on TV, inspiring her to wave frantically at him, and him—after some prompting—to wave back.

Michael Rogin's Ronald Reagan, The Movie compares the photo to an image in Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan. The frontispiece of this book by "the first modern political theorist" portrays an ideal of the state's sovereign: head atop a body composed of human figures representing his subjects.

Rogin writes that—

Hobbes wanted subjects to feel they were part of the sovereign, to identify with its actions as if those actions were their own. The theatrical metaphor by which he joined psychology to politics made spectacle part of his project. Hobbes also offered a picture of Leviathan in which the state took on human form. The image recalled medieval, corporate metaphors in which the different feudal orders composed different limbs and organs of the body politic. Hobbes' modern version, however, broke down that organic body. The body of his artificial person, Leviathan, is composed of tiny, complete homunculi. As Christopher Pye points out, they gaze at the head of the mortal god, the author of Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes... The image absorbs viewers into the body politic and keeps them passive observers at one and the same time. It offers a preview and ideal type of the relationship between modern mass society and the state.

... The frontispiece of Leviathan uncannily presages the invocation to President Ronald Reagan at the 1984 Republican convention… in which Nancy Reagan, representing the television audience, stares at the enormous head and shoulders of the chief of state.

The Importance Of Being Stephen

It's in his eagerness to put his celebrity to good use.

The educational value of his Super Pac is just the latest.

Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Amen to this, about Colbert's role as TV's stealth truth teller.

destructiveanachronism writes of Colbert—

When he breaks character, he does admirable things as well. His testimony before Congress on behalf of undocumented immigrants was incredibly admirable. His solidarity with soldiers in Iraq similarly so. His "It Gets Better" video is genuinely touching. All in all, he seems like a pretty remarkable guy and easily the wittiest and most important person on television today.

Among his other accomplishments, I would also note the commencement speeches; for example, Knox College, June 2006, and Northwestern University, June 2011.

And never to be forgotten: his sang-froid in playing this room.

The Role Of A Lifetime

A solemn 50th anniversary today.

Reagan's 1987 speech at the Berlin Wall would be the opportunity of a lifetime for right-wing propagandists.

Not that Reagan wasn't sincere about what he said. But after the Wall actually had come down, the noise machine claimed cause and effect. The media, of course, have promoted the ridiculous story line ever since.

Just another reason we are the source of laughter and head-shaking throughout the rest of the world.

Six Years Later

Mario Tama/Getty Images

The actual anniversary comes later this month, but it is very nearly six years since Katrina and its aftermath.

After those long years of perseverance by families of the murdered:
a guilty verdict against police, in the Danziger Bridge killings and cover-up.

Reagan, Unchecked

August 11, 1984; Ronald Reagan goes into a regular shtick
of his—the "humorous" sound check.

From Paul Slansky's The Clothes Have No Emperor

..."My fellow Americans," he jests, "I'm pleased to tell you today that we've signed legislation outlawing Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes." Though he gets his expected big laugh from the sycophants in the room, others are less amused.

One person who will object is Democratic presidential candidate Walter Mondale.

8/19 Asked to respond to Mondale's charge that his bombing joke had made the world uneasy, Reagan blames the media. "Isn't it funny?" he says. "If the press had kept their mouth shut, no one would have known I said it." No one points out that if he'd kept his mouth shut, they couldn't have reported it.

Reagan soon will be elected to a second term.

At least one of his sound check jests (from 1982) was true enough—

11/20 "My fellow Americans, I've talked to you on a number of occasions about economic problems and opportunities our nation faces and I'm prepared to tell you, it's a hell of a mess."

And the reaction was typical.

...his small live audience pretty much has to laugh, him being president and all.

Thatcherism, Thirty Years Later

She didn't do it alone; just as in this country, a putative opposition party saw to it that the Right's policies became institutionalized. But Thatcher certainly got things started toward heightened social inequality.

The violence in part of London and other English cities is senseless, but not without cause.

A take on youth unemployment and hopelessness in Tottenham here.

Meanwhile, it's austerity for the many, as the usual forces pull the strings.

At least one force has been receiving some unwelcome scrutiny—in Britain, if not here.

A protester dressed as Rupert Murdoch holds a puppet of David Cameron.
Photograph: Isabel O'Toole for the Guardian

Wisconsin: Recall 1

If results were not what they should have been, well... a sane people would not elect Republicans in the first place.

Nevertheless, two of Scott Walker's noxious allies have been recalled, and soon will be replaced by Democrats; this, in places that had been redistricted to be safe Republican seats.

A third race was no doubt the victim of dirty work, by the usual suspect.

Thom Hartmann is correct that this was a testing ground for
2012 campaign tactics to be pursued nationally, with a little help from staggering amounts of unidentifiable cash. But Wisconsinite John Nichols has a more balanced look at this recall's potential to start reversing the Republican grip on power in the state.

And Athenae has something to say about the real, not sane, world.

This was only round one; state law provides that officeholders, including Walker, can be subject to recall after a year.

Progressives have just begin to fight, in a state with a long history of their doing exactly that.

What's In A Name?

Compare and contrast two airports.

One country re-names its capitol's airport, to the greater glory of the pioneer in defunding the nation's public services—now reaching the point of disintegration.

Reagan's policies mocked the very idea of public good; hastened the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few; and began the transformation of a stable middle-class into a fading memory of old geezers.

He served his purpose well; the memorials to him will grow ever grander, just to be sure they overshadow the real history. Reagan is the gift that keeps giving, to our ruling class and the broken political system that continues its enrichment.

The following year, another country names an international airport for a giant of the country's rich musical culture: Antonio Carlos "Tom" Jobim.

In commemorating the artistic partnership of Jobim with Vinicius de Moraes, Peter Rozovsky writes that after their deaths

...perhaps the most fitting tribute of all was to Jobim, who wrote beautiful music inspired by the view of Rio de Janeiro from high above, from an airplane about to land. Today, anyone enjoying the same view will land shortly thereafter at the airport newly renamed in his honor: Rio de Janeiro International Airport Galeão—Antonio Carlos Jobim.

Image: worldcitypics.com

Performing the music inspired by that view: the composer and vocalist Miúcha, in 1978—



Youtube has more "Samba do Avião" videos, performed by Jobim with a variety of other musicians.

Over the years the song has become a Brazilian standard, recorded by pretty much every important singer in the country. Youtube also has a number of these versions, ranging from the soaring vocal of Milton Nascimento—



—to the understated solo guitar and vocal by one of Bossa Nova's original creators, João Gilberto.



I don't know the source or its accuracy, but I once heard a factoid that Jobim's work as a whole is the world's most frequently recorded.

It seems plausible. The musicians of Jobim's native country alone would boost the count, as succeeding generations in Brazil reinterpret the composer's songs.

And the music's international popularity continues. It really is hard to go wrong with such irresistible melodies and rhythms—even as elevator music, the stuff is catchy.

But at more memorable levels than that, jazz musicians outside Brazil continue discovering Jobim—just as they did in the 1960s.

From 1962: Dizzy Gillespie and group, in an arrangement by pianist Lalo Schifrin—



And from 1966: a marvel named Ella—

August 3, 1981: Murder In The Air

The day the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) began a nationwide strike was the day, writes Steve Early, that

President Ronald Reagan, a onetime Hollywood union leader, gave the strikers 48 hours to return to work. When 11,345 ignored his ultimatum, he fired them all.

With a typically ex-military, conservative membership, PATCO had endorsed Reagan for president

Early was taking stock at the strike's twenty-fifth anniversary—still a few years before the GOP's shiny new tactics for state by state supression of public service unions would get underway.

But as of 2006, Early could write that—

Reagan's mass dismissal of PATCO members -- and their black-listing from further federal employment -- was the biggest, most dramatic act of union-busting in 20th-century America. PATCO's destruction ushered in a decade of lost strikes and lockouts, triggered by management demands for pay and benefit givebacks that continue to this day in a wide range of industries.

Not only was he a former "union boss"; by the end of 1981 Reagan would give this performance:

During his Christmas address to the nation on December 23, 1981, President Reagan condemned the Soviet-backed Polish crackdowns on labor unions, promoting the "basic right of free trade unions and to strike"...

Back to that summer, in the good old US of A: August 5 was the day dismissal notices went to over 5,000 PATCO strikers, as Paul Slansky notes in The Clothes Have No Emperor.

In another characteristic act by the administration—this time, a literal attack on "air," in the sense of, "a substance required for human life"—Slansky quotes a Washington Post headline of
August 5:

WHITE HOUSE SEEKS TO LOOSEN STANDARDS UNDER CLEAN AIR ACT

Today, Reagan's legacy is carried on by his increasingly rabid heirs. Among the current hostage-taking: FAA funding being held up, just to prevent employees from joining unions.

The 1981 PATCO strike was largely over safety issues, as in traffic controllers seeking a reduced work week. Now, part of the blocked FAA funding is for airport safety improvements.

And there's the usual fine fiscal conservatism on display: on the pretext of fighting to cut a total $16.5 million from the budget, the Cons have caused $30 million daily loss in revenues ever since June 22, while the FAA has not been re-authorized to collect ticket and other fees.

Take Your Medicine

Drug store. Seneca, Kansas.
John Vachon, 1940
Library of Congress, FSA/OWI archive

The unpalatable pill did get a sugar coating, at least as far as the media was concerned: the sudden emergence of Bipartisan Human Interest Story .

Or, as Digby says, Congresswoman Giffords' surprise return to the House was "a great way to make this vote for The Deal a nearly sacred act."

It's wonderful that she is making such incredible progress after the brain injury. But the coverage, with its tone of "the system works, and we're all friends in the end," was making me gag.

It also makes me wonder if the next thing will be for Rep. Giffords to give a public blessing of Super Congress...

Matt Taibi's take is probably right—and was the only possible outcome, if the donors are to get the Democratic Party results they've paid for.