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."