Reviews Are In

Nice that Nelson Mandela has outlived her.

Tengrain, on the breaking news—

Pinochet, Reagan, and Thatcher walk into a bar... Hell got a little bit brighter as Satan's favorite daughter came home.

Though Tengrain also offered condolences to

... the fascist son Mark (who, to avoid international crimes prosecution relating to his coup attempt in Equitorial Guinea was forced from his home in South Africa, to his home in Texas, to his mother's home in the UK, and now to an undisclosed location in the euro zone), and his racist twin sister, the failed reality star Carole.

Via Adrastos is Germaine Greer's 2004 look at Thatcher's career. Adrastos writes that, aside from making no pretense of "geniality," Thatcher was pretty much "Ronald Reagan in a frock."

And, yes: the two had so much in common besides ideology. Greer's piece details "the long process by which the millionaire's decorative wife with the fake, cut-glass accent was made over into the no-nonsense grocer's daughter"; her support of corrupt cronies; her deal-making to benefit party donors, as well as her son.

From BagNews: 1970s images of Thatcher's success in "co-opting the female role."

As a commenter somewhere said, she was "the muse of punk music"; songs she inspired have been much noted, as in this compendium, and by Digby here.

Via Water Tiger, is this little image.

Like Reagan, Thatcher left the political scene long before departing the planet. But they went on winning—and continue to, from the graves. No wonder the management need wait only for everyone with any memory to check out, for the history re-write to have no naysayers. 

Before that happens, David Ehrenstein, on a bricklayer's daughter: "before she signs off — this triumph," as she remembers the point when social vices were turned into "virtues."