Face Time

Let's not put Ronald Reagan's face on Mount Rushmore or on the ten-dollar bill.

Instead, let's put his face on each $500 Pentagon hammer. Let's put his face on each orphan drug that costs $50 a pill. Let's put Reagan's face on the gravestones of each child that died in Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. Let's put his face on the Chinese cars built with the steel from the Twin Towers.

Let's trace Reagan's face in the ruts of deforested hill sides. Let's tattoo Reagan's smiling face onto each sarcoma on every AIDS victims. Let's put Reagan's face on the door of every homeless shelter. Let's spray-paint his face onto the walls of all the abandoned mental health facilities.

Let's put his face on each gram of crack cocaine.

Let's see his visage appear like Jesus in eBay toast for all of the nuns who were raped and killed by the Contras. Let's anodize his face into the handcuffs that shackled the innocents who were shoved out of planes into the open sea by Guatemalan death squads. Let's tile the walls with beautiful mosaics of Reagan's face in the empty Mayan villages wiped out by the Nicaraguan military. Let's put his face in the town square of what remains of El Mazote as a happy memory to the babies whose brains were dashed out there.

Let's put his face on pre-emptive war. Let's put his face on hundreds of failed savings and loans. Let's put his face on appalling CEO salaries. Let's put his face on the vanishing middle-class.

Let's put his face on Fox News.

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Why does the Right champion Ronald Reagan? Because he's the only thing they can offer from a comparatively sorry lot.

Nixon? Ford? George H.W. Bush? George W. Bush?

Nope. Nope. Nope. Dope.

That pretty much leaves Hoover and Eisenhower, and Ike left office warning us, in no uncertain terms, about the dangers of the military-industrial complex. Not exactly your pro-blood-money kinda guy.

So the Conservatives are putting all their money on Ronnie, even though he was just a pretty face with a set of index cards and the occasional bon mot. He was just a tool for industry and Wall Street and they robbed the country blind for eight years.

Mr. Obama will be back in the Oval Office 2012 with a new crop of Democrats riding his coat-tails, at which point all talk of Reagan's deification will fade to the relative obscurity of Warren G. Harding, right where it belongs.

=Lefty=

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