Wonkette listens to Chris Matthews on the TV, and loses it and runs screaming into the night:
Gipperporn: The Triumph of the Unreal: Just when we thought we wouldn't actually learn anything from all this Reagan coverage, Chris Matthews gives us a real history lesson. Vamping a bit between MSNBC correspondents' interviews of Stepford Republicans, Matthews noted that, thanks to all of Reagan's war movies, "He seemed understand the experience of the Greatest Generation better than the guys who were actually in battle could."
Yes, having a buddy bleed to death in your arms can dampen your enthusiasm for a war. But when your toughest wartime assignment is to keep your tan even, you don't really mind threatening to start another one.
You see only the unreal is really real, and the real is really unreal, or something like that. Because the unreal is on the screen, and people, like, see it. But there are no cameras where things really happen, and so they're not really real. Or something like that.
UPDATE: Wonkette resumes the attack!
Posted by DeLong at June 9, 2004 08:35 PM | TrackBack | | Other weblogs commenting on this postLet's let someone who, you know, was "actually in combat" take a swing at it. Tomorrow's Time contains this report:
Television anchors and commentators reached - and at times over-reached - to match the poignant images. When Tom Brokaw of NBC suggested to Bob Dole that Ronald Reagan had been an inspiring flag-bearer for the World War II generation, it was a bit too much for Mr. Dole, who was wounded in Italy. He replied dryly that Mr. Reagan, who spent the war making Army training films in Hollywood, had never heard a shot fired. "But he was a captain," Mr. Dole said. "And mighty proud of it."
So, the negation of reality includes reality itself, whereas reality is the negation of reality? I think that Chris Matthews is yet another victim of childhood Hegelism. Damn, I thought we had stamped that out in the first world.
Posted by: Julian Elson on June 9, 2004 09:00 PMI had the displeasure tonight of watching Jack Kemp on MSNBC claim that Reagan's ascendency (along with those of Thatcher and Pope John Paul II) was literally an act of God.
Look, I expected mushy public tributes, but this is just getting out of hand. I'm waiting for Tom Delay to propose building a large projector to impose an image of Reagan's head permanently on the moon, I swear to God...
Posted by: Brad Reed on June 9, 2004 09:50 PMI honestly don't remember what it was like the last time a president died, so I can't compare. (Then again, Nixon wasn't Reagan, so maybe it would naturally be drastically different.) But this does seem to be getting out of hand. I haven't been watching the coverage religiously, so maybe I am missing something, but each time I see a commentator in support of him, they're saying some variation of a few messages.
As for Matthews, what a truly disturbing, moronic comment. It's akin to me saying that I can have a better, more powerful, more legitimate understanding of the Nazi concentration camps than an actual Holocaust Survivor.from seeing "Schindler's List."
Posted by: Brian on June 9, 2004 10:20 PMBut you missed the biggest part of Wonkette's update! Wonkette admits that--based on the transcript she procured---she misheard Chris Matthews: he said "evoke" not "understand"
UPDATE: We got the transcript: "He seemed to be able to evoke the World War II experience better than the guys who actually were in combat." Apologies for the inaccuracy. (The intern will be beaten. . . Not because it's his fault, we just like doing it.) Did we get the gist of it?
[and then Wonkette writes the portion that appears in the update here]
NB: I don't mean to argue that pundit commentary on Reagan's passing hasn't in general marked a "triumph of the unreal". But Mr. Matthews deserves not to be blamed for saying something obscenely stupid when he actually said something quite defensible (indeed, depending on your point of view, it could be a bit of left-handed compliment... bemoaning the fact that people too often need their harsh reality heavily wrapped in romantic fantasy and President Reagan could certainly provide that. On that note, the PBS American Experience documentary on Reagan has a great quote from a former USSR Foreign Ministry official along the lines of "Reagan wasn't an anti-communist. He was a romantic abolitionalist... perhaps the last romantic.).
Julian Elson:
But you forgot about the negation of the negation, which, in this, as in all cases, is pie.
Posted by: john c. halasz on June 10, 2004 03:08 AMI've long held the view that the ordinary American not illogically regards television as a higher level of reality. Reagan, the WWII actor, was the perfect President for that America. Bob Dole, the WWII vet, wasn't.
Posted by: RT on June 10, 2004 03:20 AMAnd if anyone comes back and brings pie, so help me, I'll sic the badger badger badgers on them.
Posted by: RT on June 10, 2004 03:24 AM>I had the displeasure tonight of watching
>Jack Kemp on MSNBC claim that Reagan's
>ascendency (along with those of Thatcher
>and Pope John Paul II) was literally an act of God.
The Architect of the Universe apparantly doesn't have a very deep bench...
Posted by: Davis X. Machina on June 10, 2004 04:54 AMLet's face it, RT, Bob Dole could never have mobilized public opinion like Reagan did. He is a fine man, but he would have made a really lousy President, I have a feeling.
This ability to mobilize public opinion, to lead, is a critical element in being President, and it's why Reagan is declared a "great" President for all of the flaws of his term in office. Compare him to Carter, whose policies seem more sound and consistent in many ways but who couldn't lead ANYONE towards the end, and this is obvious.
Posted by: Jim Harris on June 10, 2004 05:48 AMhttp://pep.typepad.com/public_enquiry_project/2004/06/prof_delong_con_1.html
Posted by: Adrian Spidle on June 10, 2004 06:44 AMI have always been most fond of Bob Dole's dry wit. It would be sad if he came by it from his wartime experiences rather than the sere climate of Kansas.
OTOH, his politics suck and Elizabeth has enough treacle for two.
Posted by: Eli Rabett on June 10, 2004 07:12 AMHmm, well, I guess that does change a few things.
Eli, I wonder if I could have liked Bob Dole's need to refer to himself in the third-person over four or eight years. Hell, Bob Dole himself is probably unsure of the public's ability to put up with Bob Dole's antics for a one- or two-term Bob Dole Presidency.
Posted by: Brian on June 10, 2004 08:11 AMReagan didn't lead, he pandered. He was the man in a raincoat leading us astray with a handful of sweets. Bad things happened that we don't want to remember, even now.
Posted by: serial catowner on June 10, 2004 08:34 AMCousin Jim,
Sadly, your view and that of serial catowner (hi there) are not mutually inconsistent. Reagan was "great" rather than great. Carter was at least good, but not "good," because he couldn't sell. Reagan could sell...anything.
Posted by: kharris on June 10, 2004 09:02 AMA few years ago, I read "Reagan in his own Hand." This book includes dozens of the many radio talks that that Reagan delivered. All were entirely written by him.
Reagan was a policy wonk. He spent his evenings reading books about policy issues. He was very, very knowledgable. The book shows that he had a particular talent for getting the essential points of what was presented. I heard a similar first-person report from a scientist collegue of my wife at Stanford Research Institute. As a Reagan opponent, he was stunned at how well Reagan under a proposal that was made to him when he was Governor of Cal.
Matthews comment is goofy, because he bought into the image of Reagan the incompetent. It still hasn't occurred to Matthews that one reason for Reagan's success is that he knew what he was doing.
Posted by: David on June 10, 2004 09:33 AMBrian, being witty does not mean you would make a good president, nor does it mean that you would make a good president if you lack one, for example Al Frankin and George Bush.
Posted by: Eli Rabett on June 10, 2004 10:27 AMOn the other hand, Reagan was famous throughout Hollywood as an indicator of when each new issue of Reader's Digest was mailed out. He'd suddenly have opinions.
Posted by: name on June 10, 2004 11:15 AMWell, the actual boys of Point du Hoc came up to Reagan after his speech there in 1984 and tearfully asked him how he did know just what it was like back then. Which hugely amused Peggy Noonan.
Posted by: Patrick R. Sullivan on June 10, 2004 12:51 PMTo paraphrase Rummie, "We can know what is real, and we can know what is not real, but we can never really know unreality, once we have believed unreality was real." God.org
Posted by: aaron haffen on June 10, 2004 11:22 PMThere was a time not so very long ago when we had a few small pleasures but many great loves.
That changed somewhere right around 1984 . . .
Today, we have Pleasure to Burn, according to Camel Filters, thank you very much, and It's
Not Love, it's Crest WhiteStrips . . . What?!
"Stepford Republicans"?
If you mean Peggy Noonan, say Peggy Noonan. Frankly, I'm surprised she didn't try to throw herself in Reagan's casket. Too bad we don't practice the Hindu custom of widow immolation, or we could throw that Republican Eleanor Clift on the funeral pyre.
Posted by: Kevin Carson on June 11, 2004 10:21 AMQui tacet, consentit - Silence gives consent
Relata refero - I tell what I have been told. (Herodotos)
Vescere bracis meis - Eat my shorts
Omnes una manet nox - The same night awaits us all. (Horace)
Alea iacta est - The die has been cast. (Caesar)
Assiduus usus uni rei deditus et ingenium et artem saepe vincit - Constant practice devoted to one subject often outdues both intelligence and skill. (Cicero)
Semper fidelis - Always faithful (US Marines Motto)