[lit-ideas] Re: Ronald Reagan talks about W. Bush...
- From: "Edward Gleason" <egleason@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Lit-Ideas" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 08:45:49 -0400
The following is from Snopes.com
in reference to this alleged Diary.
Thanks to my friend Michael Pickel for finding this reference.
Sorry, Andreas.
Yrs,
Edward
http://www.snopes.com/politics/satire/kinsley.asp
Dear Diary
Claim: A 1986 diary entry by President Ronald Reagan described George W. Bush
as a "shiftless ne'er-do-well."
Status: False.
Example: [Collected via e-mail, August 2007]
A friend forwarded the following quote to me. I am skeptical that Ronald Reagan
actually wrote it.
"A moment I've been dreading. George brought his ne're-do-well son around this
morning and asked me to find the kid a job. Not the political one who lives in
Florida. The one who hangs around here all the time looking shiftless. This
so-called kid is already almost 40 and has never had a real job. Maybe I'll
call Kinsley over at The New Republic and see if they'll hire him as a
contributing editor or something. That looks like easy work."
-- Ronald Reagan in his recently published diaries, May 17, 1986.
Origins: It is often the case that a piece of satire hits so
close to home (i.e., seemingly confirms something that people believe to be
true) that it becomes difficult to distinguish from reality - especially when
an excerpt is presented outside of its satirical context.
Such is the case with the putative quote from President Ronald Reagan's diaries
reproduced above. Although some critics of the current president might find a
delicious irony in the Republican icon's once having described a young George
W. Bush (who is the son of Reagan's Vice President, George H.W. Bush) as a
"ne'er-do-well," they'd be disappointed to learn that the quote is an
out-of-context excerpt from a tongue-in-cheek article.
In June 2007, political columnist Michael Kinsley penned an article for The New
Republic after a colleague alerted him to the fact that his name appeared in
the recently-published book The Reagan Diaries, a compilation of selected diary
entries the 40th president made while in office. Kinsley ruminated about why
President Reagan might have had occasion to mention his name in a diary entry
and offered several flight-of-fancy suggestions:
But I was more interested in the me angle, frankly. And it was a puzzle. What
on earth could Reagan have written? I indulged my imagination, and my ego:
"January 22, 1983. Mommie [Nancy] says that Kinsley's column this week in The
New Republic undermines the entire philosophical basis of my administration. O
dear O dear, I had better not read it."
Or: "October 6, 1987. Why does Kinsley keep picking on me? He is the only thing
standing between me and the total destruction of the welfare state. But, ha: I
will destroy him - destroy him utterly - or my name's not ... not ... not ...
Say, they had 'State Fair' on TV last night. What a wholesome, clean-cut young
man that Pat Boone is."
Or: "May 17, 1986. A moment I've been dreading. George brought his
ne'er-do-well son around this morning and asked me to find the kid a job. Not
the political one who lives in Florida. The one who hangs around here all the
time looking shiftless. This so-called kid is already almost 40 and has never
had a real job. Maybe I'll call Kinsley over at The New Republic and see if
they'll hire him as a contributing editor or something. That looks like easy
work."
As Kinsley ultimately discovered, the reference to him that appeared in
Reagan's diaries was both mundane and erroneous:
In the case of The Reagan Diaries, however, I'd been tipped off. And, sure
enough, there I was in the index and on page 400, which describes the events of
Friday, March 21, 1986, a busy day for Reagan. He learns that Panama will not
take in the unwanted dictator of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos. He meets
with our ambassador to Russia to talk about Gorbachev. Javier Perez de Cuellar,
secretary-general of the United Nations, drops by in the afternoon, and Billy
Graham comes over for dinner. Reagan finishes writing his speech for the annual
Gridiron dinner. He has an interview with New York Times reporters. And at
midday: "had off-the-record lunch with Meg Greenfield, David Brinkley, and
editor of New Republic (Michael Kinsley)."
Well, here is the problem: This whole thing never happened. Or, if it did
happen, I was not there. Or, if I was there, it had slipped my mind. I had no
memory of having lunch with President Reagan in the White House or anywhere
else. And it's not the kind of thing you forget, is it?
Upon further investigation, [I learned that] an editor at HarperCollins had
slipped in my name. He or she - and Reagan, too - apparently were unaware of
tnr's all-chiefs-and-no-Indians tradition of ladling out titles instead of
money. Almost everyone at tnr is an "editor" of some kind. Reagan, it seems,
actually had lunch with Charles Krauthammer.
Last updated: 20 August 2007
The URL for this page is http://www.snopes.com/politics/satire/kinsley.asp
Urban Legends Reference Pages © 1995-2007
by Barbara and David P. Mikkelson
This material may not be reproduced without permission.
Sources Sources:
>>> "Andreas Ramos" <andreas@xxxxxxxxxxx> 8/23/2007 8:22 PM >>>
From the REAGAN DIARIES (entry May 17, 1986):
"A moment I've been dreading. George brought his ne're-do-well son around
this morning and asked me to find the kid a job. Not the political one who
lives in Florida. The one who hangs around here all the time looking
shiftless. This so-called kid is already almost 40 and has never had a real
job. Maybe I'll call Kinsley over at The New Republic and see if they'll
hire him as a contributing editor or something. That looks like easy work."
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