Reagan Remembered

By now, you've no doubt heard that CBS has capitulated to right-wing pressure and is shifting its miniseries about Ronald Reagan over to Showtime.

This episode isn't merely a pop-culture sideshow; it illustrates much of the right wing's strength and the amazing institutional structure linking a variety of like-minded, although far from identical, conservatives (be they in politics, business, or religion). These interests can be mobilized at will to exert enormous pressures on the way the cultural and political institutions of this country function.

As one might suspect, David Walsh of the WSWS delivers a pretty hard-hitting indictment of the controversy over the film. His conclusion is worth highlighting:

The episode reveals not only the enormous influence, far out of proportion to its level of popular support, that the ultra-right exercises in US politics and media affairs, it also demonstrates the considerable sensitivity within the political and media establishment to any attempt to puncture the Reagan myth. For two decades this mediocre actor-turned-front-man for the most reactionary sections of the corporate elite has been assiduously built up by the media as a towering political and historical figure.

This myth-making has served a definite ideological purpose—to provide legitimacy to domestic policies that effected a vast enrichment of the ruling elite and the most privileged layers of the middle class at the expense of the broad mass of working people, and foreign policies that undermined post-World War II international relations and ushered in a new period of militarism and great power conflict.

The American corporate and political elite fears that any deflating of the Reagan myth runs the risk of undermining the credibility of its entire social and political set-up.

Thus Ronny isn't lionized because he was a tough-talking, funny guy. What Reagan is remembered for (and what he is not) plays a crucial role in secruring a base of legitimacy for the right wing's efforts to further militarize society and strip away the remaining vestiges of the welfare state.

And if you think things are bad now, just wait until the Gipper kicks the bucket and the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project really kicks into gear...