REAGAN - The Legacy's Other Side

REAGAN - The Legacy's Other Side

With the solemn farewell to Ronald Reagan now complete, the right-wing spin machine has ramped up efforts to whitewash the Reagan record. Despite glowing media coverage last week of the Reagan presidency which downplayed contentious issues, radio host Rush Limbaugh continues to browbeat the media for its supposedly negative coverage of the Reagan record (http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_060704/content/truth_detector.guest.html). But as journalist William Greider notes, the Reagan presidency is one "the major media, draped in mourning, is solemnly fictionalizing (http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/177122_greider13.html)." The phenomenon is similar to the media's coverage of Reagan in the 1980s, where the actor-turned-president "spun [the media] around brilliantly, used the White House reporters and cameras as hapless props in his melodrama, ignored the tough questions and stuck unyieldingly to his cripted version of reality." But while conservatives like Vice President Dick Cheney claim " what lingers from [Reagan presidency] is almost all good (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/06/20040609-48.html)," beneath the hyperbole remains a legacy rife with controversy.

More details at http://www.progressreport.org