(DV) Kurth: Reagan Idiosis

Well, all right – I wasn’t wearing a bra. But it was Nancy Reagan, and I was buying drugs from her. All kinds of pills, poppers and unlawful paraphernalia, which she kept in a Galanos handbag and doled out to me, one by one, as we sat downtown drinking shots of whiskey on New Year’s Eve, in a kind of reverse, anti-“First Night,” where only drinking and drugging were allowed. Dream-wise, you had to be blotto to be part of this scene, but you had to be that anyway in order to get through the Reagan obsequies last week without throwing yourself under a car.

Mind you, the Widow Reagan looked a lot younger and less haggard in my dream – a lot less like a pulverized mummy, yanked from her daily luncheon-and-bridge date at the Bel Air Hotel and abruptly forced into mourning – than she did in the hundred million pictures, profiles, silhouettes, dissolves, “American minutes,” lip-bitings, half-swoonings and coffin-kissings I also saw last week, in those multiple hours when, alas, I wasn’t asleep. And whenever Nancy, in the dream, handed me another upper, downer or merciful soporific, I found myself stammering, “Oh … well … gee … hmm” – whereupon she, batting those big, fake eyes of hers, whispered to me softly, “Peter, just say … I don’t know!”

For you, Mrs. Reagan? Anything! I still have my “Reagan For Shah” button, purchased in 1980 or 1981, which I keep in a box on my desk, along with another, less “genial” little badge that speaks to the tenor of those years: “Don’t Do It, Di!” – an outright plea to the late Diana, Princess of Wales, before she was sold down the river to the ghastliest family this side of Cielito Lindo, or whatever the hell the Reagan compound in California is called in the interest of having its own library, graveyard and postage stamps. The best thing I can say about Ronald Reagan, now that he’s dead, is that he was the most relaxed president of our time, and even this euphemistic praise I owe to my father, who thought it might bear mentioning.

I once did a profile of the Reagans’ daughter, Patti Davis, for a national magazine. This was in 1993, before Patti quite understood which side her bread was buttered on and was still writing books and giving lectures about the horrors of growing up in a home where her father’s “sunny” disposition never existed and her mother’s answer to any problem was to smack her broadside across the head.

Let’s be specific. “I first remember my mother hitting me when I was eight,” Ms. Davis once wrote. “It escalated as I got older and became a weekly, sometimes daily, event.” It may be that Nancy – who has always known which side her bread is buttered on – couldn’t think of another way to deal with a rebellious girl who refused to buy into the myth. But, please – let’s drop this horseshit about “American” or “family” or any other “values” these Hollywood Borgias are supposed to represent.

“My mother is so emotionally distant,” Patti said to me, “that she wouldn’t know a [family] rift if she fell into it and cracked her head open.” The First Daughter added, in a rueful way, "I've really been tested on forgiveness.” She was already making money on the Reagan story, and I don’t blame her – what would you do?

Here, may I take the opportunity to commend Ronald Reagan’s first wife, the actress Jane Wyman, who, from the moment this “20^th Century Colossus” first walked onto the national stage, has kept her mouth firmly shut. That, my friends, is class, not the cheap imitation of Jackie Kennedy that Mrs. Reagan tried to pull off last week. If Ms. Wyman ever told what she really knew -- indeed, if any of us did -- your hair would curl to match the lips of Betty Ford, Rosalynn Carter, Hillary Clinton and even Barbara Bush at the National Cathedral on Friday.

One of Vermont’s more hilarious right-wing nutcases -- I won’t name him here, because he gets enough publicity as it is -- has been taunting me by email ever since Reagan died, asking, specifically, and with his invariable fixation on the anus, when I’m going to “get that champagne bottle outta [my] ass” and admit how thrilled I am that the second-dumbest president in American history is finally, irrevocably, certifiably dead.

“Your celebration over Reagan’s death is over,” this fellow remarks. “The week-long funeral is over. I admit it was rather long and a bit overdone, but the man deserved a big send-off and respect from real Americans, which I know you’ll never understand because as far as I’m concerned, you and all those of the Leftist stripe aren’t real Americans.”

This is a typical attitude, I believe, among those hordes of U.S. citizens who have no education and no memory, and who honestly believe that what they see on TV displays something other than official reality – namely, reality itself. Most of them couldn’t tell you the difference between the Reagan ceremonies and the 18^th-birthday celebrations of the Olsen twins. But, while we saw a lot of Reagan’s casket last week, we never saw his bones. For all we know, he’s still alive, and last week’s orgy of phony sentiment is just another way to keep us quiet, while Bush and the boys complete the task the Great Snoozer began.

When, later this year, their coup d’état is complete, think back on these words. But don’t bother to write.

Peter Kurth is the author of international bestselling books including Anastasia: The Riddle of Anna Anderson, Isadora: A Sensational Life, and a biography of the anti-fascist journalist Dorothy Thompson, American Cassandra: The Life of Dorothy Thompson. His essays have appeared in Salon, Vanity Fair, New York Times Book Review, and many others. Peter lives in Burlington, Vermont. He can be reached at: peterkurth@peterkurth.com. Visit his website at: http://www.peterkurth.com/