A trip down memory lane: The Day the Gipper Died

[Common Sense Party]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x604894

[liberal N proud]

1. I remember how they paraded him around Washington for a week

Live coverage as if he was a sitting President who died. It made me sick.

[ladjf]

2. The Reagan presidency was one of the worst things ever to happen

to America. nt

[Initech]

6. +100000000000000000

[hlthe2b]

3. For all intent and purpose, the Gipper died long before that...

the Republicans like their affable puppets--whether they are functioning illiterate like GWBush* or mentally functionally incapacitated like "the Gipper." Palin would be a shiny puppet, but she fails on the "affable" mark and is far too overt about showing her ignorance. So, who now?

[foxfeet]

4. I remember being honestly surprised that he didn't end up like Lenin.

Pickled in a glass coffin.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

7. I thought the same thing. Can you imagine what would have happened

if they'd pickled him and put him in a glass box like Lenin (who, I hear, is getting a bit moldy)? Every Freeper in the country would make a pilgrimage to the tomb so they could stand at the casket and grieve over Reagan's wrinkly old corpse while they touched themselves through their sweat pants.

[foxfeet]

8. I'm sure some of that goes on now, glass box or no glass box.

The thought is enough to send me screaming into the night. St. Ronnie, the patron of necrophilia.

[gauguin57]

5. What I remember from that day was Ron Reagan's fantastic eulogy... including this passage ...

"... Dad was also a deeply, unabashedly religious man. But he never made the fatal mistake of so many politicians wearing his faith on his sleeve to gain political advantage. True, after he was shot and nearly killed early in his presidency, he came to believe that God had spared him in order that he might do good. But he accepted that as a responsibility, not a mandate. And there is a profound difference.... "

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5235593/ns/msnbc_tv-hardball_with_chris_matthews/

I also remember how lost Nancy looked as she hugged the casket. Though I disagreed vociferously with most of what the Reagans stood for, I felt such sadness and sympathy for her. Her longtime boyfriend was really, truly gone. Though their relationship might have made some of us gag, I do think they were deeply attached to one another.