SAINT REAGAN: DIGNITY, ALWAYS DIGNITY

I see that everyone on the right is flipping out about President Obama's "slow jam the news" appearance on Jimmy Fallon's show, including Limbaugh:

Rush Limbaugh suggested President Barack Obama's "slow jam" with Jimmy Fallon last night was "beneath the office of the presidency," nothing more than an unfunny attempt "to show that he's hip."

The performance was, in Limbaugh's opinion, merely a play for the youth vote....

Limbaugh went on to compare Obama's performance on "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" to Richard Nixon's appearance on "Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In" in 1968.

"Remember that show? And everybody thought that it was a descent into no dignity whatsoever. So beneath the presidency, so beneath the office of the presidency," he said, according to a transcript of his show. "You have to go all the way back to Nixon to find a president who done so much to lower -- wait, what am I saying? They had two terms of Clinton after Nixon."

I see that Limbaugh skipped over one president in particular. Hmmm, now when was it exactly that Ronald Reagan made a public appearance with Michael Jackson at the White House? Why, it appears that it was May 14, 1984 -- during the spring of the year Reagan ran for reelection! Who'd have thought?

Savor this just to watch Reagan say,

Well, isn't this a thriller! ... Michael, welcome to the White House. I hope you'll forgive me, but we have quite a few young folks in the White House who all wanted me to give you the same message: they said to tell Michael, "Please give some TLC to the PYTs."





Limbaugh used to think it was a good idea to link Michael Jackson to Reagan. After Jackson died, Limbaugh said:

Jackson's success paralleled the rebound of the United States under Ronaldus Magnus.... He was as weird as he could be, but he was profoundly, because of his weirdness, an individual.... He flourished under Reagan, he languished under Clinton/Bush, and died under Obama.

(Yes, Limbaugh thinks Michael Jackson's weirdness was crypto-libertarianism. I guess the Beatles flourished under LBJ because rock groups are inherently communist.)

Oh, and on the subject of "Ronaldus Magnus" and pop culture let me add that Reagan brought in Mr. T to be the White House Santa in December 1983 -- just as the '84 campaign was getting under way.