Richard Russell
Ronald Reagan Memorium
AMERICANALIA
a fair and balanced history of the US part six - war and lies
There's a golden rule for public figures; the more important they are the more essential it is- stay the fuck away from grassy knolls. John F Kennedy forgot, and went right past a grassy knoll one day in Texas. No-one knows who did it. Some people said it was the Mafia, evening the score since they'd got him elected and he'd given them nothing in return. I don't know: the Mafia are more likely to nail you to something and force you to listen to 'Strangers in the night'. Some say the CIA did it, but they usually use faked heart attacks or 'plane crashes. I've got my own theory, based around the famous ten seconds of missing footage of the assassination: I think his head just exploded from too much cocaine. Kennedy took all sorts of drugs including methadone and a few you wouldn't give to a laboratory gerbil. He took rafts of charlie up his hooter because he found he could then have sex for more than ten seconds. He'd had an affair with Marylin Monroe, and she'd taught him to snort with both nostrils at once, which is fine once you get your eyes back in their sockets, but it does run a risk of Spontaneous Human Bonce Gooeyness Everywhere Syndrome, where all the cocaine builds up in gaps behind your ears and you go pop like a ketchup firework. The cops arrested Lee Harvey Oswald, mainly because he'd been to Russia once, plus his mug-shot looked really evil in a certain light. Then they cocked up: when they were taking Oswald to his trial they walked straight past another fucking grassy knoll; you know the rest. It took Martin Luther King, Malcolm X (whose real name was Doris Ollerenshaw, so you can hardly blame him for changing it), Bobbie Kennedy, and eventually John Lennon before grassy knolls were finally outlawed altogether. Unfortunately no-one did anything about the guns, which kill 40,000 Americans every year: a little over four people an hour, so if you're American and you're reading this, i'd suggest you shoot the man, woman or child next to you to improve your own average. The Viet Nam war changed everything. No, sorry: the Viet Nam war changed absolutely nothing. A few more cops shot a few more kids. A few more kids took a few more drugs, and grooved to a few more out-of-tune guitars. But Nixon was re-relected in '72, and the war didn't officially end 'til '75, by which time Jimmy Page had tuned his guitar up, so nothing was really the same. There was a new generation of poets and social critics: Bob Dylan, who could play harmonica with his adenoids; Neil Young, who could sing with a hedgehog in his underpants; Joan Baez, who couldn't sing, but stood out among the crowd as the only one who'd had a bath recently. But the socio-political fabric of the US remained beer, ball games, and more beer, with a side-order of buffalo. Jimmy Carter promised much, but Jimmy Saville might have made a better job. "Can Jim fix it for me to get those hostages home from Beirut?""Hell no, not with the Republicans and the CIA doing their best to undermine everything". Then we got the Reagan years. Ronald Reagan started out as an actor: mostly on tv adverts. There's a memorable one where he's having tea with a bunch of chimpanzees; in a California Governor's strategy meeting. Reagan branded the Soviet Union "the evil empire", and then either invaded, bombed or covertly destabilised Nicaragua, Libya, Haiti, Columbia, Iran, El Salvador, Grenada, and provided support to Saddam Hussein and the Taliban. Eventually they caught him selling drugs to a bloke called Satan in exchange for tanks to fight the Sandinistas. But by then Ronnie had succombed to a fatal disease called 'lawyer's gag', and couldn't even wipe his own arse without a congressional directive. His trial was the most tear-jerking performance of his career. "Are you President Ronald Reagan?""Er, I don't remember.""Are you married to a shrivelled gargoyle called Nancy Reagan?""Yes, I remember Nancy. Where's Nancy?""Mr President, can you tell us about the nuclear button.""Well, on my desk there's three buttons. One of them empties the oval office commode: I, er, use that quite a lot. One of them puts me through by video-link to Margaret Thatcher in the UK: I just have to hope she's not on the Downing Street commode. Now, i've been told that if ever see a blinding flash and my staff turn into chicken wings, then i'm to press the third button which will sort it all out. I nearly pressed it once, but it turned out to be a photographer eating some chicken wings. With barbecue relish.""Do you recall meeting Oliver North.""No, I remember Oliver Reed, he was a gas. Then there was Oliver Hardy: isn't he Chief of Staff. And i've heard of a guy called Oliver Twist; or was that a script they sent me. Where are the chimpanzees: i'm ready for a take." Ronnie got off, mainly because the chimpanzees who investigated him forgot what the question was. He still lives happily in California, when he can remember what number he lives at. Sometime he gets lost, and Nancy has to put pictures of him on all the lamp-posts: reward $30; answers to the name of Bonzo.
Part XXIX
a fair and balanced history of the US part seven - recent wars
Ronald Reagan won the Cold War, according to the history books. He didn't know he was winning the Cold War: he thought this guy with a splodge on his head was selling Ladas. Then the Berlin Wall fell down, and with no-one particularly fussed about re-building it, a crowd of East Berliners crossed the border demanding Levis and luxury toilet paper. Ronnie gave way to George Bush Snr, who spent billions of dollars upholding the freedom-loving democracy presided over by the Kuwaiti royal family, and then went back on his tax-cutting promises to pay for it. "Read my lips: i'm a lying motherfucker." Few predicted Bill Clinton would be president. It turned out more than half the voting public had had sex with him, and Bill is hung like a marrow. Even fewer thought he'd become the most popular president ever: until they remembered Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Bush Snr. Bill combined Mephistopheles charm with a hair-cut straight out of the Beach Boys. Bill believed in peace: a piece of that one over there in the short skirt. He brought peace to Ireland and the Middle East: knowing full well he'd no longer be in office when it all went tits up.
Then came his fall at the hands of a plump and curiously seductive Goth called Monica. "I did not have sexual relations with that woman: Miss Lowinsky. I climaxed before I could get her knickers off." At his trial he pleaded guilty: it had always worked on Hilary. He kept his job, kept his money, and the American people proved they'd rather a serial randy git over a dickless wonder any day of the week. Unfortunately, in the next election the choice was between two dickless wonders: Al 'personality costs extra' Gore, and one of the old chimps from Reagan's tea advert, George W Bush. The Bush presidency's murky beginnings betray the real character of the folks we're dealing with. Having spent enough for basic global healthcare on little ring-wing flags and dixieland strippers, the Republicans sold a guy who would keep his trousers on, essentially because he doesn't know how belts work. The Republican-backed media reported exit polls in favour of Gore, to get the Republican vote out. Even then brother Jeb had to organise the miscounting of the poor black Democrat vote to break even. Eventually a Republican-dominated gaggle of judges gave
the job to Bush, leaving Gore to go back to planet Vulcan to undertake the ritual of f'ucke'd'up, while the Democrats cast around for a trusted, capable, preferably non-Jewish candidate to split the country next time around. Now a jaundiced eye might suggest the Americans alternate their presidency between corrupt blokeys who can't keep their trousers on and half-wits who don't have the brain-power to be corrupt blokeys who can't keep their trousers on. Randy Jack Kennedy is followed by Lyndon 'No Brains' Johnson. 'Tricky Dicky' succeeded by Ford and then 'Peanuts' featuring good old Jimmy Carter. Arms to anyone who's paying Reagan gave way to "read my lips: there's nothing behind them". In fact if Bush Jnr was just stupid, we'd all be a lot safer. He's corrupt, merciless, religiously deluded, and he wants to round up everyone prepared to fight US global domination with violence, like so many cattle-rustlers. Nowadays he makes all his speeches in front of members of his armed forces, like Glenn Miller without the Andrews Sisters. Of course 'speeches' is stretching it.
© Richard Russell 2003
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