Tweet of the Week: Compare and Contrast

Ronald Reagan: Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall! @BarackObama: Mr. Putin, how high would you like me to jump?
— Jim Treacher (@jtLOL) September 12, 2013

"Argo" and Mangled History

I was actually going to get around to this, but someone else has saved me the work.  Here, read this.  

I'm on the record as loving this movie, but if I had to point out the one thing that bothered me, the fly in the ointment, it was the intro that purported to give the audience the historical background to the crisis of 1979.  The whole thing was only a few minutes long, but I hated it.  Still, the rest of the movie was absolutely splendid storytelling.  The creative liberties taken for the plot and its fantastic drama were fine by me.  It was the intro that rubbed me the wrong way, because I'm sure it's given a whole bunch of ignorant moviegoers a totally wrong idea of what happened. Well, we  should all know better than to expect actual history out of Hollywood, for goodness sake.  But you knew that already.  

I have to say, though: What may be more remarkable - and worthy of praise in this age of "America is always the bad guy" media - is the fact that the movie does not attempt to make the Iranian hostage takers sympathetic.  It does not glorify them at all.  We are clearly shown the revolutionaries' brutality not only to the captured Americans but also to other Iranians.  I think the flick deserves some kudos for that.

The writer of the article is also quite exercised about the Jimmy Carter epilogue to the film.  I can understand his annoyance, but I thought Carter's voiceover spin-doctoring was so flat-out ludicrous that I just laughed it off.  Come on, all Jimmy's done lately is try to revise his (disastrous) legacy.  Nobody mentioned Ronald Reagan at all in connection with the end of the Iran hostage crisis, but he was the elephant in the room and was conspicuous by his absence.

Oh, you might want to read the 2007 Wired article that started the whole moviemaking ball rolling.  You may also be interested in the new book The Coup: 1953, the CIA, and the Roots of Modern U.S.-Iranian Relations.

A Dad's Advice on Marriage

Read this letter!  The P.S. is absolutely delightful.

Monday Therapy: "I Am European"

If you need a good laugh on this stormy Monday, you'll appreciate this uproariously, fall-on-the-floor-and-choke-with-laughter awful music video.  Come on, why are all EU propaganda videos so darn horrible?  Just how bad is it?  So bad that it got an eminent British member of the European Parliament to call it "an abomination" and to tag it on his blog as "terrifyingly crappy video."  Take a look for yourself and ponder whether this is as bad as the hilarrible "Science: It's A Girl Thing!" video.

Good grief, people, don't you realize that name-checking a bunch of European cultural giants only makes you look even smaller and sillier?  I know, it's hardly fair to make fun of the EU's propaganda wing.  Talk about a "target-rich environment"! It's like shooting fish in a barrel.  It's not even sporting. I was, though, rather tickled to see Reagan there giving his famous Berlin Wall speech.  Is there some tiny, grudging acknowledgment of the fact that yes indeed, the Gipper helped the free world win the Cold War?  Haters gonna hate, but Reagan rocked.

FDR, Reagan, and the WWII Internment of Japanese-Americans

Read this and sigh.

History Lesson: 100 Years in 10 Minutes

This is an interesting compilation, though I do take issue with the fact that the selection is often desultory and that it focuses too much on the negative and does not include enough mention of humanitarian, scientific, medical, artistic, and other forms of achievements.  (No, mentioning the founding of Greenpeace does not count.)   It's so pessimistic, complete with the depressingly doom-tastic soundtrack.  I also found it a little odd that the founding of Israel in 1948 was not included, even though this moment in history is hugely important both to supporters and opponents.  Well, still, whoever made this took the time and effort to do this, so props to them.  Maybe I should make my own video.

History Argument: The Best and Worst Presidents on Foreign Policy

Let the debating begin!

A Hungarian Ambassador's Thoughts On Egypt

Andras Simonyi, former Hungarian ambassador to NATO and the United States, has some piquant thoughts including this one:

A Belated Happy Birthday to the Great Communicator

Check this out.

Then check out this statement from Marco Rubio on how the son of Cuban exiles regards Reagan.  Hear, hear.  You know, Reagan is the first president I remember, and somehow every other president after him has seemed so much smaller.

Retrospective: A Canadian View of Reagan

Take a look at the most influential president since FDR.

Awesome: The Reagan Float in the Rose Parade

2011 is off to a fine start with this surprise this morning as the MM tribe watched the Tournament of Roses Parade as it does every New Year's Day.

Nerd News: Historians Rank Presidents

Well, nobody asked me, is all I'm sayin'. Obama on a recent survey of 238 historians came in 15th, 2 places behind Clinton and 3 places ahead of Reagan. 

The Cold War Victory Parade We Never Got!

This is kind of ... awesome. (And shall we give a shout-out to the Gipper?)

Quote of the Day: Arthur Chrenkoff on Obama and Berlin ... Plus a Rant!

Chrenkoff's always worth a read. Blurb from his latest:

That John F. Kennedy could go to Germany and be “a Berliner” told you all you needed to know about that Democratic administration. That Barack Obama won’t do so now sadly tells you all you need to know about the current one.

Not good. Then again, I've been criticizing Obama's laughable "foreign policy" for a long time. To the Kennedy visit, you can add the Reagan visit with that awesome "tear down this wall!" speech. Like at Jericho, the walls did come tumbling down in 1989 in a massive victory for freedom. I watched the walls fall on TV, and I was just a schoolgirl, but I was so happy I actually cried ... and I'm a heartless warmongering right-wing racist nutjob who hates people and has no soul, remember?

It's absolutely disgraceful that now the president of the United States won't bother to go to the 20th anniversary celebrations -- especially since he did bother to go cheerlead (uselessly, by the way) for Chicago for those stupid Olympics. The end of the Cold War was one of the finest moments for the West in the 20th century, and it came after a long slog indeed. We're going to mark it on MM Blog even if our increasingly ludicrous leader can't seem to grant the event its due respect and honor. Yes, I said "ludicrous" -- in no small part because, ever since the campaign trail, he's shown an appalling ignorance of history, much less any true appreciation for it as anything other than one more shiny flourish in his rhetorical bag of tricks. Remember this?

I'm ranting now, so I might as well say it: Heck, Berlin was good enough for Obama to spout pretty speeches in last year when he was just a candidate trying to prove how glossy and lovable he was on the international stage, when Berlin could do something for him ... but now there's no personal benefit or aggrandizement, so I guess Berlin's off the list? What? Pfffffffffft. Doesn't anybody else find this juxtaposition a little ... odd? Narcissism as foreign policy? Anyway, is he sending Hillary to Berlin instead? Joe Biden? Geez, I hope it's not that walking malapropism Biden! HOPECHANGE!

The Reagan Prize for Freedom and Actual -- Errr -- PEACE

Here's an interesting idea indeed. HECK YEAH. Especially on the heels of this and this. It'll never happen, though, since some eggheads will never, ever get over the fact that we won the Cold War.

Ronald Reagan on Socialized Medicine

From 1961 and still relevant:

Quote of the Day: Ronald Reagan on Memorial Day

Amid all the pleasures of the holiday weekend and the unofficial beginning of the summer season, spare a thought for Memorial Day and the cause and defense of freedom. Here via Maggie's Farm is a great quote by The Reagan:

"Once each May, amid the quiet hills and rolling lanes and breeze-brushed trees of Arlington National Cemetery, far above the majestic Potomac and the monuments and memorials of our Nation's Capital just beyond, the graves of America's military dead are decorated with the beautiful flag that in life these brave souls followed and loved. This scene is repeated across our land and around the world, wherever our defenders rest. Let us hold it our sacred duty and our inestimable privilege on this day to decorate these graves ourselves -- with a fervent prayer and a pledge of true allegiance to the cause of liberty, peace, and country for which America's own have ever served and sacrificed.

... Our pledge and our prayer this day are those of free men and free women who know that all we hold dear must constantly be built up, fostered, revered and guarded vigilantly from those in every age who seek its destruction. We know, as have our Nation's defenders down through the years, that there can never be peace without its essential elements of liberty, justice and independence. Those true and only building blocks of peace were the lone and lasting cause and hope and prayer that lighted the way of those whom we honor and remember this Memorial Day. To keep faith with our hallowed dead, let us be sure, and very sure, today and every day of our lives, that we keep their cause, their hope, their prayer, forever our country's own."

The Reagan-Obama Debate on the Nature of Government

Via Roger Kimball comes this piquant and all-too-relevant collection of quotations by the late, great Gipper and the current president, shaped into a debate.

One of the most best lines from The Reagan about the ultimate choice: ". . . whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them for ourselves."

Video of the Day: "Yes, We Can" by...Ronald Reagan

Here is a lovely video sent to me by blog friend Pursuit of Serenity. Do enjoy...but be prepared to miss Reagan even more.

(And no, this is not a post about McCain or Obama or Billary or any of that. This is a post about the best of what Reagan did and inspired.)