The recent skirmish between Fux loudmouth Bill "O'Liely" O'Reilly and the pompous high priest of the cult of St. Ronnie of Hollywood George F. "Effing" Will over O'Liely's mildly critical book on the former President demonstrates the right wing's obsession with maintaining St. Ronnie's demigod status. Indeed, Effing links the survival of that status to the survival of the conservative movement, which has nothing in the way of achievements in the 20th century save his two elections. What really burned Effing was the book's reference to St. Ronnie's growing signs of Alzheimer's, which were likely accelerated by the 1981 assassination attempt.
The irony is that the historic St. Ronnie wouldn't be embraced as a movement conservative today by its rabid reactionary mob: he added trillions to the national debt, he cut and ran from Lebanon after the Beirut bombings, he granted amnesty to illegal immigrants, and he raised taxes 11 times during his eight years in office. Aside from occasionally kissing the asses of religious fundamentalists, he came up with excuses about why he didn't attend church himself.
As Salon's Sean Illing notes in his excellent article:
All told, Reagan’s policies didn’t shrink the government or increase prosperity for the middle class. On the contrary, they made government more bloated, more defense-oriented, more oligarchic, and less democratic. Conservatives never reckon with these facts because the ahistorical canonization of Reagan prevents them from doing so. Reagan has become nothing more than a juvenile projection, a malleable myth for a movement in denial. (emphasis added)Effing Will's whole reason for being rests on conservatism being viewed as not just successful, but as essential to America's future. For that to happen, the movement needs a rallying figure, a secular saint, that can serve as the touchstone for their bogus theories and regressive view of the world. For Effing, that figure can be none other than Bonzo's co-star, St. Ronnie of Hollywood.
