Read Online The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Sarah Vowell
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told me that wasn’t true.
Remember Winthrop’s city? Where “the rich and mighty should not eat up the poor”? Where “if thy brother be in want and thou canst help him . . . if thou lovest God thou must help him”?
President Reagan did not utter the word “AIDS” in public until more than 20,000 people had died from the disease. His appointed officials embezzled funds earmarked for cleaning up toxic waste sites and gave the money to Republican candidates. He cut school lunch programs for needy children. He fired 11,345 striking air traffic controllers, which, according to the Village Voice, led to 253 deaths due to controller errors over the next ten years. He cut the budget for the Department of Housing and Urban Development from $32 billion in 1981 to $7.5 billion in 1988; two million Americans were homeless by 1989. The only federal department whose budget was not cut, but increased, was the Department of Defense; that was because the president’s white whale was the Soviet Union. Being ready and able to bomb the hell out of the evil empire was the nation’s top priority and if that meant thousands of poor kids had to skip lunch or sleep in cars in poisoned neighborhoods, so be it.
The statistics above are alarming enough. But the way Reagan not only ignored the facts—the truth didn’t feel true—but simply said that all was shiny in the city of his mind, was extra galling. As Abraham Lincoln put it in an exasperated letter to his friend Joshua Speed in 1855, complaining about slavery and religious intolerance, he would “prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty—to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.”
A few weeks after Reagan’s 1989 farewell address aired, a new Elvis Costello album showed up at the radio station and the DJs wore out the grooves on “ Tramp the Dirt Down,” in which the singer hoped he would live long enough to see the death of Reagan’s transatlantic best friend, Margaret Thatcher, so he could jump up and down on her grave. I confess that became my Reagan fantasy, too. Until his ghastly, slow death from Alzheimer’s disease deprived any detractor with half a heart of even that petty, dirt-tramping thrill.
In 2004, I did watch Reagan’s funeral at the National Cathedral on live TV. The ailing Thatcher sent a video eulogy, quoting Arnold Bennett that Reagan personified “the great cause of cheering us all up.”
Former senator John C. Danforth gave the homily, reading from that part of the Gospel of Matthew from which Winthrop himself cribbed the city-on-a-hill image: “You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hid.” Danforth continued:
Winthrop believed that the eyes of the world would be on America because God had given us a special commission, so it was our duty to shine forth. The Winthrop message became the Reagan message. It rang of optimism, and we longed to hear it, especially after the dark years of Vietnam and Watergate. It was a vision with policy implications.
America could not hide its light under a bushel. It could not turn in on itself and hunker down. Isolationism was not an option. Neither was protectionism. We must champion freedom everywhere. We must be the beacon for the world.
Danforth went on to say, “If ever we have known a child of light, it was Ronald Reagan. He was aglow with it. He had no dark side, no scary hidden agenda.”
Maybe some of the people there pictured the late president’s winning smile and smiled themselves. I just sat there frowning on my couch, picturing secret crates of weapons being unloaded from a cargo plane in Iran to pay for secret crates of weapons being unloaded from a cargo plane in Nicaragua.
Sandra Day O’Connor read an excerpt from Winthrop’s “A Model of Christian Charity.” She reminded the congregation, “The city on the hill passage was referenced by President Reagan in several
Remember Winthrop’s city? Where “the rich and mighty should not eat up the poor”? Where “if thy brother be in want and thou canst help him . . . if thou lovest God thou must help him”?
President Reagan did not utter the word “AIDS” in public until more than 20,000 people had died from the disease. His appointed officials embezzled funds earmarked for cleaning up toxic waste sites and gave the money to Republican candidates. He cut school lunch programs for needy children. He fired 11,345 striking air traffic controllers, which, according to the Village Voice, led to 253 deaths due to controller errors over the next ten years. He cut the budget for the Department of Housing and Urban Development from $32 billion in 1981 to $7.5 billion in 1988; two million Americans were homeless by 1989. The only federal department whose budget was not cut, but increased, was the Department of Defense; that was because the president’s white whale was the Soviet Union. Being ready and able to bomb the hell out of the evil empire was the nation’s top priority and if that meant thousands of poor kids had to skip lunch or sleep in cars in poisoned neighborhoods, so be it.
The statistics above are alarming enough. But the way Reagan not only ignored the facts—the truth didn’t feel true—but simply said that all was shiny in the city of his mind, was extra galling. As Abraham Lincoln put it in an exasperated letter to his friend Joshua Speed in 1855, complaining about slavery and religious intolerance, he would “prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty—to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.”
A few weeks after Reagan’s 1989 farewell address aired, a new Elvis Costello album showed up at the radio station and the DJs wore out the grooves on “ Tramp the Dirt Down,” in which the singer hoped he would live long enough to see the death of Reagan’s transatlantic best friend, Margaret Thatcher, so he could jump up and down on her grave. I confess that became my Reagan fantasy, too. Until his ghastly, slow death from Alzheimer’s disease deprived any detractor with half a heart of even that petty, dirt-tramping thrill.
In 2004, I did watch Reagan’s funeral at the National Cathedral on live TV. The ailing Thatcher sent a video eulogy, quoting Arnold Bennett that Reagan personified “the great cause of cheering us all up.”
Former senator John C. Danforth gave the homily, reading from that part of the Gospel of Matthew from which Winthrop himself cribbed the city-on-a-hill image: “You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hid.” Danforth continued:
Winthrop believed that the eyes of the world would be on America because God had given us a special commission, so it was our duty to shine forth. The Winthrop message became the Reagan message. It rang of optimism, and we longed to hear it, especially after the dark years of Vietnam and Watergate. It was a vision with policy implications.
America could not hide its light under a bushel. It could not turn in on itself and hunker down. Isolationism was not an option. Neither was protectionism. We must champion freedom everywhere. We must be the beacon for the world.
Danforth went on to say, “If ever we have known a child of light, it was Ronald Reagan. He was aglow with it. He had no dark side, no scary hidden agenda.”
Maybe some of the people there pictured the late president’s winning smile and smiled themselves. I just sat there frowning on my couch, picturing secret crates of weapons being unloaded from a cargo plane in Iran to pay for secret crates of weapons being unloaded from a cargo plane in Nicaragua.
Sandra Day O’Connor read an excerpt from Winthrop’s “A Model of Christian Charity.” She reminded the congregation, “The city on the hill passage was referenced by President Reagan in several
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