The Republican Reagan Fetish

-               Robert Hillard Patillo II, Esq.

With Former President Ronald Reagan’s 100^th birthday fast approaching there has been much fervor on the American political Right to rewrite history and place the “Gipper” into the Pantheon of great American statesmen.   Scant a day passes where a member of the Republican Party or Tea Party does not wax poetically of the utopia which existed in the 1980’s under Reagan’s watch.  In this articulation of history taxes were low, the military was strong and the American Dream was in reach for all as freedom and equality rained down in a mighty torrent washing away the excesses of the liberal oppression of the past.

At the forefront of this effort to revise history, for obvious reasons, is Ronald Reagan’s son Michael Reagan who recently penned an article “Ronald Reagan — More of a Friend to Blacks Than Obama?”  He is not alone.  Many on the political Right now run all decisions through a pseudo “Reagan Rubric” to determine if the policy fits into the Dream of Gipper.  To the Right, Reagan is a figure on par with the most towering figures of American history and deserves nothing less than enshrinement upon Mount Rushmore and a National Monument.  This Reagan Fetish has resulted in the twisting and bastardization of Reagan’s true legacy.

There is a reason that Reagan is held as such a shining beacon of conservative values.  That is because he is the only decent conservative President in U.S. History.  Think about it, both Presidents Bush were national embarrassments, Ford was shunned by his own party, Nixon was forced to resign and Eisenhower was so liberal that Martin Luther King, Jr. and many other Civil Rights activist supported him because of his social policies.  Hoover, Coolidge and Harding sank the World into the Great Depression. Taft was incompetent. Teddy Roosevelt was a social and economic Liberal.  McKinley died from being stubborn.  And the rest, stretching back to Lincoln were incompetent, ineffective, corrupt or simply lost to history.  Even Lincoln himself would not be a member of the modern political Right (do you really think the Confederate flag waving, anti-government factions of the Tea Party would embrace the “Great Emancipator?”).

So Reagan is all that the Right has in the entirety of American history.  Thus you cannot really blame them for attempting to turn lemons into lemonade, or in this case lemon jelly beans, with Reagan.  In truth, Reagan was the first in a now long line of intellectually dank politicians on the Right.  Similar to the “Know Nothing” Party of the Mid-19^th century, the modern Right prides itself on nativism, conservative core-values, a lack of compromise and pedantic political machinations with no foresight as to any long term impact.  The Right lauds Reagan’s record of cutting taxes and “winning” the Cold War and criticizes the current President for the massive deficits that the country currently faces.  However, they do not seem able to make the casual connection that decreasing revenue while massively increasing spending will leave you in debt.  And further that if you continue this policy for several decades you will be in a lot of debt.  And that the guy that shows up at the end to clean up after your 30 year spending rager cannot really be blamed for excesses of the past.

These conservative Know Nothings have fundamentally distorted Reagan’s record.  In truth, Reagan ran massive Federal deficits, almost bankrupted American with the “Star Wars” program, propped up brutal dictators, ran one of the most corrupt administrations since Ulysses S. Grant, failed to address AIDS, failed to address Crack and the American drug problem, locked up and entire generation to appear tough on crime, his laissez faire economic policy caused massive future debt and he was more than likely fully senile during the latter stages of his term in office.

That is all to say that this current Reagan fetish is not unlike other fetishes.  It is based upon living out a fantasy.  In this case, the fantasy that things were somehow better way back when.

Robert Patillo is an Attorney and commentator at The Patillo Law Group, LLC in Atlanta, Ga.  He can be reached at 706-464-9839 or via email: rpatillo@robertpatillo.com. www.robertpatillo.com

by Amani Channel

If you haven’t heard, CNN’s Rick Sanchez was fired from the network on Friday.

It happened after Sanchez made comments about comedian Jon Stewart, his employer CNN, and Jews during a satellite radio interview last Thursday.

The issue was debated on CNN’s Reliable Sources on Sunday.

by Amani Channel

Here’s a news demo from an aspiring journalist in Atlanta named Jerry Askin. He’s looking for feedback, so if you’re a professional in the news business, leave a comment with some helpful advice.

by A.man.I

by A.man.I

I’ve had my fair share of covering hurricanes and tropical storms, and last year I stayed busy working the storm season as a freelance correspondent for HDNews. The high def news operation was owned by Cablevision, and I was assigned out of the southeast bureau.

The first half of the summer was relatively quiet, but once the storms started hitting, it was on. Mario Page and I covered a total of four storms last year, T.S. Fay, Hurricane Gustavo, T.S. Hanna, and Hurricane Ike.

T.S. Fay Movie

Twitter really became an effective tool for sharing what I was seeing from the field. Using the hash tags for each storm, I was able to gain a number of follers who were interested in the storms. In addition to Twitter, I posted all of our news stories to my blog, I did some live streaming, and took photos.

Hurricane Ike by far did the most damage out of all of the storms. Mario and I were assigned to cover the aftermath when residents were allowed to return home to Galveston. We turned several stories, and ended up along the Bolivar Penninsula, which was devestated.

My thoughts and prayers have been with those who lost everything. I wonder how recovery is going?

MUR Ike Movie

by A.man.I

AMANI CHANNEL INTERVIEWED ON BELLABUZZ
I was recently interviewed by Atlanta web designer/social media trainer Desiree Scales about video on the web and production. If you have general questions about video production, please check out the podcast.

Desiree has been in the web design game for a minute, and she’ll be featured in an upcoming episode of MediaConnection. Stay tuned.

LENSLINGER SHOOTS FROM THE HIP
For all you fans of news blogs, you have to check out ViewFinderBlues by the one and only Lenslinger aka Stewart Pittman. I’ve been following this reporter-turned-photographer ever since I entered the blogosphere.

One of his recent posts, titled Depleting the Breed really struck a chord.

…now I’m seeing folks whom I figured would die with a station logo on their tit leave the fold for jobs that don’t involve live trucks or nightly deadlines.

It’s a sad truth, the biz ain’t what it used to be. Hats of to everyone who is hanging tuff.

ATLANTA REPORTER-TURNED BLOGGER RETURNS TO THE AIR
I’m sure that just about every TV news pro in the Atlanta market has checked out veteran newsman Doug Richards’ LiveApartmentFire. He’s been providing a daily dose of local news analysis for a minute now.

It looks like his Doug’s love for covering murder and mayhem on the streets of metro Atlanta could only be pacified by returning to the streets. He’s now at WXIA-TV 11Alive News.

I think his blog is even better because he’s in the thick of things providing a unique glimpse of daily newsroom antics. I think his blog will be a good PR/branding tool for the station as well. Doug, has the station put any restrictions on your blog? I wonder.

by A.man.I

Sue Rodman, an Atlanta PR professional turned blogger shared some exciting news about a new segment on CBS 46 that features her blog FieldTripsWithSue.

I’ve known Sue for about a year and recently interviewed her on MediaConnection.

A couple of weeks ago she called me asking for my thoughts about an opportunity at WGCL-TV. The station was interested in featuring her on a segment that would highlight her blog. I told her that you can’t pay for that kind of exposure, and give it a shot.

This is the e-mail I just received from her:

I thought you guys might be interested in what I’m doing with CBS. Amani, thanks for your advice.

I had contacted CBS before the summit about doing a segment on Better Mornings Atlanta. Thought it might be good PR for the blog. After the summit, they contacted me and wanted me to do a weekly segment. I am now doing a segment twice a month (thought that would take advantage of the opportunity, but not commit me to a full time volunteer job — link love is the only payment at this point.)

Here’s a link to my blog post. I’m going to post something like this after each segment. In exchange, they are posting the link on Blog Stew with everyone else (although I did get them to move mine up to the top of the list), posting the video from the segment there and posting a link on the Better Mornings links.

Sue is already a respected media professional in Atlanta, but this is an example of how social media and traditional news can converge to provide community coverage.

I’m sure that more kid friendly venues will be reaching out to Sue after her appearance, and her blog traffic will probably increase. By reaching out to bloggers, CBS Atlanta could gain a competitive edge by being the first metro Atlanta news station to adopt a more participatory model. There are certainly other things the station can do to create two-way news conversations, but this is a start.

We’ll have to see what CBS Atlanta is able to cook up with the Blog Stew.

I told just about everyone I met at the NABJ Conference that anyone who is seeking employment needs to polish their digital skills.

The job below is an example of that. Thanks to Doug Mitchell for the heads up, and good luck!

from e-mail

We are looking for a digital journalist to join our content management team that produces JournalNow, our award-winning Web site.

Here are the skills we value:
Web Design/ Development – The candidate should have a firm grasp of 21st century web skills and use standards-based XHTML and CSS to create web projects. Good visual design skills. It would also be desirable for the candidate to have experience adding and organizing content to a content management system.

Multimedia – The candidate should have some mix of skills in audio/video collecting, audio/video editing, Flash design/ development and photo editing.

Journalism – Ideally, the candidate has an educational and/or occupational background in Journalism – especially if he/she has done web journalism or narrative multimedia. Needs to understand journalistic ethics/journalistic mission and should be able to work in a fast paced, high stress environment and retain a committed sense of urgency. Must have a flexible schedule and understand the realities of working in an industry with operations on a 24/7/365 cycle.

Editing/Problem Solving – candidate must be a quick, efficient and thorough copy editor, quickly produce creative web solutions to creative print layouts. When working night shifts one often works alone, so the candidate must be capable of independent work and possess excellent problem solving skills.

Customer Service – The web team is often the first point of contact for readers, so the ideal candidate will have excellent customer service skills and be able to efficiently handle the ever-varying host of problems that our diverse readership seeks help with.

Send your portfolio, or links to at least four examples of Web design and multimedia projects, along with a letter, resume, and the names of three references to: Michelle Johnson, team leader for breaking news and multimedia, at ajohnson@wsjournal.com.

Online applications can be made at: http://jobs.mediageneral.com