How to Get Smarter and Make the Media Love You
By Gene Lalor
Posted On December 31, 2006
I know getting older makes you smarter. At least, that’s the perception of most parents who, when their children grow up and as they themselves age like fine wines, achieve a certain grey eminence and don’t seem as dumb and doltish as they were when the kids were teenagers. That said, it was a bit
of a shock to discover that at least some people actually get smarter after they die!
That’s irreverent, I know, since I refer to the late, not great, accidental, thirty-eighth President of the United States, Gerald Rudolff Ford. Suddenly, we hear and read such descriptions as, “wise,” filled with
“emotional intelligence,” “honorable,” “distinguished,” “underappreciated,” a “healer”of a Watergate-torn nation. In death, he became a smart, sincere, succesful President! (To be fair, some few observers, such as The Intrepid Liberal Journal , did refer to “a dark side to the Ford legacy: the rise of
the neocons” and two of the worst of that breed, guys named Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld.. But negative obituaries were rare.) In death, the same man who had been described-- before, during and after his twenty-nine month presidency-- as a dumb clod who had hit someone with a golf ball, who had bumped his head exiting Air Force One, who was roundly lampooned for his WIN (Whip Inflation Now) buttons. This same man seems to have been born again after he died.
Consider a few earlier comments on Ford:
President Lyndon Baines Johnson: “That Gerry Ford. He can’t fart [later sanitized to “walk”] and chew gum at the same time.”
His pardon of Richard Nixon was: “a corrupt bargain.”
His decision not to bail out fiscally irresponsible and virtually bankrupt New York City in 1975 was pithily headlined as, “Ford to City: Drop Dead!”
Now, granted, James Brown passed to his reward the same week, after a life of drugs and alcohol and a history of law-breaking and girlfriend/wife-beatings and that “Godfather of Soul” was mourned and
lauded. That same week, Saddam Hussein also to his heaven to meet his seventy-two virgins, only to discover they were all in their eighties and had no water to wash the blood from his hands. But, at least he hasn’t been canonized. Yet.
But why all the plaudits and revisionism of Gerry Ford’s life and legacy? Could it simply reflect a more mellow media according him the posthumous deference denied him earlier? Or, could it be because of new Ford opinions published after his passing, post-mortem opinions critical of Republican Presidents Nixon, Reagan, Bush I and Bush II? The New York Times et al. all but fell all over their collective selves rushing to headline his negative comments. But wasn’t he a dumb twit in life, an ignoramus, guilty
of corruption and insensitivity? Didn’t he sabotage the Warren Commission with the “Magic Bullet” theory? Didn’t he veto the Freedom of Information Act? Didn’t he preside over a miserable stagflation-recession, an 8.8 % unemployment rate (1975), a double-digit CPI, and propose nothing substantive to reverse the course of the economy? Why then give him such obeisance and credence in death? I refuse to dignify his critiques by airing them in detail. Suffice it to say that he can’t deny them now.
Former President Gerald R. Ford died the day after Christmas, 2006. He seemed a decent and honest and honorable fellow. In life, he was nevernearly as dumb as he was painted by the media of his time in office. In death, he is no smarter, no more competent or patriotic, except to the media of today. Let us bury Gerry Ford and not gratuitously and cynically praise him and use his death to advance an agenda. Let him rest in peace.
I didn’t know Ronald Reagan. Mr. Ford was a decent man, but he was no Ronald Reagan.
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