Special Current Wisdom/Ron on the Rock Reactions
Jackasses, Assorted
SPECIAL CURRENT WISDOM * Reagan on the Rock Reactions The humble proposal to add Ronald Reagan's countenance to Mount Rushmore—first advanced by R. Emmett TYrrell, Jr., and fleshed out in our...
...Tyrrell, who is normally a quite reasoned commentator, should get his head examined for that one...
...May 29, 1989] Kansas City Star Proof that the Nation and the Progressive both have Native American editions: Putting Ronnie Reagan's likeness on Mount Rushmore would add new insult to old injury...
...It takes a mindless brain such as that of R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.'s even to think of such a stupid, asinine idea...
...Put him up on Mount Rushmore while he's still riding his horsey in California and while the mess of Iran-contra still remains to be sorted out in the courts...
...Then consider the Reagan administration's disastrous policies concerning indigenous peoples...
...A cowboy clown does not belong there with the four great presidents...
...Tyrrell, the editor of American Spectator, a magazine for the conservative crowd, says just a little chiseling and just a little dynamiting would allow Ronald Reagan's nose and chin and ears to be added to South Dakota's most famous monument...
...This is a pre-emptive strike: The idea, clearly, is to make it official that Mr...
...It's what the people think, and I have never suggested such a thing...
...However, a few miles west of Rushmore there is another great monument being carved that would be more appropriate for Reagan...
...If the idea advances too far, we would expect outrage to show itself...
...If we must add more figures, they should represent the American troops raising the flag at Iwo Jima...
...Reagan was a historic, heroic president before the historians can pass judgment...
...wants to add one more president to Mount Rushmore...
...And F. Emmet Tyrrell [sic] suggested that South Dakota should pay for it...
...The existence of the Mount Rushmore National Memorial, commemorating four U.S...
...Reagan should be in jail...
...treatment of Native Americans from the founding of this nation to the present...
...SPECIAL CURRENT WISDOM * Reagan on the Rock Reactions The humble proposal to add Ronald Reagan's countenance to Mount Rushmore—first advanced by R. Emmett TYrrell, Jr., and fleshed out in our July issue by David Shanahan of the Committee for Monumental Progress—has met with an overwhelming response...
...presidents, in the middle of this sacred land, is a slap in the face, especially when one considers the unflattering history of U.S...
...REAGAN: It wouldn't be very important what I thought...
...May 19, 1989] San Francisco Chronicle The terrified observations of another pathetic laggard from the March of History: Regarding the movement to get Reagan's image onto the Mount Rushmore monument: I personally vow to carry the first jackhammer up to blast off any such ugly intrusion on that historic site...
...It took Gutzon Borglum most of a lifetime to carve Mount Rushmore...
...Jerry Sawyer Vancouver [May 25, 1989] Idahonian/Daily News (Moscow, Idaho) The shocking propaganda brought down on the free-born Americans of the good Moscow: Tyrrell should proceed with the greatest dispatch and throw all his energies into the project...
...If man wants to make a monument to man, then let it not be egotism sculpted large, but let it be oil-free Alaskan sounds, acid-free rain, non-toxic water tables...
...Reagan's legacy is a country whose natural environment has been seriously compromised, whose city streets are jammed with homeless people, whose economy is running solely on the momentum of hype, whose civil rights have been eroded, and whose death toll from AIDS skyrocketed out of control as governmental health agency budget cuts made way for the most idiotic military expenditure in history: the Strategic Defense Initiative...
...May 20, 1989] Herald Leader (Lexington, Kentucky) Belles lettres from the sourpuss pen of Dr...
...May 23, 1989] Greeley Tribune (Greeley, Colorado) From a modern adept of Pyrrhonism in the Rocky Mountain State, a constructive suggestion—though not constructive enough: I think it is much too soon to consider putting Ronald Reagan's face alongside those four great presidents on Mount Rushmore...
...Robert Folsom [May 28, 1989] The Record (Hackensack, New Jersey) A confused aesthete weighs in from Edgewater: Just say no, no, no...
...What happens if the country, in the grips of a liberal revival, wants to honor some recently retired chief executive by sandblasting Reagan's face off the mountain and replacing it with a liberal...
...REAGAN: How could you not be pleased if someone is suggesting such a thing...
...June 22, 1989] THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 1989 43...
...As a Native American of Sioux and Choctaw descent, I can tell you that Paha Sapa, the Black Hills, are considered sacred by the Lakota (Sioux) Indians...
...Or the gaffe he made during his trip to the Soviet Union when he remarked that the U.S...
...We do not need or want another head carved on Mt...
...Tyrrell knows that historians tend to be on the liberal side and he doesn't want to take any chances...
...Adene Steele Eaton [May 29, 1989] * USA Today And finally, the Fortieth President of the United States responds with characteristic modesty: USA TODAY: What do you think about the movement to put your face on Mt...
...Sometimes we can be too quick to rush to judgment...
...Vancouver Columbian (Vancouver, Washington) A very intemperate response from a citizen of Vancouver, Washington, presumably an American citizen: Let's not desecrate Mount Rushmore with the face of show-off actor Ronald Reagan...
...USA TODAY: The idea does seem to please you...
...Cap Bixby San Francisco [June 3, 1989] Free Press (Mankato, Minnesota) Philistine vaporings from a sadly misnamed organ of the Farm and Labor cabal: A man named R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr...
...It is of that great chief "Crazy Horse...
...should have invited American Indians to "Come, be one of us," or such malarkey as that...
...And a bust of Reagan on a mountain is a small price to pay...
...But I don't know if there is room for anyone else there...
...I have great respect for the presidents who are represented there...
...Peter Harriman [May 20-21, 1989] Dayton News The conspiracies of the Reaganite hordes as explicated by another bitter-ender of the anti-Conservative persuasion: Right-wing journalist Emmett Tyrrell has proposed putting Ronald Reagan on Mt...
...Fortunately, the people of South Dakota have remained, at best, lukewarm to the idea...
...Howard Kleinberg of the Cox News Service: While many Americans may feel comfortable wrapped in an American flag Reagan personally stitched for them, many more were very uncomfortable with a president who had a miserable record on civil rights, who offered to sell arms to our enemies in Iran, who had enough of his appointees indicted to challenge any other president for bad judgment and who presided over the humiliation and grief of the unanswered terrorist killings of hundreds of American military and civilian personnel in Lebanon...
...But let our ultimate monument to one another be respect and fairness toward all...
...If Tyrrell and his ultra-conservative cohorts can be similarly employed and diverted from trying to foist their antediluvian philosophy on the country, the world will be a better place...
...What happens if the liberals come back to power...
...Armen Tutunjian Edgewater [June 12, 1989] Public Opinion (Watertown, South Dakota) The unwarranted anxieties expressed by a sage in Watertown: We see one tiny, little problem with [Tyrrell's] proposal...
...Herewith, a small sampling...
...May 21, 1989] Coatesville Record (Coatesville, Pennsylvania) Phrenological prescriptions from historic Coatesville, Pa.: A conservative commentator wants to see President Reagan's image on Mount Rushmore...
Vol. 22 • September 1989 • No. 9
