J. PETER FREIRE
Kleinknecht, William
bookS In revIew The Slaughterhouse What’s Good for the Gipper W e all get annoyed. People leave their cell phones on in movie theaters. Drivers tailgate and then slow down once they...
...Hyde of the ‘80s...
...That’s what the book is really about...
...Indeed, the working The Man Who sold the class often gave voice to the comWorld: Ronald Reagan plaint that Reagan was hoarding and the Betrayal of astrologers from the psychically Main street America disenfranchised...
...But Kleinknecht is a journalist, not an economist, one who learned under the balanced tutelage of Professor Howard Zinn, author of the Marxist tome, The People’s History of the United States...
...Whereas Reagan believed that big government stifled the economy, the author believes Reagan wanted farmers to starve...
...How else to explain such hopelessly naïve arguments...
...Apparently, the common man was better off with the economy in the toilet, and he just didn’t know it...
...It was the people...
...He was a corporate mouthpiece and a nap-crazed racist...
...This book is borne of annoyance,” he states in his introduction...
...They like things you don’t like...
...And where Reagan believed that when industries falter, new industries will take their place, Kleinknecht thinks that Reagan wanted the steel industry to fail...
...In other words, Kleinknecht isn’t so much annoyed about Reagan...
...Annoyed...
...Newark’s been run by Democrats for decades...
...Kleinknecht, as a crime reporter for Newark, New Jersey’s Star-Ledger, has probably seen little evidence that people are inherently good...
...Take George W. Bush: At once a moron and an insidious warmonger...
...Some annoyances are more important than others, and like a small child who tugs at your pantleg because he needs to go to the bathroom, William Kleinknecht’s annoyance should be your primary concern...
...Poor people whom Kleinknecht describes as “psychically disenfranchised” are puzzled over “this Hollywood actor and shill for General Electric, this obvious enemy of the common people he claimed to represent, this empty suit who believed in flying saucers and allowed an astrologer to guide his presidential scheduling...
...And their ineffective, non-government subsidized therapy sessions...
...Sound familiar...
...Then you’re really in for it...
...Keith Olbermann continues to receive a paycheck, one that presumably helps him feed himself...
...bookS In revIew The Slaughterhouse What’s Good for the Gipper W e all get annoyed...
...Reagan was at once a dolt and a conniving dictator...
...By William Kleinknecht Kleinknecht wrote this book (nation books, $26.95, 352 pages) to blow off some steam, and what a startling success considering reviewed by J. Peter freire that it’s filled with hot air...
...This reform had “opened the way for the remarkably affluent and egalitarian society,” a “golden era that has never been fully appreciated by liberals...
...But who can blame him for such psychic disenfranchisement...
...You can see it in the new conventional wisdom about the Old John McCain, who is somehow different from the New John McCain...
...He’s annoyed that Americans elected him in the first place...
...If Kleinknecht sounds like he didn’t read his book aloud to friends who could offer constructive criticism, it’s probably because he didn’t...
...The apotheosis of Ronald Reagan was never more abject than the coverage of his funeral,” he laments, because no one in their right mind should ever say nice things about a dead man at his funeral, let alone a popular president...
...See, it wasn’t the government that was the problem...
...For years, liberals have made similar claims of annoyance...
...Specifically, it’s “a great bewilderment over the myth that continues to surround the presidency of Ronald Reagan...
...The former was missed by the Washington glitterati because he challenged the “compassionately” conservative George W. Bush, whereas the newer version was despised because he dared to run as a Republican...
...Jekyll and Mr...
...For the author, it isn’t hard to see Reagan as the Dr...
...J. Peter freire is managing editor of The American Spectator...
...It certainly won’t go over well with those strange few who might have some fond memories of a presi 96 THe amerIcan SPecTaTor December 2008/January 2009 bookS In revIew dentwhohadthegalltoassertAmerican greatness as a fact rather than a suggestion...
...The more liberal candidate gets a clean bill of health, exemplified by his sense of “moderation...
...This alone is evidence enough not to have William Kleinknecht speak at your funeral...
...And because they also have the ability to vote, they don’t adhere to your rigid standards for presidential perfection...
...Reagan was “a repudiation of a long epoch of reform...
...Voters as idiots...
...December 2008/January 2009 THe amerIcan SPecTaTor 97...
...That industries failed because the government wasn’t bailing them out...
...The dude is annoyed...
...They are, after all, a big problem...
...The common man was too greedy, as evidenced by “the increasing self-absorption of Americans.…Americans were stampeding to therapists to fill their inner emptiness...
...I know this because he told me so...
...Isn’t that annoying...
...It was kind of like living in Moscow, except the without the funny hats...
...There isn’t a single part of Reagan free of dark motives, including his failure to return frequently to his hometown during his administration...
...Wonder Boy was kinder to the common man than Ronald Reagan...
...He asserts that the real reason social welfare programs were ineffective was simply that they lacked funding...
...If this book sounds a little Bolshie, it’s not for lack of trying...
...Those friends are probably just waiting for it to come out as a pop-up book, since that’s what they’re most used to...
...They vote the way you don’t want them to...
...It happens...
...Drivers tailgate and then slow down once they pass you...
...Not so in the Kleinknecht narrative...
...And what a golden era that was...
...Double-digit inflation, foreign people aiming nuclear missiles at us and our good-for-nothing friends, wide lapels, fondue...
...In other words, if a candidate runs to the right of an opponent, he must be suffering from multiple personality disorder...
...It was a time when Americans were so comfortable with failure they elected Jimmy “Wonder Boy” Carter just to make sure nothing changed...
...This kind of diagnosis is the natural consequence of an asylum run by the inmates...
...This morbid obsession with duality continues with other Republicans...
...He might begin the eulogy: “This eulogy is born out of annoyance...
Vol. 41 • January 2009 • No. 10
