Reagan Casts Giant Shadow Online
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By Robert MacMillan, washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Ronald Reagan (news - web sites) was a giant on the American political landscape, so it's no surprise to find the late president standing just as tall on the Internet, casting a formidable shadow, virtually speaking, across cyberspace.
The last time a former U.S. president passed away -- Richard M. Nixon on April 22, 1994 -- the World Wide Web was just a toddler. But this is the first time that the United States has lost a president -- especially one who inspired equal amounts of love and loathing -- in the full swing of the digital age.
It would be easy to gauge the "Reagan effect" on the Internet by plugging in the number of Google search results from typing in "Ronald Reagan" (1.45 million) or those of Yahoo (2.35 million). But those numbers lie in more than one way. At the very least, they reveal an unprecedented outpouring of sadness, praise, scorn and historical chronicles of varying degrees of accuracy.
Following is a tiny cross-section of the Internet that highlights some of the major and most interesting online sources of information on Reagan. It is by no means comprehensive, but it attempts to use the Internet to assemble the most basic mosaic out of the bottomless well of information that people have posted online about the 40th president.
The Straight Story
There are several "official" sources of information on Reagan. The White House gives a brief biographical sketch with links to a biography of former First Lady Nancy Reagan, portraits of the Reagans and similar entries on every other president. Also see Reagan's biography as produced by the state of California.
The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library has an enormous photo gallery and a trove of other information such as videotapes of his speeches that can be ordered from the site. Reaganlibrary.com is a separate site but also is an official part of the presidential library. It includes interesting links to a list of gifts the Reagans received (it is partially finished at this time) and handwritten letters to Soviet premiers Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov and Mikhail Gorbachev. The site also features an exhaustive list of books chronicling Reagan's life and times.
In a similar vein, 2,800 pages of Reagan's archives are available for purchase at Paperless Archives. One of the best excerpts is a letter from Nixon to Reagan dated Aug. 13, 1987: "You gave the lie to the crap about your being over-the-hill, discouraged, etc... Don't ever comment on the Iran-Contra [sic] matter again... The committee labored for nine months and produced a stillborn midget. Let it rest in peace!"
The U.S. Army, Military District of Washington provides information on the military's involvement in Reagan's funeral arrangements and a biography of Maj. Gen. Galen B. Jackman, Nancy Reagan's military escort during the viewing and funeral process.
The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation includes a condolence book and a lengthy tributes list from heads of state such as U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair and former President Jimmy Carter, as well as an uncharacteristically perfunctory e-mail from National Review founder and Editor-at-Large William F. Buckley.
Reagan's life in Hollywood gets thorough treatment from the Internet Movie Database, which notes that Reagan, among his many other performances, was the chief victim of a Dean Martin Celebrity Roast in 1973. If you're curious about what films the Reagans watched on their weekend jaunts to Camp David, a full list is here.
The Medical Dossier
The George Washington University Medical Center in Washington is home to the Ronald Reagan Institute of Emergency Medicine. Reagan was treated at the hospital in 1981 after surviving an assassination attempt by John Hinckley Jr.
But Reagan's legacy leaves its greatest impact on medicine in the form of Alzheimer's research. Reagan informed the nation in 1994 that he was suffering from the incurable disease, leading to more attention and research funding to understand its causes and to seek a cure. The Alzheimer's Association has a special section on its Web site dedicated to the late president. Among them: a page asking users to donate money toward Alzheimer's research in Reagan's name, and information on grants handed out by the Ronald and Nancy Reagan Research Institute for studying Alzheimer's.
They Praised Him...
Many sites eulogize Reagan, elevating him with the sort of adulation that few other American notables have ever managed to claim. Americans for Tax Reform chief Grover Norquist -- himself a not-so-behind-the-scenes architect of the 1994 Republican Revolution in the U.S. Congress -- runs the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project. Its most ambitious goal at this time seems to be an effort to replace Alexander Hamilton's face on the $10 bill with Reagan's. Publius press also features "comprehensive" roundups on Reagan at Reagan2020.com.
Presidentreagan.info, run by a group called Kottmann Consulting, presents a glowing tribute to Reagan. The site contains defenses of his presidential policies, a biography, a blog and links to sites like the Franklin Mint that offer Reagan-themed gifts.
Ronaldreagan.com offers similar information. Its gift shop (also available in German and Spanish) features a $149 presidential bomber jacket, a photograph of Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in matching jeans, blue buttoned-down shirts and cowboy hats. It also offers a Reagan "quote of the day." (Today it's: "Excellence demands competition. Without a race there can be no champion, no records broken, no excellence--in education or in any other walk of life.")
Young America's Foundation hosts Reaganranch.org, which provides visitors with a map and virtual tour of the Reagans's Rancho del Cielo. The foundation bills itself as a site where young people can learn about Reagan and "his ideals of individual freedom, limited government, a strong national defense, free enterprise, and traditional values."
So what did they name after Reagan, anyway? There's a good list (and here's another), but a sampling includes: an aircraft carrier, a high school in San Antonio, Texas, elementary schools in Bakersfield, Calif., and Nampa, Idaho, the Ronald Reagan Middle School in hometown Dixon, Ill., the Reagan building in Washington, D.C., Reagan National Airport in Arlington, Va., the Ronald Reagan Federal Courthouse in Santa Ana, Calif., and even the Reagan suite at the Westin Century Plaza in Los Angeles.
And speaking of what you can buy, eBay and Amazon.com feature a number of auctions but relatively small numbers of buyers. One popular item on eBay is a sketch of a horse that Reagan, a prodigious doodler, once drew (his inscription reads: "Told you I could not draw"). Forty bids were placed for this item, with the winner paying $2001.89. Also see the "Bowl one for the Gipper" T-shirt and the action figure.
And They Skewered Him...
The Onion handled Reagan with its usual questionable taste -- a brief item on George W. Bush turning the Reagan funeral into a $5,000-a-plate fundraiser and a note that Nancy Reagan is "available at 82."
Liberal satire site Whitehouse.org lets visitors play the Ronald Reagan Memory Game, a variation on whack-a-mole featuring the Reagans, Oliver North and Michael Jackson among others. Also featured are several vintage posters showing how the Gipper used to hawk Chesterfields. The site, aiming for a balance of whimsy and clumsy humor, concludes that Reagan was "an affably senile zombie propped up by a Nixon-groomed cabal of brilliantly nefarious underlings." Damnation by faint praise?
Quickchange.com labeled Reagan's two-term presidency the "Bonzo years" and posted a selection of as many as Reagan's real and reported gaffes that they could find. Deoxy.org pointed out that one anagram of "Ronald Wilson Reagan" is "Insane Anglo Warlord." Other reported quotations are available here.
Reagan and the Press
Online news sites have devoted thousands of words and photos, audio and video, to Ronald Reagan. In Dixon, where Reagan attended high school, the local paper links to an outside group's tribute site and offers a host of locally focused articles.
MSN's Slate site includes several years' worth of articles, including Christopher Hitchens's "Not Even a Hedgehog: The Stupidity of Ronald Reagan" and "Ron and Mikhail's Excellent Adventure: How Reagan Won the Cold War" by Fred Kaplan.
CNN.com features a package full of galleries, stories, video and audio clips. The "in his own words" gallery is a nice touch, offering pictures of the former president next to some of his more memorable quotations.
The New York Times has a slick flash presentation that offers five short videos on different aspects of Reagan's life including an interesting segment about his early days in Hollywood. The Times's Steven Weisman narrates all of the segments.
Oliver North reminisces about the "greatest president of my lifetime" in a three-part series on Fox News. The site also offers Fox fans an opportunity to pay tribute Reagan in a segment called Mourning the Gipper.
ABC News offers a couple of interesting pieces on Alzheimer's -- one on Reagan's battle with the disease -- and another focusing on ways to stop the disease.
CBS News resuscitates a 1989 poll claiming that Reagan had a 68 percent approval rating when he left office.
MSNBC is chockablock with Reagan special features, including a useful interactive "where are they now" guide to some Gipper-era luminaries (about three-quarters of the way down this article), both famous and infamous, including Alexander Haig, Caspar Weinberger, Margaret Thatcher and John Hinckley Jr. Also see the BBC's story on the special relationship between Thatcher and Reagan, as well as interesting insights on Reagan's international stature.
--washingtonpost.com Staff Writer David McGuire contributed to this article.
June 12, 2004 at 11:19 PM in Web lifestyle | Permalink
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