News - Reagan should be on a $3 bill

I offered my small prayer for Ronald Reagan when he was shot by this Hinckley. I said another prayer for him when I read this graceful note that he issued about his Alzheimer’s.

Having said this, I now strongly endorse a suitable memorial for him.

Ronald Reagan belongs on a $3 bill.

You are supposed to honor and respect the dead. But you also must respect the truth, and live for the living — and this funeral has gone on too long. I am in a car and I hear the radio announcer, who is supposed to be telling you news, whisper:

“The color guard quietly leaves the casket viewing area and marches with the colors toward the two hearses; they are taking no chances and have a backup ... ” I was waiting for him, or somebody next to him, to let out a sob.

For the funeral of Ronald Reagan, they took the body from Beverly Hills to Simi Valley, the white Los Angeles suburb, where it stayed for a day-and-a-half or so, then they drove it in one of these two hearses to the airport and flew it to Washington. Then they had a march and afterward put the casket into the Capitol for crowds to pass by and now there was to be another march and a religious service. Then a drive to the airport, where the casket will be shuttled back to the airport south of Los Angeles and in a hearse to the final ceremony at his library. That is quite a funeral. They buried George Washington in half the time.

You keep thinking of Harry Truman, whose code was, “Do not impose.” He left an order that there were to be no eulogies at his funeral.

This man Reagan was 93 years old and out of it with Alzheimer’s for many years and I don’t see how anybody can summon grief. They proclaimed it a deep religious ceremony. Which it is not. His whole weeklong funeral is cheap, utterly distasteful American publicity.

The great American news industry, the Pekinese of the Press with so much room and time and nothing to say, compared Reagan to Lincoln and Hamilton, they really did. This is like claiming that the maintenance man wrote the Bill of Rights. And almost all the reporters agreed that Reagan was the man who brought down Russia in the Cold War. Just saying this is absolutely sinful. The Cold War was won by a long memo written by George Kennan, who worked in the State Department and sent the memo by telegram about the need for a “Policy of Containment” on Russia. Kennan said the contradictions in their system would ruin them. Keep them where they are and they will tear themselves apart. We followed Kennan’s policy for over 40 years. The Soviets made it worse on themselves by building a wall in East Berlin. When they had to tear it down and give up their system, Kennan was in Princeton and he sat down to dinner.

I thought that children were taught this. Instead, reporters tell us that Ronald Reagan won the Cold War. Beautiful.

Ronald Reagan was an actor. He was as real as the line he used to keep his fame alive. “Win one for the Gipper.”

The line was complete Hollywood, down to agents who fought over it.

In 1938, a radio show, “Cavalcade of America,” had a segment about coach Knute Rockne of Notre Dame and his star back, George Gipp, who was dying of pneumonia and supposedly said to Rockne, “Someday, when the team’s up against it, the breaks are beating the boys, ask them to go in there with all they’ve got! Win one for the Gipper.”

Warner Bros. bought the radio segment and assigned screenwriter Robert Buckner to put the “Win one” line into his otherwise original screenplay of Knute Rockne All American.

Pat O’Brien was Rockne and Reagan was George Gipp. Reagan delivered “Win one for the Gipper” extremely well; he was a lot better actor than he was supposed to be. When the writers of the radio show saw the movie, they realized that this guy was getting their best line. “Win one ... ”

“Where is ours?” they asked. Warner Bros. made a quick settlement and the film was released with Reagan’s famous speech.

But for a television release, the line was taken out of the film because Warner didn’t want to pay any more. It is back in the video, my friend Harry Haun notes in his book, The Cinematic Century.

In government, he was as real as his trademark line. He was a callous man with a smile who cut taxes in 1981 and left cities without funds for such things as help for dependent children. He walked off, leaving us an enormous deficit but with a smile on his face that even the Gipper’s fakery couldn’t help us with.

Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Jimmy Breslin writes for Newsday, a Long Island, N.Y., daily.