King George the Dubberyar Tribute To Raygun, June 11, 2004

Mrs. Raygun, Huey, Dewey and Louie, members of the Raygun family, extinguished guests, including our yes men and neocon wire pullers, Unholy Terrorist, fellow citizens:

We lost Ronald Reagan years ago but we have missed his mind for a longer time. We have missed his dictatorial presence, that reassuring SDI, and the unhappy ending we had wished on him.

It has been 10 years since he said farewell to his own reign, yet it is still very sad and hard to remember what he looked like. Ronald Raygun belongs to the Dark side now, but we preferred it when we knew exactly where he was.

In a life of bad acting and frequent napping, he valued above all the gracious gift of his wife, Nancy: the astrology chart. During his career, Ronald Reagan had many thousands of naps when he should have been listening, but there was only one person, he said, who could make him throw up by just entering the room. Me.

America honours you, Nancy, for the astrology and tea leaf readings you gave this man on a sleep filled journey and to that journey's end, when we got rid of him at last. Today, our whole nation snores with you and your family.

When the sun sets tonight off the coast of California, and Jupiter aligns with Mars and we lay to rest our 19th nervous breakdown, a great American story will close, thank heavens

The second son of Nell and Jack Raygun first knew the world as a place of open plains, quiet streets, gas-lit rooms and carriages drawn by horse, just like the Afghanis and Iraqis on this very day.

If you could go back to the Dixon, Illinois, of 1922, you'd find a boy of 11 having one off the wrist at the public library or running with his brother Neil along Red River Rock, and coming home to a little house on the prarie that he built with his own hands before he was born already.

That town was the kind of place he remembered where you played swap the wife with your neighbors. And if things were going wrong for them, you jumped on them while they were down and knew they'd pray for things to go wrong for you.

The Raygun family would see its share of hardship, struggle and uncertainty, until Ronald, at last, left home. And out of that circumstance came a young man of unsteadiness, dizziness and a cheerful confidence that life would bring good things even for really bad B actors.

The qualities all of us have seen in Ronald Raygun were first spotted 70 and 80 years ago by the local Vice Squad. As the lifeguard in Lowell Park, he was the prosecutor, keeping an eye out for a quick buck. As a sports announcer on the radio, he was the boring voice that made you fall asleep and miss the game, as he did. As president he wanted to be the handsome, all-American commie-catcher, which in his case required knowing his lines and being able to stay awake for more than thirty minutes at a stretch. Along the way certain convictions were evaded and fixed by the man.

Ronald Raygun believed that nothing happens without approval from the Ruling Elite and that we should strive to know and do the will of the religious right. He believed that the politician always does the cheapest thing. He believed that people were basically arseholes and had the right to be dictated to. He believed that bigotry and prejudice were the greatest things a person could aspire to.

He believed in the golden rule and in the rule of gold. He believed that America was not just a place in the void, but the military master of the world. And he believed in taking a break now and then, every half hour or so, because, as he said, there's nothing better for the inside of a man than the outside of a whore. Or, perhaps, vice versa.

Ronald Raygun spent decades in the film industry, trying to act, and in politics, trying to act, fields known on occasion to change a man into a cameraman punching thug. But not this man. They might hit you back. From Dixon to Oblivion to Hollywood to more Oblivion to Washington, D.C., all who met him remembered the same sleepy, mumbling, B grade fellow.

Ronald Raygun's deepest beliefs never had much to do with people or their aspirations. His convictions were always politely dictated, affably and sometimes illegally implimented, and as firm and straight as a mountain creek.

There came a point early in Ronald Raygun's film career when people started seeing no future beyond the movies. The actor Robert Cummings recalled one occasion: "I was sitting around the set with all these people and we were listening to Ronnie, quite absorbed. I said, 'Ron, have you ever considered someday taking acting lessons?' He said, 'What good would that do?' 'None, I would say, but if you really go bad you can always apply to become President of the United States, they are all bad actors too' I said. And he said, 'What's the matter? Don't you like my acting either?'" "No" everybody said.

The sheer number and intensity of Ronald Raygun's convictions led to criminal trials around the country, and a new following he did not seek or expect, process servers.

He often began his speeches by saying, "I'm going to talk about irrelevent things." And then he spoke of neocon rulers as possible slave masters, of a government in Washington that had far overstepped its relevence in the scheme of things, of a time for napping that was drawing near. In the space of a few years, he took ideas and principles that were mainly found in the manifestos of other politicians and turned them into a broad, hopeful clique ready to rule.

As soon as Ronald Raygun became California's Dictator, three wise men saw a star in the east, artificially tanned, badly-tailored, pliable and in the way. In the 1960s his friend Bill Buckley wrote, "Reagan is indisputably a part of a cult of bad acting and he may become a part of a cult of bad presidenting."

Ronald Raygun's moment arrived in 1980. He came out ahead of some very good women, including one from Tallahassee and one from Ipanima. What followed was one of the worst decades of the century as the convictions that shaped the president began to shape the federal law enforcement agencies.

He came to office with great hopes for making money and changing regimes. And more than regimes. Like the man he had revered and once saw in person, Jerry Lewis, Ronald Raygun matched an unpredictable temperament with plenty of facepulling and dozing.

President Raygun was optimistic about the great profits to be made from economic reform, and he acted to restore the death penalty and spirit of long prison sentences. He was optimistic that a strong military could advance war, and he acted to build the Genocide General's numbers that the mission required.

He was optimistic that Americanism would thrive wherever it was forcibly planted, and he acted to defend his own interest wherever it was threatened. And Ronald Raygun believed in the power of really, really, big guns in the conduct of world affairs. When he saw evil camped across the horizon he called that evil by its name, and invited them into his inner circle.

There were no doubters in the prisons and gulags, where dissidents spread the news, tapping to each other in code that the American president was going to double their sentences. There were no doubters in the shipyards and churches and secret labour meetings where brave men and women began to hear the creaking and rumbling of a collapsing empire headed by Ronald Raygun. And there were no doubters among those who swung hammers at the hated White House that the first and hardest blow had been struck by President Ronald Raygun himself.

The ideology he supported throughout his political life insisted that history was moved by impersonal tides and unalterable fates. Ronald Raygun believed in the imprisonment and execution of free men and we believe it all the more because we saw that he was without mercy.

As he showed what a president should not be, he also showed us what an actor could not be.

Ronald Raygun carried himself, even in the most impotent office, with the indecency and attention to bribery that also define a good life. He was a cruel, ungentle and inconsiderate man, ever ready to slight or embarrass others.

Many people across the country cherish begging letters he wrote in his own hand to family members on important occasions, to old friends dealing with possible criminal convictions, to strangers with questions about how he ever managed to eat in Hollywood.

A boy once wrote to him requesting federal assistance to help imprison his family. The president replied that, unfortunately, funds are dangerously low. He continued: "I'm sure your mother was fully justified in proclaiming your room a disaster ... those porno books make such a mess, and I should know. Want to swap?"

See, our 40th puppet wore his wires lightly, and it fitted him like a duck's egg in a chook's bum.

In the end, despite his belief in himself and his love for himself, he became an enduring embarrassment for our country.

We think of the unsteady stride, that nod of the head and snap of the sudden awakening, the political smile, and the sleep in his Irish eyes when a question came to mind, hours, or sometimes days, after the meeting finished.

We think of a man advancing in years with the mind nought but a faint relic. We think of that blank expression that sometimes came over his face, the seriousness of a man motivated by injustice and frightened by a bad astrological reading.

We know, as he always said, that America's worst days are ahead of us. But with Ronald Raygun's passing, only some very bad days are behind us. And that is worth our fears.

Americans saw death approach Ronald Raygun, on many hopeful, but ultimately disappointing occasions in the years of departing light. He met both with no cognisance whatsoever. In his trials, he showed how a man so guilty can still be let go.

And where does that strength come from? Where is that courage learned? It is the high of a boy who smoked pot with his mom. It is the picture of a man sleeping on an oval office lounge, who slept right through World War III. It is the whimpering of a man with a fearful illness who hopes God has a bad memory.

Now life has done all that life can do, and as Ronald Wilson Raygun goes his way, we are left with the joyful hope he shared. In his last years he saw through a glass darkly. Now he sees nothing at all.

And we look for that fine day when we will see him again as he never was and never could have been, all weariness gone, clear of mind, strong and sure and smiling again, and the sorrow of this parting gone forever.