rational geekery

Timothy Noah, over on Slate, wants to know why, in an era where the media is infatuated with anniversaries, there was no coverage of the 20th Anniversary of the Iran - Contra scandal in the weekends papers?

Noah gives a couple of reasons, but if you ask me, the one reason is that America wants to see its presidents as chosen, almost hallowed people. Reagan was, wilfully or not, heavily involved in the complicated Iran-Contra affair.

For the uninitiated, a stupendously simplified description of the Iran-Contra scandal goes like this: arms were illegally sold to America’s chief enemy in the Middle East, Iran, and the profits were illegally channelled to contra groups (radical anti-Marxists) in Nicaragua (in line with the Monroe doctrine of US intervention on continental America).

The American rightwing, led by the romantics at the Weekly Standard and the National Review, have completely rewritten the history of Reagan’s presidency. Reagan is held up as a bastion of all that conservatism stands for, and he is almost exclusively credited with 'defeating' the Soviet Union - no mention of Gorbachev or the Duma's corrupt asset raiders in that history.

So, just two decades on from the scandal that almost saw a President impeached, the American right have scrubbed clean the nation's collective memory (chief protagonist, Oliver North, is painted as an all-American hero on Fox News). I wonder, if given a similar time frame, they can reinvent the career of this President?