Hillary's Brain Fart

I'm sure you already know that Hillary Clinton praised Ronald and Nancy Reagan for their courageous advocacy on behalf of people with AIDS . (I give you Dan Savage's horrified response.)

As with the recent death of thuggish legal sophists and enemy of humanity Nino Scalia, there seems an inexplicable reflex on the part of people who ought to know better to come up with praise for the departed which is a) completely the opposite of the truth and b) counterproductive to the interests and purposes of the speaker.

Death does not erase history. While it is arguably impolite to offend people who are acutely grieving, I do not think that Nancy Reagan's family and friends particularly needed to hear Hillary Clinton say something nice about NR that wasn't true. I actually don't have anything nice to say about Nancy Reagan, and I think it's important that political discourse be ruled by fact, so I won't make anything up. I don't think she was particularly important, except as a bad example. Her signature cause as First Lady was going around saying "Just say no to drugs," which was singularly unhelpful because it did not cause people to say no to drugs and it substituted for actually doing anything about drug abuse (which includes alcohol and tobacco and therefore the slogan was doubly misleading.)

Other than that she advised her husband on the basis of astrology. Those were her contributions. Enough with the crocodile tears.