What else is this battered old Spiro Agnew watch to conclude after the news that Murrieta Valley Unified School District is poised to open California's very first Ronald Reagan High School in 2009. Well, “poised to open” is actually conflating things a bit (just like a certain deceased president's teary-eyed suck-ups do when discussing the certain deceased president's “legacy”). What's up is the district solicited names for the new campus from the community, and with a strong push from Freedom Fighter schools trustee Ken Dickson, Ronald Reagan High is trouncing all other names like so many Carters and Mondales.
“He is a hero to this community,” blubbered Dickson, who lives in a community known for rednecks, country clubs, out-of-control sprawl . . . hey, Ronald Reagan really IS a hero in that community!
We kid, we kid. But to hear Grover Norquist, chairman of the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project and so many other nonprofits pushing the hard-right agenda that his children's, children's children are assured of being able to live comfortably as their peers are buried in the piles and piles of debt recent Republican administrations have saddled them with, naming a high school after the Gipper is, well, a matter of looming national importance–right up there with who'll be cast off next from American Idol even!
“It is imperative that school officials recognize the important role that Ronald Reagan played in the lives of all Americans, especially in his time as governor of California,” Norquist said in between tokes on his Chesterfield. “The many nominations for Reagan display the sentiments of Murrieta citizens, and their voice should be . . . blah-blah-buick!”
He goes on to note there are Dutch-named high schools in Texas, Florida and North Carolina, but none in his adopted state. And that's got this time waster mad, mad as heck, by gummers! Look, Orange County likes to go around and flaunt to all the other counties that this here is Reagan Country, but what do we have named after Ronald Reagan, besides that dinosaur turd-sized glob of concrete rising from the center of Santa Ana? Other than The Reagan Years arcade on Commonwealth in Fullerton? Other than Ronnie the Blow-Up Doll in a certain ex-Orange County Republican Party chairman's crowded closet? Nothing, nada, zippo!
“Oh, we're an Orange County school district ready to open a new high school, and we're going to name it after a tree stump . . .”
You people are disgusting.
Mr. Orange County, put up these walls!
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.