Reagan in Vineland

[jbor]

on 25/6/02 12:14 PM, Doug Millison at millison at online-journalist.com wrote:

> jbor:
>> The scene's not a simplistic anti-Reagan
>> screed at all.
> 
> Not simplistic, no, yet still a serious indictment of Reagan.  Here in
> Vineland we have a little family here that's been thoroughly corrupted and
> fucked over by the Reagan Administration, these good people

    He'd brought home a quickly compiled list, all independent contractors
    like themselves. Frenesi got out a couple of frozen, or with the state
    the fridge was in actually semithawed, peperoni pizzas, put the oven on
    to preheat, and made a fast salad while Flash opened the beers and read
    off the names. There were Long Bihn Jail alumni, old grand-jury
    semipros, collectors of loans and ladies on strings who'd been persuaded
    to help entrap soon-to-be ex-customers, snitches with photographic
    memories, virgins to the act of murder, check bouncers, coke snorters
    and ass grabbers, each with more than ample reason to seek the shadow of
    the federal wing, and some, with luck, able to reach its embrace and
    shelter. (87.1)

These are "good people"? They haven't been "corrupted and fucked over by the
Reagan Administration" at all.

    The trip to the Long Bihn Jail or LBJ as it was called by most soldiers,
    was short but uncomfortable, riding in the back of a jeep with my hands
    cuffed behind my back. When we arrived, the desk sergeant ordered us
    locked in the holding tank, where we joined several other men who had
    been picked up during the evening.

http://vietnam67.home.att.net/jmbook12.html

Frenesi turned over sometime at the end of the 60s too, didn't she? And, as
Justin points out, "Reaganomics" is actually helping put a stop to all this
corruption (88.18-25).

Seems to me as if the political representation here might just be cutting
across them old party lines again, as you say.

best


> find themselves
> in the "trailer trash" (jbor's endearing phrase) category as a result of
> the concerted attacks of the Reagan & Co., that paragon of homespun
> American values.   (High-class crooks like Ralph Wayvone actually get to
> rub shoulders with the likes of Ronnie and Nancy in their security-guarded
> California paradise).  Only in actively resisting the best efforts of the
> Reagan Administration does the family find some measure of happiness, and
> then only after a rather miraculous deus ex machina intervention that
> protects Prairie from her worst instincts which have been drilled into her
> by the TV culture that created Reagan.