Reagan "Look Magazine" 1966

[Cattledog]

[wryter2000]

1. Yup

I'm so glad this is coming out now. People forget he invented "the welfare queen."

[unc70]

5. Invented earlier, popularized by Jesse Helms

Helms taught Reagan how to campaign racist in 1976, but too late to win the Repub nomination. By 1980, the Helms organization had honed the Reagan performance.

[hlthe2b]

2. Yikes... That's unfortunate... (although I can sadly remember those growing up)

and New Orleans French Quarter businesses continue to do a brisk business in "Mammy" dolls and broom covers (yes, really), so I guess it is situational. I do find the statuary particularly offensive.

[customerserviceguy]

3. I remember a cartoon from that era

I think it might have been in the New Yorker, but I'm not sure.

It shows two white men standing in the yard owned by one of them, and there's a jockey figure on the lawn. The owner says to the visitor, "If I paint him white, I'm racist, and if I paint him black, I'm racist."

[JHB]

4. The solution seems clear: Purple with pink polka-dots

How many times have you heard "I'm not a racist! I don't care if someone's white, or black, or purple with pink polka-dots!"?

Now (well, back then) he can prove it.

[wryter2000]

7. My two favorites

"I don't see color," and, "I don't have a racist bone in my body."

[ChubbyStar]

6. Just Yuck!

The statue is so offensive, and RR just looks so fucking dumb in that photo. The stains on the jeans are perfect.

[a kennedy]

8. I know, our neighbor has two of them in his yard.

One of these days I'm going to say something about them too. Just have to get up the guts. He is so good to my husband, does a lot of yard things that my husband can't do anymore........so I feel like if I were to say something that nice gesture might stop.

[Blue_true]

9. Figurines like that were common to a lot of yards.

Amos & Andy was very popular. A lot of people did not equate those things with racism then, regardless of whether the racism was overt or latent. I heard the N-word a lot as a boy, said by people that did not treat Black people any different from anyone else.

[tenderfoot]

10. I wanted to get one and paint it a pale flesh tone with blonde hair and blue eyes

I never liked them and was bewildered to see them on lawns growing up in the Northeast.

[hunter]

11. Asshole. I've never seen him as anything else.

During his second term I had the misfortune of seeing him as a confused old guy who didn't know where the hell he was or what he was doing there. But remnants of his acting skills kicked in and he managed to read a few lines for the media machines.

He was never anything more than a fool who would do or say anything for a blow job.

I'm tired of meat puppet presidents.

[Boomerproud]

12. "On Bended Knee "

The perfect book about the media and RR Superstar.