For President's Day

Once called "Washington's Birthday," today's holiday is now known as "Presidents' Day"--"if you want to buy a mattress," as Chris Mathews said earlier tonight during Hardball. In honor of this day, I felt it would be appropriate to post Gil Scott-Heron's "B-Movie." Although written during and about the Reagan years, it's as prophetic and perceptive now as it was in 1981, maybe even more so now, amidst the far right's ongoing attempts to canonize Reagan:



"The idea concerns the fact that this country wants nostalgia. They want to go back as far as they can even if it's only as far as last week. Not to face now or tomorrow, but to face backwards. And yesterday was the day of our cinema heroes riding to the rescue at the last possible moment. The day of the man in the white hat or the man on the white horse, or the man who always came to save America at the last moment--someone always came to save America at the last moment, especially in B movies. And when America found itself having a hard time facing the future, they looked for people like John Wayne. But since John Wayne was no longer available, they settled for Ronald Reagan. And it has placed us in a situation that we can only look at like a B movie.

... 

This ain't really your life,
Ain't really your life,
Ain't really nothing but a movie."