Politics & Entertainment Week

We end Politics & Entertainment Week with a final look at the ultimate actor turned polititician, the 40th President of the United States, Ronald Reagan.

Known to some as the "Last great lion of 20th century," Ronald Reagan brought Hollywood to Washington.

Sure, Marilyn sang "Happy Birthday" to JFK, but as far as we know she wasn't lobbying any particular political agenda.

Reagan, on the other hand, brought us Reaganomics, praised by some as the most ambitious reform policy since the New Deal. "Ambitious?" I suppose. The national debt rose from $1 trillion to $3.5 trillion under Reaganomics and has continued to grow to near $5.5 trillion, but is also seen as the cause of the fall of the Soviet Union (they couldn't afford to spend as much on defense as we could and their economy was destroyed).

Musical maverick Lowell Shyette, in paying tribute to "The Gipper" with his song Ronald Reagan, Mr. President, quotes Reagan's 1987 speech at the Berlin Wall, "Mr. Gorbechev, tear down [that] wall."

Having survived a 1981 assasination attempt by John Hinckley, Ronald Reagan turned 91 this year, though he suffers from Alzheimer's disease.

[Ronald Reagan passed away on June 5, 2004]

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Politics & Entertainment Week

What could have been the true intentions behind Ronald Reagan's 1985 visit to the Kolmeshohe Cemetery at Bitburg?

It was French novelist, essayist, and playwright Albert Camus who said, "The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding."

It was newsman Ted Koppel who said, "History is a tool used by politicians to justify their intentions."

That said, what could have been the true intentions behind Ronald Reagan's 1985 visit to the Kolmeshohe Cemetery at Bitburg?

The plan was to observe the 40th anniversary of V-E Day -- May 8, 1945 -- and the collapse of Hitler's Third Reich.

It was thought that American soldiers were buried alongside approximately 2,000 German servicemen. As it turned out, the remains of all American servicemen had long since been removed from Germany, and there were 49 members of the notorious Waffen SS interred at Kolmeshohe. The Waffen SS has been held responsible for the massacre of 71 American POWs during the Battle of the Bulge.

Though Reagan's visit lasted but a mere eight minutes, it was not overlooked.

Reagan claimed that the German soldiers were "victims of Nazism also ... drafted into service to carry out the hateful wishes of the Nazis." Rabbi Alexander M. Schindler responded that this equation of Nazi soldiers to Holocaust victims was "a callous offense for the Jewish people." Despite widespread disapproval of the planned visit, Reagan proceeded as planned.

"As I watched it on TV, somehow it really bothered me," recalls Joey Ramone in My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down (Bonzo Goes To Bitburg), and continues with, "You watch the world complain but you do it anyway."

Reagan's second term has been dubbed by some as "The Bonzo Years," drawing from the title of one of his Hollywood films, "Bedtime For Bonzo," where he plays a college professor who adopts a chimpanzee (Bonzo) and attempts to raise it as a child. Classy stuff.

Is it me or does "W" bear a striking resemblance to Bonzo?

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Politics & Entertainment Week

Bruce Springsteen released his 6th album "Born in the USA," in 1984 in what, at face value, appeared to be the most patriotic rock 'n' roll album of all time.

Standing before an American flag in his faded blue jeans, white t-shirt with a red baseball cap tucked in the back pocket, "The Boss" quipped Born in the USA. Remember, this was 1984, fabled by George Orwell as the great police state of the future, and here was a down-home, blue-collar (and a bit pumped up on steroids, comparatively speaking to his former self) kind of guy leading flag-waving concert audiences in a hysteria about American pride.

Or was it?

It was enough to inspire Ronald Reagan into praising the song in his 1984 bid for re-election. Despite a presidential aide not being able to identify Reagan's favorite Springsteen song, another aide claimed that Reagan listened to Springsteen's records all the time.

Fact is, Born in the USA tells the story of a disillusioned Vietnam veteran and the hardships faced after returning from the war.

Bruce did what he could to set the record straight by meeting with labor, environmental, and civil rights activists and mentioning them from the stage, but the crowds, with their American flags waving, kept coming.

This is all well and good, but I'm left to wonder why the last line of the song goes, "I'm a cool rocking daddy in the U.S.A."

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Politics & Entertainment Week

The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) was established in 1937 with the primary objective of investigating un-American and subversive activities. Translation: Find the Commies.

In September, 1947, HUAC began an investigation into the Hollywood Motion Picture Industry, interviewing 41 cooperative persons who were labeled as "friendly witnesses," including writer Ayn Rand (noted Anti-Commie), studio heads Jack Warner and Louis B. Mayer, and actors Gary Cooper, Robert Montgomery, Ronald Reagan and Robert Taylor.

During their interviews, several people were named as suspected Communists. Eleven were eventually called to testify. Of those eleven, the playwright Bertolt Brecht was the only one to answer any questions on the stand. He testified that he was not a Communist, then immediately returned to [Communist] East Berlin.

The remaining "unfriendly witnesses," who became more widely known as the "Hollywood Ten," included writers Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Ring Lardner Jr., John Howard Lawson, Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Adrian Scott, and Dalton Trumbo, along with director Edward Dmytryk. In exercising their Fifth Amendment rights, all refused to testify and were held in contempt of court.

Following the hearings, the "Hollywood Ten" were blacklisted by the Hollywood film community.

House Un-American Blues Activity Dream, as one might expect, details these events with the derisive undertone characteristic of Richard Farina.

Not unlike Bob Dylan, Richard's music often carried a political message. However, unlike Bob Dylan, who survived a near-fatal motorcycle accident in July, 1966, Richard Farina was killed in a motorcycle accident in April, 1966.

His wife and musical companion, Mimi Baez Farina (younger sister of Joan Baez) died in July, 2001.

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Politics & Entertainment Week

The protest song, the patriotic song, the Bono/Paul O'Neill World Tour 2002. Symbols of freedom and pop-culture's influence of and by politics.

In 1976 Jimmy Carter, borrowing a line from Bob Dylan's 1972 recording, It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding), delivered his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention. "He who's not busy being born is busy dying," quoth the Georgian peanut farmer as evidence that he was in touch with the current culture.

While Carter quoting Dylan may be recorded as the first incident where a politician used popular music to increase his stature, it was not the first, nor the last, blurring of the line between the entertainment and political spheres.

As early as 1947, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall led protests against the "Hollywood Ten" hearings by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Actor Ronald Reagan was cast as Mr. President in 1980, and returned for the sequel in 1984. Who can forget billionaire Ross Perot singing Patsy Cline's "Crazy" in his bid to oust the elder Bush, only to be upstaged by the saxophone-toting Bill Clinton.

Today, Washington is rife with entertainers making passionate bids for causes. John Travolta, Bob Barker and even [Tickle Me] Elmo (yes, the muppet) have given congressional testimony on behalf of freedom of religious persecution (for Travolta himself as a Scientologist? I ponder), pet neutering and music education, respectively.

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