David's Daily Diversions

Honour to Whom Honour is Due

I was able to watch the National Funeral for President Reagan after all. I managed to nick the aerial from one classroom and use the telly in another and stay until the caretaker finally kicked me out of the building. I saw everything up to the middle of the recessional out of the building.

I cried through most of it. I stopped when Rev. Sen. Ambassador-designate Danforth gave his homily. Now is it me, or which one actually did the preaching? Was is Danforth or W.?

Danforth was careful not to offend the Jew and the Muslim and any Anglicans present by referring to the Creator, Sustainer, and/or Comforter. Bush's references to the "the Lord" and "his saviour" carried more Christian conviction and he probably used more reference or allusion to Scripture. Danforth claimed his was the "religious" message, but I'm not so sure.

Did Bill Clinton take sleeping tablets before arriving, so all of the noise of the choirs and bands and orchestras and organ wouldn't disturb him? Perhaps it is how he managed to sit next to the most sour-faced woman on the planet, the capetbagging junior Senator from New York. He may have been more popular than his Democratic predecessor, but he and his puppetmaster could learn something about grace and dignity from the man and woman from Plains. The Clintons could never be pinned with the adjective "genteel". An event such as this just shows the stark contrast between the Clintons and the rest of those who have lived (or presently occupy) 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. They really are a cut below. I am so glad Reagan outlived the Clinton presidency, or else we might have had to listen to an insincere, amorphous eulogy.

I'm very glad I got to see the national send off for Ronald Reagan. I wish my children were older so that they could have watched an appreciated it. I hope that those of you with older children made this event required viewing. They need to take this into their lives and tell their children's children that they saw the way the nation honoured the passing of the 40th President of the United States.