Fancy Nancy
Taki
Washington Well, it's goodbye Willie Nelson, Hello Frank Sinatra. And about time, too. Jimmy Carter, the small man of stature, vision, execution, and many other things, is finally on his way, Peter Jay will miss him, our own Henry Fairlie will miss him, that motley group of Georgians whom he brought with him to run the country will miss him too. But I doubt if many members of the free world, those who would like it to remain so, will shed tears over his departure, although our suicidal tendencies are such that I am not so sure.
The flim-flam man from the South is gone, but not before giving one last flim-flam performance before the TV cameras which he has grown to love. Ironically, the Iranians have released the hostages because they know that Reagan would have relegated the hostage .problem to its rightful place, treating them as prisoners of war and not regarding their release as the paramount objective of American foreign policy.
Now to more pleasant things — like Nancy Reagan, and what some not so pleasant people have been saying about her. Washington DC is a town that thrives on rumours, backbiting, and vicious gossip about people in power. The intrigues that go on, and the Byzantine way those rumours are spread, make the court of Louis XIV seem unsophisticated by comparison. The premier rumour-reapers, needless to say, are the 'ladies' and 'gentlemen' of the priss. In a nation obsessed with trivia nothing is considered too trivial to go unreported. There is also a plethora of punditry, with every journalist giving instant analysis to anything a public person says or does. According to the pundits Nancy is the imponderable in the incoming Reagan equation. She is known to be a dominant — and a sometimes domineering — woman. But the things that the press have been writing about her make one suspect that perhaps they have decided to invent a counterpart to Richard Nixon now that they don't have him to kick around any longer. The story that she slept with a gun next to her pillow, was conveniently leaked a day or so after the death of John Lennon. Then she was quoted as failing to understand why the Carters would simply not move out of the White House before their term was up, so that Nancy and her decorator could get busy making it a better place to live in. And it was said that she wanted half the White 'louse torn down so she could redo it Hollywood style. And so on; it is bound to get worse.
I know two people who are close friends of Nancy Reagan and whose opinions I respect. They both tell me — they are not Reagan propagandists — that the rumours about her are completely without foundation. And when I see some of the Reagan critics like I.F. Stone I am convinced that is so. I.F. Stone is the left-wing professor who charges the Reagans with insensitivity to the poor for ordering a white-tie inaugural ball. What is wrong with a little dressing up after the Carter sweaters and blue jeans? If Stone cares about the poor he should spend more time with them and less with the trendies that he usually hangs around with.
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