Reagan tells Soviet jokes

May 28, 2016 9:12 AM

Everything makes him think of a story.
posted by Foci for Analysis (37 comments total)

Some of which didn't almost cause WW3.

It's weird how he's this cuddly jovial guy these days when growing up in the UK in the 80s he was this asshole that was almost certainly going to get our country incinerated because he wants to start a war on a whim.

(I've been thinking about this lately because I've been watching Deutschland 83, which opens on the Evil Empire speech, and from that perspective he's even more terrifying.)

Now there's a fair chance we're going to have President Trump. That's going to be a joy.
posted by Artw at 9:23 AM on May 28, 2016 [3 favorites]

It's becoming more and more acceptable to point out that he was a bigoted psychopath, and that can only be a good thing.
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:36 AM on May 28, 2016 [18 favorites]

The first joke is a corker. Having visited the USSR just before Gorby, I found it true that the lack of even remotely decent consumer goods really was a massive factor in how it all eventually collapsed.
posted by Coda Tronca at 9:46 AM on May 28, 2016 [8 favorites]

He confused old movies with foreign policy, but he was always quick with a joke!
posted by adept256 at 9:51 AM on May 28, 2016 [22 favorites]

I have a deep and abiding hatred of all things Reagan. This has not changed that.
posted by Splunge at 9:52 AM on May 28, 2016 [5 favorites]

The Clothes Have No Emperor
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:56 AM on May 28, 2016 [4 favorites]

Yeah, remember when he pretended he was announcing a preemptive nuclear strike on the Soviet Union while the tape was running before a radio interview?

That was fucking hilarious.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 10:09 AM on May 28, 2016 [11 favorites]

Ah, he made such a great Clown-in-Chief. I particularly loved his bumbling senility schtick or when he pretended to be "president."
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 10:29 AM on May 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

Now there's a fair chance we're going to have President Trump.

Who will make Ronnie Raygun look like a statesman of the highest order.
posted by blucevalo at 10:46 AM on May 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

"I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers. Thank you. Now watch this drive." (Swings).

These guys are the devil, so they've got the tunes and the gags.
posted by Coda Tronca at 10:48 AM on May 28, 2016 [3 favorites]

> Who will make Ronnie Raygun look like a statesman of the highest order.

When LBJ was president, I thought it couldn't get worse. When Nixon was president, I realized I'd been wrong, but thought it couldn't get worse. Then Reagan was elected (I, an anarchist, cast my last vote in a desperate attempt to stave it off); I was appalled but thought this had to be the worst. Then George W. Bush was elected became president, and now I no longer think.
posted by languagehat at 11:06 AM on May 28, 2016 [56 favorites]

These are pretty good. Gosh what an amazingly charming brilliant speaker who was dead wrong about everything.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 11:08 AM on May 28, 2016 [5 favorites]

It's weird how he's this cuddly jovial guy

the devil does his business with a smile and a wink...
posted by ennui.bz at 12:10 PM on May 28, 2016 [4 favorites]

I thought I'd never be more embarrassed at having our president who was a former shill for General Electric, and a perfect analog of Alfred E. (what, me worry?) Neuman. I didn't mind that he was a second rate-actor, but Nancy scared me. I was sort of disgusted with his "Gobachev, tear down this wall..." posing, because I had served in a place where people actively had to deal with the Cold War, first hand. They ended it, not Reagan. Anyhow, nothing could have been as disgusting as the clown car Reagan rode in on.

Well, that's what I thought until a few years later I saw our leaders--gubmental movers and shakers on the B-43 clown bus--singing "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran...." That's the worst case scenario our government could ever, ever.....wait, ah shit. Donald.

I can't...
posted by mule98J at 1:27 PM on May 28, 2016 [6 favorites]

The first one is pretty funny.

I still despise Reagan and feel an unhappy vindication for crying in the dorm common room while the re-election data were coming in.
posted by Superplin at 3:22 PM on May 28, 2016 [2 favorites]

It's weird how he's this cuddly jovial guy these days when growing up in the UK in the 80s he was this asshole that was almost certainly going to get our country incinerated because he wants to start a war on a whim.

Oh, not everyone thought that.

When we were kids, my little sister thought Ronald Reagan was a monster. Not in a metaphorical sense; she thought he was a real actual hiding under the bed eating little girls honest to goodness MONSTER.

Now that she is an adult, she of course realizes how silly that is. Clearly he was much worse.
posted by louche mustachio at 3:30 PM on May 28, 2016 [9 favorites]

"Have we really achieved full Communism?"

"Oh hell no. Things are going to get a lot worse."

LOL!

I was a wee one when Reagan was president. But when I see videos of him, I totally get why he was so immensely popular. Bill Clinton had a ton of charisma, but Presidents Reagan and Obama are on a whole other level of mastery with that skill.

I'm sure a young Obama spent a lot of time studying Reagan's public speaking. Both men project a very similar cool and jovial gravitas.
posted by riruro at 3:42 PM on May 28, 2016 [3 favorites]

Yeah, remember when he pretended he was announcing a preemptive nuclear strike on the Soviet Union while the tape was running before a radio interview?

"My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes." -- August 11, 1984
posted by radwolf76 at 4:19 PM on May 28, 2016 [2 favorites]

When LBJ was president, I thought it couldn't get worse. When Nixon was president, I realized I'd been wrong, but thought it couldn't get worse. Then Reagan was elected (I, an anarchist, cast my last vote in a desperate attempt to stave it off); I was appalled but thought this had to be the worst. Then George W. Bush was elected became president, and now I no longer think.

The worst is always yet to come. But so is the best. The only hope is to die on your favorite side of the pendulum with a bad memory for disappointment and pain.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 4:34 PM on May 28, 2016 [3 favorites]

My dad was a lifelong Republican, ran for State office as a Republican, held fundraisers for Republicans, even had Gerald Ford over to our house. He was active in Scouting, and was awarded the Silver Buffalo, the highest award in Scouting. As a result, he went to the White House & met Reagan.
He came back a Democrat. I have never seen someone make such an abrupt political about-face. I have always admired him for that.
posted by Floydd at 4:59 PM on May 28, 2016 [31 favorites]

5 Minutes (Jerry Harrison, Bootsy Collins).
posted by languagehat at 5:15 PM on May 28, 2016 [2 favorites]

NYT 1987 story on this very subject.
posted by Ideefixe at 5:22 PM on May 28, 2016

riruro: ""Have we really achieved full Communism?"

"Oh hell no. Things are going to get a lot worse."

LOL!

I was a wee one when Reagan was president. But when I see videos of him, I totally get why he was so immensely popular. Bill Clinton had a ton of charisma, but Presidents Reagan and Obama are on a whole other level of mastery with that skill.

I'm sure a young Obama spent a lot of time studying Reagan's public speaking. Both men project a very similar cool and jovial gravitas."

Please. There is no comparison. This isn't so much apples and oranges as it is osmium and feather dusters. Reagan was a hollow shell, there was no there there. Obama is a true scholar and leader.
posted by Splunge at 5:52 PM on May 28, 2016 [2 favorites]

Too damn bad they buried him so deep, but I think I understand why.
posted by Twang at 5:59 PM on May 28, 2016

Floydd, did your father mention any specifics about his trip? Things said or seen that changed his views on being a republican?
posted by blueberry at 6:08 PM on May 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

seconding blueberry, re: Floyd's dad. That's a great set up. What's the rest of the story?
posted by es_de_bah at 7:41 PM on May 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

Floydd, did your father mention any specifics about his trip? Things said or seen that changed his views on being a republican?

We weren't close at that time, mostly because of our diametrically opposed political views. But he told my brother that he could not continue to support an "empty suit." My sense was he'd had a good look behind the curtain and all the subsequent news, Iran Contra, Trickle Down Economics, was revealed to him as the fraud it ultimately proved to be. I just revelled in the fact that Holiday dinner conversations became much more pleasant.
posted by Floydd at 8:14 PM on May 28, 2016 [4 favorites]

I've got a great Reagan joke!

My mother is from Nicaragua but came to the US in the 60s and became a citizen. She voted for Reagan. Contras armed by Reagan later killed one her brothers in Nicaragua.

Wait, that isn't funny at all...
posted by Groundhog Week at 8:21 PM on May 28, 2016 [8 favorites]

Ronald Reagan: The man who destroyed the United States of America (except for a very wealthy few).

I mean, when George H. W. Bush is calling your economics plan "voodoo economics" (GEORGE H. W. BUSH was by no means a progressive guy.), you know the man (Reagan) has gone off the rails for the ultra-wealthy.

The west will probably never recover from Reagan and Thatcher's madness. If anything, it seems to have grown in popularity. Very scary.
posted by InsertNiftyNameHere at 9:24 PM on May 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

I find it interesting how in the rhetorics, he basically speaks about the Russians in an ethnographic 'othering' way. As in: "They tell these jokes among their people. " Which just speaks for how those jokes were not really meant in a light hearted way they are perceived now, but rather as another tool for distancing the 'enemy'. Scary shit.
posted by katta at 1:37 AM on May 29, 2016 [3 favorites]

Aren't jokes supposed to make me laugh? I'll never forgive Reagan. I have my reasons.
posted by readyfreddy at 3:03 AM on May 29, 2016

those jokes were not really meant in a light hearted way they are perceived now

He's factually right that the jokes were very popular among 'their people' though. The black humour was one of the things that gave people relief. The guy waiting ten years for his car is surely being humanised by the joke, not 'othered' - Reagan's 'philosophy' if you can call it that, was that the Soviet Union was oppressing its 'own people' because it was inherently evil. The 'own people' turn of phrase was used extensively for later wars like Iraq.
posted by Coda Tronca at 3:49 AM on May 29, 2016 [3 favorites]

Soviet scientists build a computer with the purpose of determining how war full communism is. They turn the thing on and ask away: "How far is full communism?" The computer replies: 25 miles. Confused, the scientists start looking at the data the computer used for the calculation, and soon find out that the answer was based on Stalin's statement that "every Five Year Plan will take us one step closer to communism."

Coda Tronca is right, these are all jokes that were told witin the Soviet Union. I had heard all of them before, and I happened to live there for the first 13 years of my life.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 3:55 AM on May 29, 2016 [5 favorites]

Ronald Reagan - the actor?!?!!

. . . and Jack Benny, as Secretary of State!

*slam*
posted by petebest at 6:21 AM on May 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

"It's weird how he's this cuddly jovial guy these days when growing up in the UK in the 80s he was this asshole that was almost certainly going to get our country incinerated because he wants to start a war on a whim."

Except there's actual history about Reagan's horror over nuclear weapons and his desire to work towards a nuclear free world... a position that got him quite a bit of flack from the defense community that thought it wasn't possible.
posted by Jahaza at 10:59 AM on May 29, 2016

Here's one that actually is funny:

Reagan opened a KFC. It only serves right wings and assholes.
posted by jonmc at 11:00 AM on May 29, 2016 [3 favorites]

"Ronald Reagan came to the presidency as a long-time critic of arms control and detente with the Soviet Union, the preeminent U.S. strategic adversary during his eight years in office. Throughout the 1970s, Reagan had argued that the United States was falling behind the Soviets in the nuclear competition and that U.S. long-range ballistic missiles were becoming increasingly vulnerable to Soviet attack. During his 1980 election campaign against President Jimmy Carter, Reagan contended that the unratified Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty II (SALT II) was “fatally flawed.” As president, Reagan accelerated strategic nuclear modernization plans and launched modern efforts to build a national missile defense system through his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), raising tensions with the Soviet Union and prompting widespread public concern about the possibility of war between world’s two major nuclear superpowers.

"Yet, Reagan’s early opposition to U.S.-Soviet arms control negotiations gradually gave way to a more conciliatory approach that was consistent with his growing concern about the threat of mutual assured destruction. By the time he had left office, Reagan had overcome the reluctance of many of his closest advisers to engage with the Soviets and had forged an enduring diplomatic partnership with Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev. That partnership, combined with strong U.S. and European public pressure for nuclear restraint, led to some of the most sweeping arms control proposals in history and helped usher in a new age in U.S.-Russian relations."

https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2004_07-08/Reagan
posted by Jahaza at 11:02 AM on May 29, 2016