I don’t know a whole lot about Margaret Thatcher, so I’m here neither to bury nor praise her. But I thought it would be fun to round up the dumbest eulogies that wingnuts are writing about her. My favorite so far:
I think we all know what Maggie would have thought of Kim Jong-eun.
— Charles Lane (@ChuckLane1) April 8, 2013
liberal
Too f*cking stupid to understand that everyone thinks the same thing about Kim. Where they differ is what to do about him.
maya
“Waiter, doesn’t a fortune cookie come with that?”
schrodinger's cat
Cherub but not an angel.
James Gary
I don’t know, Charles Lane—what WOULD Maggie have thought of Kim Jong-Un? Admired his resolve and feisty spirit? Sneered at his unflattering haircut? Seriously, I’m not at all sure how to interpret that particular tweet.
Litlebritdifrnt
They turned off the comments at the Daily Telegraph “out of respect” that should tell you something.
Nicole
And we also know what she thought of the Khmer Rouge:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2000/jan/09/cambodia
beltane
@Litlebritdifrnt: No comments allowed on The Guardian story either.
scav
@Litlebritdifrnt: There’ll be a lot if similar respect shown for a bit, I’d guess. We did just hit one of my two licit “I’m not even going to pretend I’m sorry about this one.” deaths. ha!
schrodinger's cat
@scav: Is Dick Cheney the other one?
Maude
@beltane:
I was looking for comments at Guardian. I’m disappointed.
They would have been a good read.
She’s hated more than Reagan and that’s saying something.
She talked to Geo H Bush before the Gulf War. She was for it. He was wavering before she spoke to him.
red dog
Charles Lane is too young to have any memory of Maggie so he has nothing but hearsay to comment on. She and Reagan changed both nations for the worse by taking from the poor and allowing the rich to run amok. I hope they and their minions are both paupers in the next world.
Amir Khalid
@James Gary:
Well, Maggie T figured Nelson Mandela, one of the most admired people on the planet, was a terrorist. So she would probably have liked the cut of Kim Jong-Un’s jib.
beltane
Here is a brief tribute from a British leftist: http://www.leninology.com/2013/04/ding-dong-witch-is-dead.html
scav
@schrodinger’s cat: I am sooooooo predictable. :)
Elizabelle
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Re turning off the reader comments on UK papers:
*Snort*
The American MSM takes note for Dick Cheney’s eventual return to dust.
And: Charles Lane? Low hanging fruit.
Chyron HR
Well, jeepers, presumably she would have thought something like, “When did Kim Il-Sung die?”
JoyfulA
Maybe Caribou Barbie will attend the funeral. Remember when she insisted she was going to England to consult with Thatcher?
Rick Massimo
I’m so FKING over this “what would our dead hero have done in this situation? That is what we must do” business. You know what your dead hero did? He or she looked at the situation and gathered opinions they respected and made their own decision (whether I agree with it or not). Why is that too difficult for these people?
Oh, right: They’re stupid.
John
@red dog:
per Wikipedia, Charles Lane got his BA in 1983, so I’d guess he’s old enough to remember Thatcher.
Amir Khalid
Here’s John Cole reminiscing about his encounters with Margaret Thatcher.
Baud
I know Maggie would have worked with Tip O’Neill to come to a bipartisan solution to our budget problems.
Davis X. Machina
Any Wikipedia references to “Strong and wrong” should re-direct to her entry.
Yutsano
I shall refrain from all commentary until our own dear Sister Sarah has put in her good word. And it will be delish indeed.
maya
Here’s a fitting petition.
Tom Betz
I’m waiting for Elvis Costello to announce that he’s going dancing.
hartly
Those who recognize my handle might be sick of hearing my Dr. Who comments, but…In an indirect way I blame Mrs Thatcher for destroying my favorite TV show. Her political career motivated an air-head script-editor named Andrew Cartmel to revamp the old series as a political platform to get Mrs. Thatcher out of power and fight “social injustice”, sacrificing logic, plot, and basic excitement in the process. (I’m sorry, her policies might have been bad for Britain, but anyone who thinks middle-class England in the 1980s qualifies as a dystopian nightmare has no business script-editing a sci-fi adventure series.) Russell Davies was a big fan of this era, and while he didn’t go much for politics, the old series’ final years clearly influenced his decision to make the show more about ordinary, everyday personal tragedies than outerspace exploration.
As far as her legacy in the bigger, more important real world, suffice it to say that I’ve heard both good and bad. I’ve never seen any point in holding grudges beyond the grave, so whatever evil she did in this world I hope she rests in peace.
Yutsano
@maya: Heh. Already has 38K signatures.
schrodinger's cat
@Amir Khalid: I saw that, John Cole was British, who knew.
maya
Next Village poutage:
Will Obama go to Baroness Von Thatcher’s funeral? (Does he have to?)
Redshirt
What’s Peggy Noonan had to say? I’m truly interested, as I expect soaring new heights of maudlin.
Frankensteinbeck
The core ‘conservative’ value is hate. They get there from different directions, but where it comes together is that they like to hurt people. Anyone who abuses large swathes of humanity while saying it’s for their own good is a hero to them. Haven’t I just described half of Sullivan’s articles?
Schlemizel
I am reminded of a funeral I went to as a kid for a local politician who was also a good friend of the family.
Besides friends there was a good sized contingent of people who only knew him from his time in office. One particularly obnoxious troll who had high ambition (and failed always so there is some justice) was regaling a group with how impressive the crowd size was but his was going to be so much bigger. While explaining that HIS funeral would need to be held in a very large hall my dad looked him in the eye and dead-panned “yup, give the people what they want and they’ll turn out”
Schlemizel
@maya:
LOVE IT!
Omnes Omnibus
@red dog: Charles Lane graduated from Harvard in 1983. He is not too young to have to have any memory of Thatcher.
Amir Khalid
@maya:
As I understand, attending funerals abroad is the Vice-President’s gig. Unless the VP is Dick Cheney, in which case it would be rather like sending a Death Eater.
kindness
NPR was all Maggie all the time this morning. I really am not looking forward to listening to Sully this week now.
A Ghost To Most
I hope someone in the twitterverse responded to Lane:
“Roughly what we think of you, Charles”
Tod Kelly
“I think we all know what Maggie would have thought of Kim Jong-eun.”
Um… Charles Lane knows that Maggie just died last night, right? Is it possible he thinks we’re doing a “ten years later” thing?
Forum Transmitted Disease
Vicious mean-assed bitch whose specialty and sole goal in life was to kick those who were already down.
Worse than Reagan? Saddam? Mao? Stalin? Certainly right in that class of grasping, greedy predator on one’s fellow human beings.
Friend of Hermes
What Thatcher actually thought of Kim: “Um,…where am I?”
Amir Khalid
@Tod Kelly:
I think Lane is aware that Thatcher had been mostly gone since the onset of her dementia.
dr. luba
@beltane: Oddly, the exact same tribute all of my British FB friends seem to have posted.
Chris
@Maude:
I’ve read that from several people, but I wonder if it’s actually true – sounds more like something her supporters would’ve said to boost her public image as the Iron Lady that everyone was afraid to cross.
The fact is, the American MIC was coming off of a decade of Reagan-financed arms buildups, along with some small-scale but heavily publicized military interventions (Grenada, Libya, Panama) to test the waters of public approval. I think a lot of them were ready for a “real” war to shake the Vietnam legacy once and for all.
handsmile
For those here (and on Zandar’s earlier post “Hearts of Iron” who claim not to know much about Thatcher/Thatcherism), an appraisal of the Thatcher years from the late Guardian columnist Hugo Young published on the day following her resignation as prime minister (11/23/90):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/1990/nov/23/past.conservatives
Comments are being accepted on this post at the Guardian’s website (and are a great delight to read).
As I wrote on Zandar’s thread, the Guardian will be even more essential than usual for the next several days as a necessary antidote to the overwhelming bathos and outright lies on Thatcher to which we will be subjected by the American corporate media.
Chris
@Rick Massimo:
I agree. I fucking hate the American worship of the founding fathers as secular saints for exactly this reason.
maya
“I think we all know what Maggie would have thought of Kim Jong-eun.”
Isn’t that a line from Necromancing The Stone?
Cacti
Nelson Mandela has outlived apartheid, and its greatest champions, Reagan and Thatcher.
Maybe there is an FSM after all.
gocart mozart
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAdwirnAtFc
eemom
sorta OT, but I was reminded of this question by the Michael Kelly thread a couple of days ago: why did the film Shattered Glass, otherwise quite a good film, portray both Lane and Kelly as great guys? It irked me.
mapaghimagsik
And here I was going to mention The Thatcher Memorial Home For Incurable Tyrants and Kings.
pete
I understand that an elderly and demented women has passed, which must be a great relief to all who knew her.
Walker
@hartly:
The “Cartmel Masterplan”, which gave us Curse of Fenric and Ghostlight, was far more exciting than anything from the Colin Baker era. Honestly, when I think of political Dr. Who, I think Vengance on Varos, which predates Cartmel.
jamick6000
I like this website: http://www.isthatcherdeadyet.co.uk/
here is a nice reaction to her death:https://twitter.com/Mobute/status/321268957329887233
handsmile
Downing Street has just announced the funeral arrangements for Thatcher: not a state funeral, but a “ceremonial funeral with military honours.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/08/no-state-funeral-margaret-thatcher
Sadly disappointing the expressed wishes of tens of thousands of Britons and free-market enthusiasts everywhere, “The costs of the funeral will be borne by the government and Thatcher’s estate, Downing Street said.” I do hope there will be a breakdown of those costs and who paid.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
Gotta love this exchange on the twitter thing.
Yutsano
@handsmile: I’d love to hear how Clegg will sell that idea to his constituents. But hey it’s all about staying in power amirite?
jamick6000
oooooooooookay I have the winner. From Slate
I don’t think even Andrew Sullivan could top this one.
patroclus
I think Thatcher would have thought Kim Jung Un was a tinpot little dictator that the U.S. needed to start a war with; forgetting of course that he has nuclear weapons and that the entire Korean peninsula, Japan and a lot of U.S. troops would end up dead from it.
The Brits remember Argentina, but Americans should remember that she was Reagan and Bush’s biggest cheerleader in Panama, Granada, Lebanon, South Africa and the first Iraq war. Back then, we were reticent about foreign adventures because of Vietnam; after Thatcher not so much anymore.
Tone in DC
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Yes.
Somewhere, John Lydon is smiling.
Mnemosyne
I have nothing clever to say about Thatcher that has not already been said, so I’ll stick to: good riddance, and may the destructive policies she championed die with her.
Chris
@hartly:
I don’t watch Dr. Who, but it sounds similar to the cyberpunk sci-fi genre that started appearing during that era (Blade Runner’s the usually remembered one), showing a gritty future marked by massive income inequality and all-powerful corporate elites. That trend didn’t offend me so much.
(One of the many things I’m sorry we never got to see in Firefly is Whedon’s take on it via the Blue Sun plotline. Fuck you, Fox).
Death Panel Truck
Speaking of death, is Ted Nugent dead or in jail yet?
beltane
I retract my statement about the Guardian disabling comments. There are comments, many of them heartfelt and not very civil http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2013/apr/08/miliband-clegg-local-elections-cameron-madrid?commentpage=1#start-of-comments
Cassidy
@Death Panel Truck: Nah. He’s still a cowardly, lying pile of T&H shit.
scav
Noted that at least the CBC mentioned up front it’s a polarized reaction. Well done. Margaret Thatcher’s death evokes polarized reaction and it’s such a low bar to have to praise making it over.
SiubhanDuinne
@Death Panel Truck: @Cassidy:
What’s your hurry? There’s still a week and change.
patroclus
And don’t forget that after she left office, she played a large role in making sure Pinochet never faced trial for what he did to a lot of innocent Chileans.
The main thing about Thatcher is that she made going after the poor and enabling the Gordon Gekko view of society respectable in roughly the same way Blair made W’s Iraq adventure respectable – by cheerleading America’s worst instincts. It’s not like Reagan et al. would not have fired the PATCO controllers, sent troops to Lebanon to die, put all the mentally ill and homeless out on the streets, de-progessivized the U.S.’s tax structure, de-regulated the financial services industry, almost destroyed the gains of the women’s movement, put off health insurance/care for a generation and forgot the lessons of Vietnam on his/their own, it’s just that Thatcher made it seem like it was the right thing to do.
I’m sorry she’s dead, but if this causes a major period of Reagan/Thatcher worship (yet again), it won’t be good for either country or the world in general.
Death Panel Truck
@Litlebritdifrnt: The Daily Mail is apparently deleting negative comments. Every comment is a glowing tribute (with some adding anti-Obama slurs.)
SiubhanDuinne
I have a Facebook, uh, acquaintance, who is waxing nostalgic about Thatcher and her eulogy at Reagan’s funeral. He ends by asking rhetorically (possibly slightly paraphrased) “I wonder what Reagan would say today on learning of Margaret Thatcher’s death?”
To which I am greatly tempted to reply “Maggie!! Welcome to Hell!!”
But I won’t.
handsmile
@Yutsano:
You’re spot-on about the desire/intention, but being Cameron’s “poodle,” Nick Clegg is now so reviled and his Liberal Democrats are now so decimated that his “power’ may not even be sufficient to maintain his seat in the House of Commons in the next parliamentary election.
Death Panel Truck
@SiubhanDuinne: Less than three days, according to this site. Apparently he said it on April 12, 2012.
Amir Khalid
@SiubhanDuinne:
Some temptations should not be resisted.
CT Voter
Dumbest?
Todd Starnes: @toddstarnes 32m
Margaret Thatcher was the original Mama Grizzly.
scav
@Death Panel Truck: maintaining that thin veneer of messy reality does just get sooooooo in the way of projecting the beautiful news. best ignore that reality spoilsport whenever possible. anamatromic dinosaurs next to the automated monorail are just the thing.
patroclus
@handsmile: Perhaps, but the Lib Dems did win the most recent by-election and the Tories could certainly play games by not having strong (or any) candidates challenge sitting Lib Dem MP’s in the next general election, so the jury is still out on that notwithstanding current polls. Especially if Clegg times a resignation on a key issue bringing down the coalition at a propitious time.
Mike in NC
The US government should dispatch Mitt Romney to attend Thatcher’s funeral. He did such a great job at the London Olympics last year.
lonesomerobot
Until I moved overseas years ago, I naively thought Thatcher was warmly regarded by almost everyone. Then I met and befriended many, many Pommies (hopefully that descriptor will clue some in to the country where I was) who almost uniformly despised her. I’m hoping we don’t have a retro 80s night here in America with too much ideological Iron Lady love — but I know this will definitely bring on some old skool conservative yankee boners like they haven’t had in 20 years. America had an alternate reality when it comes to the image of Maggie Thatcher.
Death Panel Truck
@Death Panel Truck: Ruh-roh. Spoke too soon. There are negative comments at the Daily Mail.
“For all of you remembering Thatcher fondly, all I can say is that you were not affected directly by her… growing up in the 1970/80’s in the North West of England was tough, she took away jobs, homes, transport, left people with no money and no prospects. She single-handedly ended the manufacturing industry in Great Britain. She took away my schools sports fields and, on a less serious note, took away my milk at playtime. You can also argue that she is to blame for the benefits culture that we as a nation are constantly bleating on about at the moment. She put such vast amounts of people on the dole that they and their families are still fighting to climb out of the hole she created as she destroyed all industry therefore destroying peoples careers and livelihoods. She was a true Tory – look after your own and sod the rest. She may have been strong, but she was also cruel and heartless.”
Villago Delenda Est
It really is too bad the vile bitch didn’t die 35 years sooner. Also Ronaldus Magnus’ principle fault.
Irish Steel
The Mekons Vengeance
SiubhanDuinne
Hahahahaha. BBC News caption:
LIVE: MARGARET THATCHER DIES
SiubhanDuinne
@Amir Khalid:
Very true, which is why I came over here to share with like-minded folks. I have a quasi-professional relationship with the FB guy and my employer feels strongly about keeping one’s political views out of social media where one is identifiable.
AxelFoley
@jamick6000:
It’s still early in the week. Give it time.
SiubhanDuinne
Annette Funicello died today, too.
Now that’s sad news.
Johannes
@Walker: well said, Walker.
JoyousMN
I had exactly the same thought, but Dan Savage said it best. From Dan’s Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/fakedansavage
“Woke to news of Margaret Thatcher’s death. First thought: has anyone gotten a reaction from Elvis Costello?”
Trollhattan
@Amir Khalid:
@SiubhanDuinne:
No kidding. I’d add, “Come, I’ll introduce you to Stalin; turns out he’s a great guy.”
Trollhattan
@SiubhanDuinne:
Aww, that’s a shame.
M.I.C.
See you soon
K.E.Y.
Why, because we like you!
Annette’s sweatshirt will be far more fondly remembered by the boomer male cohort than Mags, that’s for sure.
Noah Brand
“Jack always said it was difficult for us Americans to understand what it was really like here in the darkest parts of the eighties. We had a doddery old president who talked about the end of the world a little too often and was being run by the wrong people. But they had a prime minister who was genuinely mad. You know there were feminists and women’s studies theorists who denied she was even really a woman any more, she was so far out of her tree? She wanted concentration camps for AIDS victims, wanted to eradicate homosexuality even as an abstract concept, made poor people choose between eating and keeping their vote, ran the most shameless vote-grabbing artificial war scam in fifty years… England was a scary place.”
–Warren Ellis, writing Jakita Wagner in Planetary
AA+ Bonds
@jamick6000:
If only we had had more slaves with the bootstrap capability to look out for #1 – then slavery would have been abolished by fiat of the slaveholders after the personal worth of the slaves had become impossible to deny . . .
I mean, civil rights went awfully slowly – it’s really too bad that Martin wasn’t more selfish and focused on personal accrual and power and eager to kneecap other black men . . . not a real activist after all, was he?
Tehanu
@SiubhanDuinne:
Hear, hear. She actually tried to do some good in the world — not just make life easier for selfish people.