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Jun. 8th, 2004 05:00 pmOK, can we just STOP hearing about Ronald Reagan now?
Never mind the Lenin-mausoleum look of the public viewing as shown on television in brief extract this morning. *shudder* Someone obviously had a deliciously developed sense of irony when planning how people would see the casket or simply accidentally tripped across something formulaic.
It was weird. The Great Leader, encased in a box, cordoned off from the people by stanchions supporting velvet cordons, with an armed honour guard at the head and foot, with viewers filing in from one side, walking past the box, turning ninety degrees to walk past the head, turning again to walk down the far side, a final turn at the foot, and out.
I'm not sure which Great Leader it is about which i speak, because it fits either.
And all the press coverage- yet another proof, at least in this day and time, that Shakespeare was wrong in the words he put in Mark Anthony's mouth (Julius Caesar, Act III, Scene II), for it is the good that men do which seems to live after them, while the evil is oft interrèd with their bones. The man will be credited for overseeing the tearing down of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, but more credit for both is rightly due to Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev- he was the one who changed his nation and the world, rather than just standing at the Brandenburg Gate pontificating at another world leader to "tear down this wall" on 12 June 1987.
Never mind the Lenin-mausoleum look of the public viewing as shown on television in brief extract this morning. *shudder* Someone obviously had a deliciously developed sense of irony when planning how people would see the casket or simply accidentally tripped across something formulaic.
It was weird. The Great Leader, encased in a box, cordoned off from the people by stanchions supporting velvet cordons, with an armed honour guard at the head and foot, with viewers filing in from one side, walking past the box, turning ninety degrees to walk past the head, turning again to walk down the far side, a final turn at the foot, and out.
I'm not sure which Great Leader it is about which i speak, because it fits either.
And all the press coverage- yet another proof, at least in this day and time, that Shakespeare was wrong in the words he put in Mark Anthony's mouth (Julius Caesar, Act III, Scene II), for it is the good that men do which seems to live after them, while the evil is oft interrèd with their bones. The man will be credited for overseeing the tearing down of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, but more credit for both is rightly due to Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev- he was the one who changed his nation and the world, rather than just standing at the Brandenburg Gate pontificating at another world leader to "tear down this wall" on 12 June 1987.
