Happy Reagan Day!

I noticed this in today's Tribune-Review.

It's a chummy, feel good tale from the pen of Paul Kengor (Poli Sci professor at Grove City College and beneficiary of much Scaife funding), of President Ronald Reagan and how easily the Gipper connected with the common man, in this case an African-American limo driver named Joe Bullock. It begins thusly:

Today marks the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan's birth. In a telling development, Republicans around the country have been holding Reagan Day dinners as they've long done every February for Abraham Lincoln. This is yet another spontaneous display of affection for Reagan.

Having written so much on the man, I get lots of questions about Reagan this time of year, running the gamut from his domestic achievements to his historic foreign-policy triumph: peacefully ending the Cold War.

And then a few paragraphs down:

I'd like to take the opportunity presented by Reagan's time of year -- not to mention the month of Presidents Day -- to share an anecdote that was told to me by Bill Clark, Reagan's close friend and most significant adviser.

At the time this happened, Clark was serving as Reagan's national security adviser. He had previously been deputy secretary of State and would later be appointed secretary of the Interior. His driver all this time was a man named Joe Bullock, a Georgia native who had moved to Washington during the Great Depression. Joe was a victim of the cruel Jim Crow laws that afflicted the South. He went to Washington for a better life.

I wanted to look into this story a bit - it's a good story.

Know what I found?

This - National Review Online February 6, 2010 (one year ago):

Today marks the 99th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birth. In a telling development, Republicans around the country have begun holding Reagan Day dinners, as they’ve long traditionally done every February for Abraham Lincoln. This is yet another spontaneous display of affection for Reagan.

Having written so much on the man, I get lots of questions about Reagan this time of year, running the gamut from his domestic achievements to his historic foreign-policy triumph: peacefully ending the Cold War.

While this is NOT PLAGIARISM (as it was written by the same person) you'd think that for something as important to conservatives as Ronald Reagan's birthday, Professor Kengor could actually write something, you know, new.

Am I wrong about this? Talk about your spontaneous displays of affection.

How The Right Wing Noise Machine Works

I guess this may have to be an ongoing series.

It's long been known that Richard Mellon Scaife has funded large swaths of the right wing media - from the Heritage Foundation to his ownership of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. He funds the think tanks and then his paper reports on what those think tanks say - and all with no mention whatsoever about the Scaife money funding both sides.

A few days ago, it was about Ilya Somin. Today, it's about Paul Kengor:

Paul Kengor's new book, "DUPES: How America's Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century," is a masterful history of how many progressives have unwittingly aided some of America's most dangerous adversaries. However, history is a process and the same dynamic is at work today among our most powerful leaders. Fortunately, we now have an active universe of commentators and media outlets that seek to inform and educate us about the perils we now face with power in the hands of modern-day "dupes."

So who's this "Paul Kengor? He actually had a piece in the Trib recently. It was on Juan Williams and touched on NPR's "hypocrisy" for not firing Nina Totenberg "for wishing AIDS upon the family of the late Jesse Helms." (Actually the piece is a reprint from The American Thinker - where the author of the piece, Ed Lasky, is the news editor.  Small world, huh?)

From this blog post we learn some context of Totenberg's "wish."  It was from 1995 and Helms was at that point holding up the reauthorization of the Ryan White Act because he was disgusted by the image of men having anal sex.  How much more human suffering would have happened had he succeeded in stopping the reauthorization?  Totenberg catches flack for her rather inartful statement but Kegnor is silent on the disgusting Helms himself and the pain and death the Senator from South Carolina was himself wishing on a lot of other human beings.

Interesting.

Back to Paul Kengor and the right wing noise machine.

If you do just a little digging, you'll find the connections.  For instance Kengor is on the "Board of Advisors" of the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy.  About 87% of that institute's funding comes from none other than Richard Mellon Scaife.

The book itself is published by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.  And what's the ISI?  According to the mediamatters.org:

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) is an educational organization based in Delaware. Founded in 1953, ISI strives to educate for liberty and promote a set of principles deemed the principles of freedom. These principles include limited government, individual liberty, personal responsibility, rule of law, free market economy, and Judeo-Christian moral norms.

The ISI has received about $10.4 million over the last 25 years or so from the foundations controlled by Richard Mellon Scaife.

Media Matters has more:

ISI sponsors the Collegiate Network, an organization that supports right-leaning publications on many prestigious college campuses. The organization also has its own publishing imprint, ISI Books, which has published the work of more conservative authors like William F. Buckley, Michael Barone, and L. Brent Bozell. The organization is chaired by Edwin J. Feulner, Jr., who is also president of the Heritage Foundation. Major donors include the Castle Rock, Carthage Scaife, Olin, and Bradley Foundations. [emphasis added.]

Again, small world, huh?  Paul Kengor, advisee to the Scaife-funded Allegheny Institute for Public Policy, has a book published by the Scaife-funded Intercollegiate Studies Institute and now he's getting some free publicity for the book on the pages of the Scaife-owned Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

There's some more minor stuff here, as well.  Ed Feulner, president of the Scaife-funded Heritage Foundation has a weekly column at the Scaife-owned Tribune-Review and is the former chairman of also Scaife-funded ISI, the institute that published Kengor's book.

Which makes me wonder, would any of this have happened without Richard Mellon Scaife's philanthropic largess?

I dare say, very little.

This is how the right wing media noise machine works.

The circle-jerk continues.