It's important not to give Reagan (a legitimate monster) too much credit / blame for this trend. Anti-intellectualism has been part and parcel of Republican messaging since my earliest memories in the early 1950s. Let no one forget how they labeled Adlai Stevenson: Egghead. Believe me it was not entirely a reference to the shape of his b…
It's important not to give Reagan (a legitimate monster) too much credit / blame for this trend. Anti-intellectualism has been part and parcel of Republican messaging since my earliest memories in the early 1950s. Let no one forget how they labeled Adlai Stevenson: Egghead. Believe me it was not entirely a reference to the shape of his bald head. I remember heated discussions, prompted in large part by the John Birch Society*, opposing fluoridation of our drinking water, in defiance of the know-it-all dentists. And I remember who/what crawled out of the woodwork when it was proposed (1960±) that my home town, Winthrop, Mass, build a new high school. Reagan's great(?) accomplishment was to nationalize those attitudes and, with his typical slick script reading, make them more widely "respectable."
It's important not to give Reagan (a legitimate monster) too much credit / blame for this trend. Anti-intellectualism has been part and parcel of Republican messaging since my earliest memories in the early 1950s. Let no one forget how they labeled Adlai Stevenson: Egghead. Believe me it was not entirely a reference to the shape of his bald head. I remember heated discussions, prompted in large part by the John Birch Society*, opposing fluoridation of our drinking water, in defiance of the know-it-all dentists. And I remember who/what crawled out of the woodwork when it was proposed (1960±) that my home town, Winthrop, Mass, build a new high school. Reagan's great(?) accomplishment was to nationalize those attitudes and, with his typical slick script reading, make them more widely "respectable."
*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5q2hHElTVbc