The Last Word on Reagan; New Words from Bob Mould
Well, Ronald Reagan is in the ground, and I'm content to leave him there for now: the final verdict on his place in history is way, way off, and we have a couple other political issues to hash out this year. But I do want to point out one aspect of Reagan's legacy that has not yet been explored, with big props to the New Republic for correcting this oversight: the punk rock inspired by Reagan and his administration:

If Reagan embodied everything sunny and inspiring about the United States to his supporters, to the preternaturally angry punk rockers of the early '80s, he represented anomie, arbitrary authority, and an ignorance that was socially acceptable, even valued. At the dawn of the Reagan era, pioneering singer and guitarist Bob Mould was a student at St. Paul's Macalaster College. "I remember watching these kids getting up in the morning on my dorm floor, putting on a suit and tie and a briefcase, talking about this guy from California named Ronald Reagan and how he was going to be the next president," Mould told journalist Michael Azerrad. "And I'd be sitting there arguing with those fucks in speech class and poli sci and just hating that, thinking 'This is not acceptable behavior. This is not what we're supposed to be doing with our late teens.'"

Speaking of Mould, the legendary guitarist and songwriter has a blog.

And I find myself with mixed feelings about it. This guy was one of the great heroes of my youth, and Husker Du remains my all-time favorite band. The first real show I ever saw was Husker Du at Temple University when I was 13; we got there hours early and ran into Bob Mould and Grant Hart in the stairwell and were too awestruck to speak. About four years later my friend Rob and I waited outside a 21-and-up Mould solo show on South Street in Philadelphia, following him into a deli at one point to ask if he could get us in (he was very nice but couldn't help; eventually the doorman took a $10 from each of us and we caught most of the set). All through college I caught Bob solo and with his post-Huskers band Sugar, and a lot of those memories are inextricably bound up with great and terrible times. His later solo output wasn't so much my cup of tea, but I still went to see him perform about two years ago at the waterfront by the East River, with my girlfriend; she loved his songs too.

So here's this guy who was just short of a god to me, and here's his blog filled with minutiae about going to the gym, meeting friends for coffee, and what have you. He's a fine writer and a very interesting guy, but it's almost too much; sometimes you don't want your heroes brought down to human size. I remember reading an interview years ago with Michael Stipe, back before R.E.M. became a multinational band, where he told an adoring fan, "Hey, I shit too." Sometimes you don't wanna know.