Journal articles on the topic 'Military history, Modern – Sierra Leone'

This essay examines the language of an expatriate community as found in letters and petitions written by African Americans who migrated to Sierra Leone by way of Nova Scotia in 1792. These documents provide some of the earliest first-hand evidence of African American English and contribute to debates about the history of that variety. The paper compares selected grammatical features in that variety to modern-day African Nova Scotian English for insights to the history of African American English and develops a case for the principled use of manuscript documents for reconstructing earlier stages of colloquial English.

AbstractThe Franciscan mission to western Guinea between the 1660s and the late eighteenth century operated, from its Bissau centre, a 'Mission to Sierra Leone', whose priests occasionally reached the territory of modern Sierra Leone. Contact was made with the Afro-Portuguese resident in the Sierra Leone estuary, particularly with the Lopes family, and in 1752 a leading member was encouraged to make a 'Donation of Sierra Leone' to the Portuguese crown. This had little meaning and no effect. Hardly anything else is known about the local missionary activities, partly because of the decay of the general mission, but scraps of information about the Catholicism of the Afro-Portuguese appear in Portuguese and English sources.

ABSTRACTThe West Side Boys were one of several military actors in the Sierra Leonean civil war (1991–2002). A splinter group of the army, the WSB emerged as a key player in 1999–2000. In most Western media accounts, the WSB appeared as nothing more than renegade, anarchistic bandits, devoid of any trace of long-term goals. By contrast, this article aims to explain how the WSB used well-devised military techniques in the field; how their history and military training within the Sierra Leone army shaped their notion of themselves and their view of what they were trying to accomplish; and, finally, how military commanders and politicians employed the WSB as a tactical instrument in a larger map of military and political strategies. It is in the politics of a military economy that this article is grounded.

AbstractThis article examines a case study from war-torn Sierra Leone in 1994, in which a rumor galvanized violent public action and only dissipated when a seemingly unrelated issue was resolved. I argue that the circulation of rumors can foment the emergence of political narratives focused on topics that are otherwise taboo, and creates the space to act on them without overtly disturbing the status quo. I analyze the content of interview material with residents of the town of Makeni and eight months of articles printed in national newspapers to illustrate the subtle emergence of tribal accusations in the context of military mutiny. The rumor itself concerned an imminent attack by mutinous, criminal soldiers (calledsobels) on the town they were meant to defend. This instigated a mass demonstration, shooting into a crowd, political mudslinging, and accusations that some politicians were trying to “tribalize the war.” Responding to the distress, the government removed the offending “tribalist” administrator from Makeni, and all talk ofsobelfears dissipated, even as the reality ofsobelswas borne out in confirmed attacks and a high profile court-martialing. That tribal favoritism was the real issue was illustrated by residents' embrace of their new military administrator and the town's unprecedented move towards development in the midst of renewed security threats.

AbstractIn international criminal tribunal discourse, appeals to history and legitimacy are omnipresent. This article addresses the widespread practice of combining these appeals into one narrative. It analyses how international prosecutors engage with justifying the legitimacy of trials through the invocation of a tribunal's own history. The scrutiny of such ‘auto-histories’ as a specific form of history-telling illuminates an overlooked dimension of trials as fora for writing history. The opening statement is a perfect opportunity for constructing and communicating auto-histories. A comparative study of opening statements at the International Military Tribunal, the Special Court for Sierra Leone and the International Criminal Court reveals a recurrent, self-justifying narrative where both rootedness in history and a break with the past are key to singing the tribunal into existence as a crucial mechanism in the transition from chaos to peace. The connections between auto-histories at different tribunals show how legal practitioners discursively contribute to constructing the international criminal law's identity by relying on both origins and future.

AbstractThis paper presents a comparative analytical study that is based on a political economy perspective concerning the effects of economic violence and the specter of predation-induced armed conflicts in modern African states. Although "blood diamonds," crude oil, "conflict timber," and illicit arms trafficking have engendered and exacerbated civil wars, cross-border raids, and protracted regional destabilization in Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo, my primary focus is on the ongoing military debacle in Liberia and the recently concluded mayhem in Sierra Leone. The "resource curse" hypothesis will be utilized to examine and to illuminate the impact of economic pillaging, illicit arms trade, and predatory warlordism on the political instability and humanitarian atrocities in these two West African countries. A review of the internal regime types and the regional security relations within the sub-region will help to contextualize the recurrent trends and discernable systemic patterns that have been associated with these pillaging wars in the post-cold war era of Africa's international relations. In short, armed conflicts have weakened state capabilities, strained the financial resources of nongovernmental organizations and even raised provocative questions about the political will and sustaining capacities of the international community and regional security organizations to keep the peace and create conditions that are conducive to long-term, sustainable and viable political stability and economic development in the conflict-ridden and war-ravaged Sub-Saharan African States.

Opening ParagraphThe study of women in Sierra Leone has been well launched. Except for the work of Carol P. MacCormack (formerly Hoffer) on political leadership and socio-economic development among Mende and Sherbro women (1972, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1981, 1982), most of this scholarship focuses on women in Freetown, mainly the Krio. Filomena Steady (1975, 1976) has analysed Krio women's leadership in church and political organisations. The history of their economic contribution to the evolution of the city has been discussed by E. Frances White (1976, 1978, 1981a, b). Gender relationships in modern marriage have been examined by Barbara Harrell-Bond (1975). In addition, there are a number of biographical studies of prominent leaders: Paramount Chief Madam Yoko (Hoffer, 1974), Adelaide Casely Hayford (Okonkwo, 1985; Cromwell, 1986), Constance A. Cummings-John (Denzer, 1981, forthcoming a, b), Hannah S. Benka Coker (Metzger, 1973: 50–2), and Lottie Hamilton-Hazeley (Metzger, 1973: 52–3). On the basis of this body of work it is possible to study more closely the contribution of women in modern politics in Freetown and the socioeconomic forces behind their participation. This account covers the period from the emergence of the proto-nationalist movement, the National Congress of British West Africa (NCBWA), up to the campaign for independence.

Emily Hahn and Katharine Fowler challenged gender barriers decades ahead of modern feminism, and, together with other pioneering women geologists, they provide inspiration for all. They met at the University of Wisconsin in 1925. Hahn had chosen engineering because a professor said women can not be engineers. Rejecting an office-only mining career, she then found her ultimate calling as writer and world traveler, spending two years in the Belgian Congo (1931-33) and eight in China (1935-43). During the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, she had a daughter by a British officer, whom she married in 1945. Fowler came from Bryn Mawr College to Wisconsin to compete in a men's world. They forced acceptance as the first women to take a mining geology field trip and a topographic mapping field course. Later, in disguise, Fowler gained admission to a Black Hills mine and then did Ph.D. field work alone in Wyoming. After an African Geological Congress, she worked in the Sierra Leone bush (1931-33) and then began teaching at Wellesley College (1935). She attended a 1937 Soviet Union Geological Congress, taking harrowing field trips in the Caucusus Mountains and Siberia. From 1938, she and her new husband, Harvard geologist Marland Billings, collaborated in important New England research.

This article sets the stage for a special issue exploring group-level dynamics and their role in producing violence. My analytic focus is socialization, or the process through which actors adopt the norms and rules of a given community. I argue that it is key to understanding violence in many settings, including civil war, national militaries, post-conflict societies and urban gangs. While socialization theory has a long history in the social sciences, I do not simply pull it off the shelf, but instead rethink core features of it. Operating in a theory-building mode and drawing upon insights from other disciplines, I highlight its layered and multiple nature, the role of instrumental calculation in it and several relevant mechanisms – from persuasion, to organized rituals, to sexual violence, to violent display. Equally important, I theorize instances where socialization is resisted, as well as the (varying) staying power of norms and practices in an individual who leaves the group. Empirically, the special issue explores the link between socialization and violence in paramilitary patrols in Guatemala; vigilantes in the Bosnian civil war; gangs in post-conflict Nicaragua; rebel groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo, El Salvador, Sierra Leone and Uganda; post-conflict peacekeepers; and the US and Israeli military. By documenting this link, we contribute to an emerging research program on group dynamics and conflict.

<em>The objective of this paper is to explore the initiatives and practices of different countries in truth seeking. Many countries during the post-conflict, colonial, slavery, anarchical and cultural genocide periods establish the Truth Commissions to respond to the past human wrongdoings: crimes and crimes against humanity. Enforced Disappearances (ED), killings, rapes and inhumane tortures are wrongdoings. Truth Commission applies the method of recovering silences from the victims for structured testimonies. The paper is prepared based on the victim-centric approach. The purpose reveals the piecemeal fact-findings to heal the past, reconcile the present and protect the future. The study covers more than 50 Commissions in a chronological order: beginning from Uganda in 1974 and concluding to Nepal in February 2015. Two Commissions in Uruguay were formed to find-out enforced disappearances. Colombian and Rwandan Commissions have established permanent bodies. The Liberian TRC threatened the government to submit its findings to the ICC if the government failed to establish an international tribunal. The Commissions of Bolivia, Ecuador, Haiti, former Yugoslavia and Zimbabwe were disbanded, and consequently, their reports could not be produced. No public hearings were conducted in Argentina and former Yugoslavia. It is noted that only 8 public hearings in Ghana, 8 national hearings in East-Timor and 15 in Brazil were conducted. Moroccan Commission held public hearings after signing the bond paper for not to disclose the names of the perpetrators whereas Guatemala did not include the perpetrators’ names in the report. The Shining Path’s activists are serving sentences based on civil-anti-terrorist court, but Alberto Fujimori is convicted for 25 years. Chadian Commission worked even against illicit narcotics trafficking. The UN established its Commissions in Sierra Leon, El Salvador and East-Timor, but failed to restore normalcy in Kosovo. Haiti prosecuted 50 perpetrators whereas Guatemala prosecuted its former military dictator. The Philippines’ Commission had limited investigation jurisdiction over army, but treated the insurgents differently. In El Salvador, the State security forces were responsible for 85 percent and the non-state actors for 15 percent similar to CIEDP, Nepal. The TRCs of Argentina, East-Timor, Guatemala, Morocco, Peru and South Africa partially succeeded. Large numbers of victims have failed to register the complaints fearing of possible actions. All perpetrators were controversially granted amnesty despite the TRC recommendation in South Africa. The victims and people still blamed Mandela that he sold out black people’s struggle. Ironically, the perpetrators have received justice, but the victims are further victimized. As perpetrator-centric Government prioritizes cronyism, most of the Commissioners defend their respective institution and individuals. Besides, perpetrators influence Governments on the formation of Truth Commission for ‘forgetting the victims to forgive the perpetrators’. A commission is a Court-liked judicial and non-judicial processes body, but without binding authority except Sierra Leone. Transitional Justice body exists with a five-pillar policy: truth, justice, healing, prosecution and reparation. It has a long neglected history owing to anarchical roles of the perpetrators and weak-poor nature of the victims. Almost all TRCs worked in low budget, lack of officials, inadequate laws and regulations, insufficient infrastructures and constraints of moral supports including Liberia, Paraguay, Philippines, South Africa, Uganda and Nepal. The perpetrators controlled Governments ordered to destroy documents, evidences and testimonies in their chain of command that could have proven guilty to them.</em>

Abstract In 2017, the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections at the Firestone Memorial Library, Princeton University, acquired the papers of a British enslaver who operated in the region of greater Sierra Leone during the late-eighteenth century. This article offers an introduction to these papers for potential researchers. Focusing on two journals that cover Matthews’s time in the region between 1785 and 1787, it suggests three topics for which the collection might be of value to scholars of early-modern West Africa. These three topics are the local workings of the transatlantic slave trade in greater Sierra Leone; the production of European knowledge about Africa and Africans; and the history of the region immediately preceding the settlement of Freetown. In addition, this article includes four images of Sierra Leone. Black and white versions of these images were printed in 1791, but the watercolors are reproduced here for the first time.

The present day railway system in West Africa is the result of the transportpolicy developed by the colonial powers (France, Great Britain and Germany) at the end of the 19th century. lt is remarkable that no network of railways, like in Southern Africa, was brought about. The colonial railways in West Africa were built by the State or by a joint-stock company within the borders of one colony to export the raw materials from the production centres to the harbours. Nevertheless railways were built for more than economical grounds only, in West Africa they had to accomplish a strategic and military role by "opening Africa for the European civilization". Hargreaves calls railways the "heralds of new imperialism" and Baumgart speaks of the own dynamics of the railways, to push the European colonial powers further into Africa... The construction of a railway needed a very high capital investment and the European capitalists wouldn't like to take risks in areas that were not yet "pacified". It is remarkable how many projects to build a Transcontinental railway right across the Sahara desert largely remained on paper. Precisely because such plans did not materialize, however, the motive force they provided to such imperialist actions as political-territorial annexations can be traced all the more clearly.The French built the first railway in West Africa, the Dakar - St-Louis line (Senegal), between 1879 and 1885. This line stimulated the production of ground-nuts, although the French colonial-military lobby has had other motives. The real motivation became very clear at the construction of the Kayes - Bamako railway. Great difficulties needed the military occupation of the region and the violent recruitment of thousands of black labourers, all over the region. The same problems transformed the building of the Kayes-Dakar line into a real hell. Afterwards the Sine Saloum region has been through a "agricultural revolution", when the local ground-nuts-producers have been able toproduce forforeign markets. The first British railways were built in Sierra Leone and the Gold Coast-colony (Ghana). In Nigeria railway construction stimulated the growth of Lagos as an harbour and administrative centre. Lugard had plans for the unification of Nigeria by railways. The old Hausa town of Kano flourished after the opening of the Northern Railway, for other towns a period of decline had begun. Harbour cities and interior railwayheads caused an influx of population from periphery regions, the phenomenon is called "port concentration". Also the imperial Germany built a few railwaylines in theirformer colony Togo, to avoid the traffic flow off to the British railways. If s quite remarkable that the harbours at the Gulf of Guinea-coast developed much later than the harbours of Senegal and Sierra Leone.After the First World War only a few new railways were constructed, the revenues remained very low, so the (colonial) state had to take over many lines. The competition between railways and roadtransport demonstrated the first time in Nigeria, it was the beginning of the decline of railways as the most important transportsystems in West Africa. Only multinational companies built specific railways for the export of minerals (iron, ore and bauxite) after the Second World War, and the French completed the Abidjan - Ouaga-dougou railway (1956).The consequences of railway construction in West Africa on economic, demographic and social sphere were not so far-reaching as in Southern Africa, but the labour migration and the first labour unions of railwaymen organized strikes in Senegal and the Ivory Coast mentioned the changing social situation.The bibliography of the West African railways contains very useful studies about the financial policy of the railway companies and the governments, but only afew railways were already studied by economic historians. KEY WORDS : bibliographical survey, colonial history, economic and demographic consequences, railway development, West Africa

Introduction A snapshot, not unlike countless photographs likely to be found in any number of family albums, shows two figures sitting on a park bench: an elderly and amiable looking man grins beneath the rim of a golf cap; a young boy of twelve smiles wide for the camera — a rather banal scene, captured on film. And yet, this seemingly innocent and unexceptional photograph was the site of a remarkable and wide ranging discourse — encompassing American conservatism, celebrity politics, and the end of the Cold War — as the image circulated around the globe during the weeklong state funeral of Ronald Wilson Reagan, 40th president of the United States. Taken in 1997 by the young boy’s grandfather, Ukrainian immigrant Yakov Ravin, during a chance encounter with the former president, the snapshot is believed to be the last public photograph of Ronald Reagan. Published on the occasion of the president’s death, the photograph made “instant celebrities” of the boy, now a twenty-year-old college student, Rostik Denenburg and his grand dad. Throughout the week of Reagan’s funeral, the two joined a chorus of dignitaries, politicians, pundits, and “ordinary” Americans praising Ronald Reagan: “The Great Communicator,” the man who defeated Communism, the popular president who restored America’s confidence, strength, and prosperity. Yes, it was mourning in America again. And the whole world was watching. Not since Princess Diana’s sudden (and unexpected) death, have we witnessed an electronic hagiography of such global proportions. Unlike Diana’s funeral, however, Reagan’s farewell played out in distinctly partisan terms. As James Ridgeway (2004) noted, the Reagan state funeral was “not only face-saving for the current administration, but also perhaps a mask for the American military debacle in Iraq. Not to mention a gesture of America’s might in the ‘war on terror.’” With non-stop media coverage, the weeklong ceremonies provided a sorely needed shot in the arm to the Bush re-election campaign. Still, whilst the funeral proceedings and the attendant media coverage were undeniably excessive in their deification of the former president, the historical white wash was not nearly so vulgar as the antiseptic send off Richard Nixon received back in 1994. That is to say, the piety of the Nixon funeral was at once startling and galling to many who reviled the man (Lapham). By contrast, given Ronald Reagan’s disarming public persona, his uniquely cordial relationship with the national press corps, and most notably, his handler’s mastery of media management techniques, the Reagan idolatry was neither surprising nor unexpected. In this brief essay, I want to consider Reagan’s funeral, and his legacy, in relation to what cultural critics, referring to the production of celebrity, have described as “fame games” (Turner, Bonner & Marshall). Specifically, I draw on the concept of “flashpoints” — moments of media excess surrounding a particular personage — in consideration of the Reagan funeral. Throughout, I demonstrate how Reagan’s death and the attendant media coverage epitomize this distinctive feature of contemporary culture. Furthermore, I observe Reagan’s innovative approaches to electoral politics in the age of television. Here, I suggest that Reagan’s appropriation of the strategies and techniques associated with advertising, marketing and public relations were decisive, not merely in terms of his electoral success, but also in securing his lasting fame. I conclude with some thoughts on the implications of Reagan’s legacy on historical memory, contemporary politics, and what neoconservatives, the heirs of the Reagan Revolution, gleefully describe as the New American Century. The Magic Hour On the morning of 12 June 2004, the last day of the state funeral, world leaders eulogized Reagan, the statesmen, at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. Among the A-List political stars invited to speak were Margaret Thatcher, former president George H. W. Bush and, to borrow Arundhati Roi’s useful phrase, “Bush the Lesser.” Reagan’s one-time Cold War adversary, Mikhail Gorbachev, as well as former Democratic presidents, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were also on hand, but did not have speaking parts. Former Reagan administration officials, Supreme Court justices, and congressional representatives from both sides of the aisle rounded out a guest list that read like a who’s who of the American political class. All told, Reagan’s weeklong sendoff was a state funeral at its most elaborate. It had it all—the flag draped coffin, the grieving widow, the riderless horse, and the procession of mourners winding their way through the Rotunda of the US Capitol. In this last regard, Reagan joined an elite group of seven presidents, including four who died by assassination — Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley and John F. Kennedy — to be honored by having his remains lie in state in the Rotunda. But just as the deceased president was product of the studio system, so too, the script for the Gipper’s swan song come straight out of Hollywood. Later that day, the Reagan entourage made one last transcontinental flight back to the presidential library in Simi Valley, California for a private funeral service at sunset. In Hollywood parlance, the “magic hour” refers to the quality of light at dusk. It is an ideal, but ephemeral time favored by cinematographers, when the sunlight takes on a golden glow lending grandeur, nostalgia, and oftentimes, a sense of closure to a scene. This was Ronald Reagan’s final moment in the sun: a fitting end for an actor of the silver screen, as well as for the president who mastered televisual politics. In a culture so thoroughly saturated with the image, even the death of a minor celebrity is an occasion to replay film clips, interviews, paparazzi photos and the like. Moreover, these “flashpoints” grow in intensity and frequency as promotional culture, technological innovation, and the proliferation of new media outlets shape contemporary media culture. They are both cause and consequence of these moments of media excess. And, as Turner, Bonner and Marshall observe, “That is their point. It is their disproportionate nature that makes them so important: the scale of their visibility, their overwhelmingly excessive demonstration of the power of the relationship between mass-mediated celebrities and the consumers of popular culture” (3-4). B-Movie actor, corporate spokesman, state governor and, finally, US president, Ronald Reagan left an extraordinary photographic record. Small wonder, then, that Reagan’s death was a “flashpoint” of the highest order: an orgy of images, a media spectacle waiting to happen. After all, Reagan appeared in over 50 films during his career in Hollywood. Publicity stills and clips from Reagan’s film career, including Knute Rockne, All American, the biopic that earned Reagan his nickname “the Gipper”, King’s Row, and Bedtime for Bonzo provided a surreal, yet welcome respite from television’s obsessive (some might say morbidly so) live coverage of Reagan’s remains making their way across country. Likewise, archival footage of Reagan’s political career — most notably, images of the 1981 assassination attempt; his quip “not to make age an issue” during the 1984 presidential debate; and his 1987 speech at the Brandenburg Gate demanding that Soviet President Gorbachev, “tear down this wall” — provided the raw materials for press coverage that thoroughly dominated the global mediascape. None of which is to suggest, however, that the sheer volume of Reagan’s photographic record is sufficient to account for the endless replay and reinterpretation of Reagan’s life story. If we are to fully comprehend Reagan’s fame, we must acknowledge his seminal engagement with promotional culture, “a professional articulation between the news and entertainment media and the sources of publicity and promotion” (Turner, Bonner & Marshall 5) in advancing an extraordinary political career. Hitting His Mark In a televised address supporting Barry Goldwater’s nomination for the presidency delivered at the 1964 Republican Convention, Ronald Reagan firmly established his conservative credentials and, in so doing, launched one of the most remarkable and influential careers in American politics. Political scientist Gerard J. De Groot makes a compelling case that the strategy Reagan and his handlers developed in the 1966 California gubernatorial campaign would eventually win him the presidency. The centerpiece of this strategy was to depict the former actor as a political outsider. Crafting a persona he described as “citizen politician,” Reagan’s great appeal and enormous success lie in his uncanny ability to project an image founded on traditional American values of hard work, common sense and self-determination. Over the course of his political career, Reagan’s studied optimism and “no-nonsense” approach to public policy would resonate with an electorate weary of career politicians. Charming, persuasive, and seemingly “authentic,” Reagan ran gubernatorial and subsequent presidential campaigns that were distinctive in that they employed sophisticated public relations and marketing techniques heretofore unknown in the realm of electoral politics. The 1966 Reagan gubernatorial campaign took the then unprecedented step of employing an advertising firm, Los Angeles-based Spencer-Roberts, in shaping the candidate’s image. Leveraging their candidate’s ease before the camera, the Reagan team crafted a campaign founded upon a sophisticated grasp of the television industry, TV news routines, and the medium’s growing importance to electoral politics. For instance, in the days before the 1966 Republican primary, the Reagan team produced a five-minute film using images culled from his campaign appearances. Unlike his opponent, whose television spots were long-winded, amateurish and poorly scheduled pieces that interrupted popular programs, like Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show, Reagan’s short film aired in the early evening, between program segments (De Groot). Thus, while his opponent’s television spot alienated viewers, the Reagan team demonstrated a formidable appreciation not only for televisual style, but also, crucially, a sophisticated understanding of the nuances of television scheduling, audience preferences and viewing habits. Over the course of his political career, Reagan refined his media driven, media directed campaign strategy. An analysis of his 1980 presidential campaign reveals three dimensions of Reagan’s increasingly sophisticated media management strategy (Covington et al.). First, the Reagan campaign carefully controlled their candidate’s accessibility to the press. Reagan’s penchant for potentially damaging off-the-cuff remarks and factual errors led his advisors to limit journalists’ interactions with the candidate. Second, the character of Reagan’s public appearances, including photo opportunities and especially press conferences, grew more formal. Reagan’s interactions with the press corps were highly structured affairs designed to control which reporters were permitted to ask questions and to help the candidate anticipate questions and prepare responses in advance. Finally, the Reagan campaign sought to keep the candidate “on message.” That is to say, press releases, photo opportunities and campaign appearances focused on a single, consistent message. This approach, known as the Issue of the Day (IOD) media management strategy proved indispensable to advancing the administration’s goals and achieving its objectives. Not only was the IOD strategy remarkably effective in influencing press coverage of the Reagan White House, this coverage promoted an overwhelmingly positive image of the president. As the weeklong funeral amply demonstrated, Reagan was, and remains, one of the most popular presidents in modern American history. Reagan’s popular (and populist) appeal is instructive inasmuch as it illuminates the crucial distinction between “celebrity and its premodern antecedent, fame” observed by historian Charles L. Ponce de Leone (13). Whereas fame was traditionally bestowed upon those whose heroism and extraordinary achievements distinguished them from common people, celebrity is a defining feature of modernity, inasmuch as celebrity is “a direct outgrowth of developments that most of us regard as progressive: the spread of the market economy and the rise of democratic, individualistic values” (Ponce de Leone 14). On one hand, then, Reagan’s celebrity reflects his individualism, his resolute faith in the primacy of the market, and his defense of “traditional” (i.e. democratic) American values. On the other hand, by emphasizing his heroic, almost supernatural achievements, most notably his vanquishing of the “Evil Empire,” the Reagan mythology serves to lift him “far above the common rung of humanity” raising him to “the realm of the divine” (Ponce de Leone 14). Indeed, prior to his death, the Reagan faithful successfully lobbied Congress to create secular shrines to the standard bearer of American conservatism. For instance, in 1998, President Clinton signed a bill that officially rechristened one of the US capitol’s airports to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. More recently, conservatives working under the aegis of the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project have called for the creation of even more visible totems to the Reagan Revolution, including replacing Franklin D. Roosevelt’s profile on the dime with Reagan’s image and, more dramatically, inscribing Reagan in stone, alongside Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt at Mount Rushmore (Gordon). Therefore, Reagan’s enduring fame rests not only on the considerable symbolic capital associated with his visual record, but also, increasingly, upon material manifestations of American political culture. The High Stakes of Media Politics What are we to make of Reagan’s fame and its implications for America? To begin with, we must acknowledge Reagan’s enduring influence on modern electoral politics. Clearly, Reagan’s “citizen politician” was a media construct — the masterful orchestration of ideological content across the institutional structures of news, public relations and marketing. While some may suggest that Reagan’s success was an anomaly, a historical aberration, a host of politicians, and not a few celebrities — Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Arnold Schwarzenegger among them — emulate Reagan’s style and employ the media management strategies he pioneered. Furthermore, we need to recognize that the Reagan mythology that is so thoroughly bound up in his approach to media/politics does more to obscure, rather than illuminate the historical record. For instance, in her (video taped) remarks at the funeral service, Margaret Thatcher made the extraordinary claim — a central tenet of the Reagan Revolution — that Ronnie won the cold war “without firing a shot.” Such claims went unchallenged, at least in the establishment press, despite Reagan’s well-documented penchant for waging costly and protracted proxy wars in Afghanistan, Africa, and Central America. Similarly, the Reagan hagiography failed to acknowledge the decisive role Gorbachev and his policies of “reform” and “openness” — Perestroika and Glasnost — played in the ending of the Cold War. Indeed, Reagan’s media managed populism flies in the face of what radical historian Howard Zinn might describe as a “people’s history” of the 1980s. That is to say, a broad cross-section of America — labor, racial and ethnic minorities, environmentalists and anti-nuclear activists among them — rallied in vehement opposition to Reagan’s foreign and domestic policies. And yet, throughout the weeklong funeral, the divisiveness of the Reagan era went largely unnoted. In the Reagan mythology, then, popular demonstrations against an unprecedented military build up, the administration’s failure to acknowledge, let alone intervene in the AIDS epidemic, and the growing disparity between rich and poor that marked his tenure in office were, to borrow a phrase, relegated to the dustbin of history. In light of the upcoming US presidential election, we ought to weigh how Reagan’s celebrity squares with the historical record; and, equally important, how his legacy both shapes and reflects the realities we confront today. Whether we consider economic and tax policy, social services, electoral politics, international relations or the domestic culture wars, Reagan’s policies and practices continue to determine the state of the union and inform the content and character of American political discourse. Increasingly, American electoral politics turns on the pithy soundbite, the carefully orchestrated pseudo-event, and a campaign team’s unwavering ability to stay on message. Nowhere is this more evident than in Ronald Reagan’s unmistakable influence upon the current (and illegitimate) occupant of the White House. References Covington, Cary R., Kroeger, K., Richardson, G., and J. David Woodward. “Shaping a Candidate’s Image in the Press: Ronald Reagan and the 1980 Presidential Election.” Political Research Quarterly 46.4 (1993): 783-98. De Groot, Gerard J. “‘A Goddamed Electable Person’: The 1966 California Gubernatorial Campaign of Ronald Reagan.” History 82.267 (1997): 429-48. Gordon, Colin. “Replace FDR on the Dime with Reagan?” History News Network 15 December, 2003. http://hnn.us/articles/1853.html>. Lapham, Lewis H. “Morte de Nixon – Death of Richard Nixon – Editorial.” Harper’s Magazine (July 1994). http://www.harpers.org/MorteDeNixon.html>. Ponce de Leon, Charles L. Self-Exposure: Human-Interest Journalism and the Emergence of Celebrity in America, 1890-1940. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2002. Ridgeway, James. “Bush Takes a Ride in Reagan’s Wake.” Village Voice (10 June 2004). http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0423/mondo5.php>. Turner, Graeme, Frances Bonner, and P. David Marshall. Fame Games: The Production of Celebrity in Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000. Zinn, Howard. The Peoples’ History of the United States: 1492-Present. New York: Harper Perennial, 1995. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Howley, Kevin. "Always Famous: Or, The Electoral Half-Life of Ronald Reagan." M/C Journal 7.5 (2004). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0411/17-howley.php>. APA Style Howley, K. (Nov. 2004) "Always Famous: Or, The Electoral Half-Life of Ronald Reagan," M/C Journal, 7(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0411/17-howley.php>.