The simpsons has been coopted by Ronald Reagan's flag-draped corpse. I at first wondered if this was one final act of censorship, but the imperial ambitions of the reaganite agenda are of course far from dead, to the chagrin of untold millions around the globe - in Iraq, where reagan supported a brutal dictator named Saddam Hussein, in Guatemala, where Reagan excused the atrocities of Efrain Rios Montt's death squads as "totally dedicated to democracy" and "givena bum rap by the press," in El Salvador, where murdered nuns became international communist conspirators, in Nicaragua, in american school cafeterias bountiful with ketchup and poverty.



As the military band plays the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," I imagine John Brown, Ralph Chaplin, and ten thousand air traffic controllers with middle fingers extended, reclaiming a melody from one who never deserved it.