Ronald Reagan Jr.
From Philosopedia
Reagan, Ronald Jr. (20 May 1958 - )
Reagan, the son of the 40th United States President, who was a Presbyterian, is an actor, writer, ballet dancer, journalist, and television talk show host.
He was born in Los Angeles, California, to actor Nancy Davis Reagan and Ronald Reagan Sr. His sister is Patti Davis, five and a half years his senior. His step-brother is talk show host Michael Reagan (born 1945), who was adopted as an infant by Ronald Reagan and his first wife, Jane Wyman. His half-sister is Maureen (1941 - 2001), author of First Father, First Daughter: A Memoir (1989).
While his father was Governor of California from 1967 to 1975, Ronald Jr. lived in Sacramento, California. He attended Yale University but dropped out in 1976 after one semester. At that time, his father was running in the Republican Presidential primary against incumbent Gerald Ford - disliking the attention he received at Yale, he joined the Joffrey Ballet in pursuit of a lifelong dream to become a ballet dancer. Although rumored to have been gay or bisexual, he is straight and in 1980 married Doria Palmieri, a psychologist.
Time in 1980 wrote:
- It is widely known that Ron's parents have not managed to see a single ballet performance of their son, who is clearly very good, having been selected to the Joffrey second company, and is their son nonetheless. Ron talks of his parents with much affection. But these absences are strange and go back a ways.
Reagan hosted Saturday Night Live on television midway through his father's second term as President, and in one skit he parodied Tom Cruise in Risky Business by dancing in his underwear in the White House while his parents were away. Watching on television, his parents reportedly had no idea who Cruise was, they had to have the joke explained.
On television he has co-hosted Connected: Coast to Coast (2005 - ). In films he has appeared in Tanner on Tanner (2004, as himself); My Date with the President's Daughter (1998); and Soul Man (1986). Reagan, who now works as a political correspondent for MSNBC, has covered dog shows for Animal Planet.
In the mid-1990, he dropped the "junior" from his name. He long as been a vocal opponent of his father's political party, the Republican. To Fox News reporter Roger Friedman (22 January 2004), he said:
- Reagan has always been a vocal opponent of his father's political party, but never as much as he is now. He told me he will write an article of undetermined length for Esquire explaining why George W. Bush should not be re-elected.
- One reason, I inferred, was that Bush has blocked stem-cell research for diseases such as Alzheimer's. Reagan is extremely clear about his feelings on this subject, since his father, who will turn 93 next month, has been felled by this insidious illness.
- "It's unbelievable that Bush doesn't approve stem-cell research," Reagan said.
- I also asked Reagan what he thought of the controversial TV movie, made by CBS but aired on Showtime recently, about his family.
- "I saw it on tape," he said. "Someone sent it to me. I think my mother saw some clips from it. It looked to me like a 'Saturday Night Live' sketch. I mean, it was just so bad. And who cared? James Brolin did a terrible imitation of my father. Judy Davis is a good actress, but she's not my mother. The problem is that people made such a big deal out of it, but in the end it was nothing."
- Reagan and I reminisced about the days in the early 1980s when he and his wife Doria, to whom he is still married, lived on my block in New York. The Secret Service took up a lot of parking spaces, which caused much grumbling.
- "We left after 18 months," he said. "I never really liked living in New York. I'm much happier in the country."
While interviewing the self-proclaimed messiah Charles Manson for a media program, Reagan was preached to by the man who allegedly had a “spell” over a “family” of followers who were found guilty of murdering actress Sharon Tate and her four guests. When Manson explained his “message” on the recorded program and asked the President’s son if he believed in God, Reagan responded, “No, I do not.”
MSNBC on 12 July 2004, writing about words he spoke at the internment ceremony for his father, confirmed Reagan's being an atheist:
- A few weeks ago, William F. Buckley Jr., an elder statement of the conservative movement, wrote privately to Reagan, an atheist, and accused him of "deriding the faith of your parents."
- Buckley, a long-time friend of President Reagan, also claimed to know him better than Reagan’s son. Buckley’s remarks were reprinted publicly today by conservative columnist Robert Novak.
- "I’ve known Bill since I was a child," says Reagan. "I’ve admired him for his decency, honesty, and sense of honor. I don’t know why he would give that piece of correspondence to a reporter." Reagan adds that he wrote Buckley back, "but I have no intention of releasing it to the press. He sent me a letter, and I assume these things are private."
- While the Bush White House was privately infuriated with Reagan, most Republicans, in the wake of national mourning, offered no response to Ron Reagan’s eulogy or his stance. The irony is that many moderate Republicans agree with the Reagan family on the issue of stem cell research and they are now even angrier President Bush hasn’t change his position to something the Reagans might support.
On 6 November 2009 at the Seattle Red Lion Hotel, site of the 32nd annual convention of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Reagan accepted their "Emperor Has No Clothes Award." He described as a youth reading the Bible and finding God "positively psychotic." People despise atheists, he declared, "because they're terrified about the weakness of their own faith."
(See "One Boy's Journey to Godlessness," FREETHOUGHT TODAY, March 2010.)
