Margeret Thatcher is being remembered more fondly in the U.S. than in Britain, it seems, although not everyone on this side of the pond is being all that reverent, either. See, for example, Alex Pareene, “The Woman Who Wrecked Great Britain.”
The view from the American Right (example) is that she did what had to be done, for Britain’s own good, and while it’s a shame so many people suffered, by now everyone ought to agree it was for the best. Andy Sullivan saw in Thatcher “a final rebuke to the collectivist, egalitarian oppression of the individual produced by socialism and the stultifying privileges and caste identities of the class system.”
On the other hand, Paul Krugman points out —
Thatcher came to power in 1979, and imposed a radical change in policy almost immediately. But the big improvement in British performance doesn’t really show in the data until the mid-1990s. Does she get credit for a reward so long delayed?
And the answer is, from the Right, of course. Just like so many wingnuts wanted to credit Ronald Reagan for Bill Clinton’s economy, whereas (in their minds) President Obama owned George W. Bush’s economy as soon as he won the 2008 election.
GOP POV:
Oh, if only Herbert Hoover had won in ’32, HE could have been credited with the recovery from The Great Depression, and Republicans would have ruled in that part of the 20th, and probably the rest of that damned Liberal Century!!!
Politician Granny with your high ideals
Have you no idea how the majority feels
-Tears for Fears, “Sowing the Seeds of Love”
Not exactly post-mortem… she inspired a lot of punk and pop-song protests back in the day.
I’m flashing back to an afternoon in September 1983, when I bummed a ride around the Greenham Common airbase with some of the women camped there. Thatcher had just been re-elected but the mood was not dampened amongst the anti-nuke protesters. Politician Granny was a humorless robot by comparison.
And Thanksgiving Day 1990 when, at dinner, a friend broke the news that the Tories had booted her. Best. Thanksgiving. Ever.
She was a cancerous shadow on the 1980s, honestly.
“Margaret Thatcher is being remembered more fondly in the U.S. than in Britain”
Sure they should know right? FAUX did their best to whitewash the old hag’s record with nonstop propaganda. Greta Vansufferen did a soft ball piece with ol’ dead eye dick that was bone chilling. Cheney looks like he’s 60 years old with his new heart and was sporting a child-like cowboy hat, really spooky stuff.
Does Thatcher get credit for the mess Britain’s in now?
Didn’t she sow the seeds of the policies that are the core of Britain’s problems?
Maybe we should look back and see what political forces have shaped the modern, messed up, economy and who unleashed those forces.
Good heavens, is it possible? This is actually making me like Russell Brand. A lot.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/russell-brand/margaret-thatcher-our-unm_b_3046390.html
It appears that Maggie’s claim to fame was the military adventure against Argentina. That is on par with the US invasion of Grenada, praise the lord…..
Yeah, she was Nuestra Senora de las Malvinas… and she was a wartime Prime Minister. Is war a necessity to placed in the conservative hall of fame?
Her her conservative pet name— the Iron Lady— creates associations in my mind of the iron maiden and the Iron Cross…both of which have a dark feeling.
Thatcher believed Nelson Mandela deserved to rot in jail and Augusto Pinochet deserved to be free. ‘Nuff said.
One more thing, as pointed out by a commenter here —
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/09/russell-brand-margaret-thatcher
She supported Pol Pot. When the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia, she made sure the Khmer Rouge kept their seat at the UN.
“The view from the American Right … is that she did what had to be done, for Britain’s own good, and while it’s a shame so many people suffered, by now everyone ought to agree it was for the best.”
Isn’t that called ‘collectivism’? Take one for the team, comrades!
Mike G …Good link.
The editor of the U.K.’s conservative Daily Telegraph newspaper said online comments had been disabled on its Thatcher stories because of the volume of anti-Thatcher abuse.
Interesting take a long time ago on Thatcher the Slasher, from a young Tony Blair, who, unfortunately, learned nothing from his own piece.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2013/04/08/thomas-jones/blairs-thatcher-thatchers-blair/
Politician, take heed unto, and heal, thyself.
Too late for Tony.
JoanR16, thanks for the Russell Brand link. It is representative of such a different side of him, the man beneath the clown makeup. It is also an intriguing way of seeing Thatcher, as opposed to the “speak no ill of the dead” on the news. If England is better off, it is only so for some. Sorta like this place I know of…..
Ooops, posted this on the previous day’s thread. Reposting, here:
Our right wing, showing how much they love the Intertubes and the TWITsphere – claiming the North Korea is still dangerous, because, ‘Look what they did to Pearl Harbor!â€
I sh*t thee not:
http://publicshaming.tumblr.com/post/47223447644/remember-what-north-korea-did-to-the-u-s-at-pearl#_=_
And here I thought it was the Germans, all this time.
Another good one, Rand Paul went to Howard University, and talked to the college students there ‘like they was ignant pickaninnies!’
Did you know that the Republican Party was the party of Civil Rights, and still is?
And that ‘he has never wavered in his support for civil rights or the civil rights act.’
Yeah, me neither.
And, neither did the students.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/04/rand-paul-pretends-he-favored-civil-rights-act.html
Rand, what you did was the equivalent of getting up at ‘Veganism In Internet Age’ conference, and claiming that neither you nor anyone in your family has ever eaten meat, and that you fully support veganism – when all anyone had to do, was search for a second to find evidence of you wolfing down a medium-rare cheeseburger, while your dad ate a rare porterhouse, at the ‘Meatlovers For the Paul Family Fundraiser’ last week.
OY!
“TEH STOOOOOPID ‘N LION†– IT HERTZ!!!
One final thought about Margaret Thatcher:
While we can console ourselves that “The Iron Lady” is finally dead, and can do more personal damage, we need to remember, that her kind of “rust, never sleeps.”
“She made some serious mistakes – the poll tax, opposition to German unification, insisting that Nelson Mandela was a terrorist”
Well, that’s a charitable way of putting it. She also supported Pinochet. Her early monetarist policies quickly doubled the unemployment rate. But, while she didn’t find it necessary to bayonet opponents in the entrails and toss them from helicopters into shark infested waters, her victims were all the “right sort of victims”. You know people who did understand Milton Friedman.
The “mistakes” she made weren’t mistakes at all, they were logical conclusions drawn from her ideology and her Randian mindset.
For many years now the toxic seeds of the “no such thing as society” variety have taken root. It was particularly evident during the recent Republican primaries. The overwhelming characteristic that came forward in the candidates was a lack of empathy, followed closely by the Dunning-Kruger effect and “just world hypothesis”. This tears at the heart of the traditional goal of the American enterprise, the “greatest good for the greatest number”.