Andy Ihnatko has posted a drinking game suggestion which has the potential to cause serious liver damage. Here’s the rules, just in case you don’t want to follow the link:
- Every time there’s a moment of silence for Ronald Reagan, you take a drink.
- For every twenty seconds that the moment of silence is awkwardly extended to ensure that every governor or senator with a shot at the 2008 nomination receives a somber close-up on national television, you take another drink.
- Every time a convention speaker claims that s/he can Feel Ronald Reagan’s Presence Among Us Today, you take a drink. Take a bonus drink if the speaker pretends to blink back tears; take a third if the speaker is also male.
- Every time the crowd is challenged to do something “for the Gipper” ? re-elect George W. Bush; support statewide referenda banning same-sex marriage; stop tossing chicken bones into Oklahoma’s seating area (Texas delegates only) ? you take a drink.
- Every time George W. Bush (or one of his designated proxies) attempts to create the impression that he’s Ronald Reagan’s son and not George Sr.’s, you take a drink.
- Every time there’s a video montage that ends with Ronald Reagan in cowboy attire, strolling and/or riding a horse in slow motion across a sweeping prairie in which the sky has been electronically replaced with a seductively rippling American flag, you chug.
I’ve got a couple suggestions for alternate rules. Of course, you’re probably not going to get as intoxicated if you follow them… Think of it as a Ronald Reagan drinking game for teetotalers.
- If the words ‘Air Traffic Controllers’ and ‘Reagan’ are spoken within two minutes of each other, take a drink
- If the words ‘Deficit’ and ‘Reagan’ are spoken within five minutes, take a drink
- If Reagan’s first wife, or if his kids from his first marriage are there or are mentioned, take a drink
- If they mention his support for the Apartheid regime in South Africa, drink
- Any mention of Augusto Pinochet or Ferdinand Marcos is worth a drink
- If they show any footage of Reagan laying a wreath in Bitburg Cemetary, take a drink
- If anyone mentions the civilians that were killed by Contra rebels, drink
- If someone points out that Al Quaeda and the Taliban have their roots in Reagan’s CIA-trained Mujahedeen, take a drink
- If Donald Rumsfeld reminisces about how Reagan sent him to cozy up to Saddam Hussein, chug your drink