One of the ways you can see how glowing the coverage of Reagan's death has been is to take a look at the number of times he's been referred to by his nickname (and/or the more casual form of his first name). Here's a chart I made this morning by doing a quick Google search of Reagan's nicknames :
For those of you who would respond that Clinton's death will be marked with the same kind of gushing and historical whitewashing, it's worth noting that a news search right now for "Clinton" and "Monica Lewinsky" yields more than twice as many results as "Reagan" and "Oliver North", despite the fact that Reagan's death is all over the news and the only news about Clinton in the last week or so is about that book he's releasing.
Yeah, I know effusive praise generally follows the death of any President, but, if it ain't obvious now, over the next week we're gonna be seeing the people who have a lot to gain politically by the public mourning of a "popular" president milking this for all it's worth.
(This was originally posted at The Talent Show)