Listics

Thinking of Reagan’s body this morning. Thousands of people out west found time to cruise the casket while it was in Simi Valley. Now it’s being moved to DC and tens of thousands more will show up to pay their repects to the deceased 93 year old former President of the United States.

Since the death of Lenin in 1924 his carefully embalmed cadaver has been on display in a great mausoleum in Moscow. For about eight years he shared space with Josef Stalin, but Khruschev’s de-Stalinization work made this arrangement unseemly and the new corpse was removed to a simple grave while Lenin’s body continued to lie in glorious state.

Here in the US we have all manner of roadside attractions and the value of maintaining corpses on display has never seemed profitable, so it’s doubtful that reagan will remain in the rotunda past the official mourning period. Never-the-less, this week’s outpouring of grief and curiousity reminds me of Soviet Russia where fallen leaders sometimes found their way to glass display cases.

I’ve always thought that with a timely application of carbon tetrachloride and formaldehyde, the Elvis industry in Memphis could have done a lot better. Tourism through Graceland is a mere trickle. Imagine what kind of revenue they could produce if they had the king under glass. Maybe Graceland could work a deal with the Reagan library….