I'm back from New York after a fantastic sales conference with Consortium, where I had a chance to pitch Goodbye Madame Butterfly to the national sales staff, take part in a marketing workshop (just what CMP needs) and attend a party at the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge where I met other publishers who share our same cultural mission. More on that later, but here's a piece that hit me like a breath of fresh air after all the recent Ronald Reagan hagiography. We so soon forget what a blatant racist Reagan was throughout his career. But not Alec Dubro — he wants to remind us all:

Ronald Reagan. The man was a saint, a positive saint. Such strength, such warmth, such conviction, such vision. Such claptrap.

Reagan was a mean, crazy old man with a withering contempt for most of the world’s people, beginning with African Americans and extending most strongly to black Africans.

From his rigid pro-apartheid stance to his blatantly purposeful choice of kicking off the last stretch of his presidential campaign at the very place where civil right workers were killed by the KKK and telling an all-white audience that he believes in "states rights," Ronnie was a true, blue white racist, and it's good that someone's reminding us of this fact. Now back to publishing.