Baroness Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990, has died. It’s difficult to even imagine what the UK would be today had someone grayer than her and less forceful in vision than the Iron Lady been in Downing Street for that time.
Burt Likko
Pseudonymous Portlander. Pursuer of happiness. Bon vivant. Homebrewer. Atheist. Recovering Republican. Recovering Catholic. Recovering divorcé. Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of Ordinary Times. Relapsed Lawyer, admitted to practice law (under his real name) in California and Oregon. There's a Twitter account at @burtlikko, but not used for posting on the general feed anymore. House Likko's Words: Scite Verum. Colite Iusticia. Vivere Con Gaudium.
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Who’s going to tell Councilwoman Knope?
RIP, Baroness.Report
Not entirely relevant, but what did you think of the movie “Iron Lady”?Report
Brought a tear to my eye.Report
I hated it, the Better Half liked it. He saw it as a portrait of her dementia (in which case I’d call it successful). I saw it as a mess of a biopic that did little to communicate the actual life achievements (for good or ill) of its subject.
But Meryl Streep was fabulous. There’s a scene of her late in her career in an empty meeting room after having been rudely abusive to a loyal supporter, and the way her face subtly collapses under the realization of just what a horrible mistake she’s made is a master class in acting.Report
Daniel Day-Lewis would have been good too.Report
I should’ve put my cards on the table when I asked the question. But I’ll say I liked it. I saw the movie as a commentary on what people give up when they become public figures. In this case, she gave up overseeing her family and she lived her regrets through her dementia. (Of course, my take on what I think the movie’s take was has a very gendered component. I don’t think we’d see a biopic of, say, the familial sacrifices John Major had to make.)Report
I got twenty minutes into it and I had to let Kitty watch the rest by herself. I can’t speak for the rest of it, but the first twenty minutes is a good portrait of dementia.
I don’t need to experience that again, vicariously or not.Report
It can be disturbing. My father had alzheimers, and so did his mother. And so did my mother’s sister. (Not a good augury for me, either.) I’ve also known a professor who had something like it (I’m not sure if it was officially alzheimers). Very sad thing to see.Report
Yes, I think my own proximity to dementia, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer is why I wept at the scene where she frantically collected his old clothes while it flashed back on moments of their life together.
Good lord, I just teared up thinking about it.Report
Thatcher looms as a larger-than-life figure from my childhood. I was terrified of war with the USSR (thanks a lot 80s action movies!). She made me feel a lot safer than Reagan, kind of like my grandmother.Report
Interesting. Did Reagan unsettle you on the Cold War front, or was Thatcher just that much more reassuring? What was the difference there as you felt it?Report
I had forgotten that the IRA had spent a few years trying to bomb her.Report
I was studying in London in March of 1990 and saw first-hand the beginning of the end of Thatcher’s reign as Prime Minister — the infamous Poll Tax Riots. While many of the reforms she undertook during her term of office were arguably necessary to address sclerotic problems with Britain’s economy, the glee with which she seemed to stick it to poor people could be jarring at times.
I suspect that she probably has a better reputation in the US than she does in Britain, owing largely to us seeing her as someone that helped Ronnie stare down the Commies.Report
I’d say its roughly a 50/50 split between those who think she was the best PM in the last 50 years and those who think she was the worst.Report
Just an impression on my part, but I find (in the U.S.) that those who really liked Reagan really like Thatcher, and those who really hated him, really disliked Thatcher. If true, it’s not a particularly surprising observation, I guess.Report
I cannot adequately frame my contempt for Margaret Thatcher. But Elvis Costello has given it an eloquent try.Report
Musicians made a fortune off her, and most used the money to snort up half of Columbia.
She’s like the patron saint of punk rock.Report
Judy Garland is not punk rock.Report
I have to admit that while I detest much of what I remember and have read since about her policies towards the poor I was only a child and in a middle class family so the visceral hate largely passed me by. That said the protests are absolutely necessary to counter the sanctification of the woman. If it was a matter of showing respect for the mourning of the family I would agree but when we are asked to show respect for the idea everyone in Britain loved her and her policies it is right to counter this with reality and when her ideas still define government policy respect for the dead is being turned into an attempt to silence dissent.Report