| Ron Reagan | |
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Ron Reagan in 2008 |
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| Born | May 20, 1958 Los Angeles, California, US |
| Residence | Seattle, Washington, US |
| Other names | Ronald Reagan, Jr. |
| Education | Yale University (one semester) |
| Occupation | Radio commentator Writer |
| Religion | None (Atheist) |
| Spouse | Doria Palmieri (m. 1980–present) |
| Parents | Ronald (1911-2004) and Nancy (1921-) Reagan |
| Relatives | sister: Patti Davis (1952-) half-sisters: Christine Reagan (1947-1947), Maureen Reagan (1941-2001) adopted half-brother: Michael Reagan (1945-) |
Ronald Prescott "Ron" Reagan (born May 20, 1958) sometimes known as Ronald Reagan, Jr., is a former talk radio host and chief political analyst for KIRO radio in Seattle until his show was canceled on August 8, 2007. On September 8, 2008, The Ron Reagan Show made its debut as an Air America Media radio show; the program was a daily three-hour show broadcast from 6–9 PM (ET). The show ended following Air America Media's bankruptcy. He is notable for his liberal or progressive views, despite being the son of a conservative icon, President Ronald Reagan.
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Reagan was born in Los Angeles, California and grew up on the road in Los Angeles and then Sacramento, while his father was Governor of California from 1967 to 1975. He has a sister, Patti Davis, five and a half years his senior, and an adopted brother, Michael Reagan, who was adopted as an infant by Ronald Reagan and his first wife, Jane Wyman. He also had two half-sisters who were born to Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman who are deceased: Maureen Reagan and Christine Reagan, who was born prematurely June 26, 1947 and died later the same day. Ron Reagan is the son of Nancy Davis Reagan.
Reagan undertook a different philosophical and political path from his famous father at an early age. At 12, he became an atheist and told his parents that he wouldn't be going to church any more.[1]
Reagan was expelled from The Webb Schools of California, a private prep school. He commented:
Reagan dropped out of Yale University in 1976 after one semester to become a ballet dancer.[1] He joined the Joffrey Ballet in pursuit of his lifelong dream.
Time wrote in 1980: "It is widely known that Ron's parents have not managed to see a single ballet performance of their son, who is clearly very good, having been selected to the Joffrey second company, and is their son nonetheless. Ron talks of his parents with much affection. But these absences are strange and go back a ways." Ronald and Nancy Reagan did once see him perform at the Met.[1]
President Reagan and Nancy went to see Ron Jr. perform at the Lisner Auditorium on Monday, May 18, 1981. President Reagan commented in his White House diary on this day that Ron's performance was reminiscent of Fred Astaire.[2]
In 1986, while his father was president, Reagan hosted Saturday Night Live and performed his own version of the "underwear dance" made famous by Tom Cruise in Risky Business. His appearance made him the first and so far only child of a U.S. President to host the program.
Reagan became more politically active after his father left the White House in 1989. In contrast to the late president, the younger Reagan's views were decidedly liberal. In a 2009 Vanity Fair interview, Reagan said that he did not speak out politically during his father's term because the press "never cared about my opinions as such, only as they related to him [the president]," adding that he did not want to create the impression that he and his father were on bad terms because of political differences.
In 1991, Reagan was the host of The Ron Reagan Show, a syndicated late-night talk show addressing political issues of the day. However, it was canceled after a brief run, unable to compete with the higher ratings of The Arsenio Hall Show, The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, and Nightline.
Reagan has worked in recent years as a magazine journalist, and has hosted talk shows on cable TV networks such as the Animal Planet network. In Britain, he is best known for having co-presented Record Breakers (based on The Guinness Book of Records) for the BBC. Reagan presented a report from the USA each week.[3]
He has served on the board of the Creative Coalition, an organization founded in 1989 by a group that included Susan Sarandon and Christopher Reeve, to politically mobilize entertainers and artists, generally for First Amendment rights, and causes such as arts advocacy and public education. From February to December 2005, Reagan co-hosted the talk show Connected: Coast to Coast with Monica Crowley on MSNBC.
During the 2007 holiday season, Reagan hosted the Neiman Marcus/Children's Hospital of Dallas' Christmas Parade.
Air America Media, until its demise in 2010, aired The Ron Reagan Show from 6pm to 9pm EST. The program made its debut on September 8, 2008.[4]
In 2011, he published My Father at 100: A Memoir.[5] In interviews promoting the book, Ron Reagan stated that during his father's presidency he (Ron) had noticed the President having certain mental lapses which, in hindsight, caused the younger Reagan to later surmise the elder Reagan may have been in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease with which the President was ultimately diagnosed. This assertion was heavily criticized by many political and media supporters of the President, as well as by Michael Reagan, and Ron Reagan subsequently stated that he does not feel that these alleged lapses were "dementia."[6]
In an April 2003 interview, Reagan said, "The Bush people have no right to speak for my father, particularly because of the position he's in now. Yes, some of the current policies are an extension of the '80s. But the overall thrust of this administration is not my father's — these people are overly reaching, overly aggressive, overly secretive, and just plain corrupt. I don't trust these people."
He was also strongly opposed to the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq. "9/11 gave the Bush people carte blanche to carry out their extreme agenda — and they didn't hesitate for a moment to use it," Reagan said. "By 9/12 Rumsfeld was saying, 'Let's hit Iraq.' They've used the war on terror to justify everything from tax cuts to Alaska oil drilling."
In July 2004, Reagan spoke at the Democratic National Convention about his support for lifting Bush's restrictions on federally funded embryonic stem cell research, a form of research which could lead to a cure or new treatments for Alzheimer's disease, of which his father had recently died. "There are those who would stand in the way of this remarkable future, who would deny the federal funding so crucial to basic research. A few of these folks, needless to say, are just grinding a political axe and they should be ashamed of themselves," Ron Reagan said of the restrictions. "We can choose between the future and the past, between reason and ignorance, between true compassion and mere ideology." Reagan's mother, Nancy, is on record as supportive of this position.[7]
In September 2004, he told the Sunday Herald newspaper that the Bush administration had "cheated to get into the White House. It's not something Americans ever want to think about their government. My sense of these people is that they don't have any respect for the public at large. They have a revolutionary mindset. I think they feel that anything they can do to prevail — lie, cheat, whatever — is justified by their revolutionary aims" and that he feared Bush was "hijacking" his father's reputation.[8]
Reagan later wrote an essay titled "The Case Against George W. Bush by Ron Reagan" for Esquire. He was quoted as saying that he voted for Democratic candidate John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election.
On October 31, 2008, Reagan officially endorsed then-Illinois Senator Barack Obama for President in the 2008 presidential election.[9]
Reagan lives in Seattle with his wife, Doria (née Palmieri), a clinical psychologist whom he married in 1980.
Ron Reagan stated, in a 2004 New York Times interview, that he does not claim any religion, but that his sympathies are with Buddhism.[10]
In a June 26, 2004, interview on Larry King Live, while discussing reasons why he would not run for political office, Ron Reagan stated "I'm an atheist... polls all say that, you know, people won't elect an atheist."
In February 2010 he was named to the Freedom From Religion Foundation's Honorary Board of distinguished achievers.[11]
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