Meet Me at the Back of the Blue Bus

"...in short that, just as on the material side of human culture there has everywhere been an Age of Stone, so on the intellectual side there has everywhere been an Age of Magic?"
J.G. Frazer

A slip of the tongue? Freudian faux pas? At long last...some Obama Drama? Our PeOTUS Barry-O is nearly as adept at impromptu speaking as he is at following teleprompters, and I thank the Almighty that we finally will have a leader who can "think on his feet". But then gaffes are gonna be unavoidable, aren't they?
Obama does nothing in a small way. His first post-election, pre-inauguration press conference offered up his first doozy. When Barack was queried about any confabs he may have had with our prior presidents he didn't feel constrained by the boundries of this, our dimension, and almost apologetically claimed that he and the Widow Reagan hadn't summoned the ghost of Ronald Wilson. (Personally I don't understand why, unless Noonan wasn't up to channeling.)
As we watched and heard Obama use the word "seance" my Good Wife gasped while I pulled a ROFL and a couple inter-rib muscles.
At first she thought me mad (not uncommon) then realised it was merely my mordant and macabre sense of humor. She knew that neither I nor Barack intended injury to NancyPants.
It didn't take the press long to understand this either- the response was immediate. Not only were they willing to revive the Reagan's reliance on the occult, but that they might seem "fair and balanced", had to conjure cryptic Clinton connections to the afterlife and "communications" therewith. All this as straight-faced journalism. No note of derision, not an excision charged against deviation from reason...just in case, you know. For is it unreasonable to make a conjecture, just a wild guess mind you, that indeed Mrs. Reagan has made not one but many attempts to "talk with" her dearly departed RonnyKins? I shouldn't think so.
What did Barack apologise for when he made that ex post facto call to California?
"Hello?"
"Um, yes hello. Is this Mrs Reagan?"
"This is."
"Ahhh...Mrs Reagan this is Barack Obama."
"You're that boy moving into my other house?"
"Yes ma'am that's right. Mrs Reagan I..."
"Now you're all paid up? The first and last month's?"
"Mrs Reagan I think I said something on TV..."
"Oh! You're calling about that seance thing?"
"Yes ma'am. Now I don't want you to think that-"
"That's OK, Brock. You know I'm pretty sure that I
felt the table move last Friday, but with those tremors
you know...well you just can't tell!"
"Ummm. Yes. So Ronnie hasn't...?"
"Listen Brock, when He decides to contact us I will be sure
to let you know. You will keep that phone bill paid?"

It wasn't just the Widow's toes that Obama trod upon. He's messing with the Myth. Just never-you-mind if the Great Communicator isn't quite up to the task of communicating from the other side; the legend is still alive. All of the Zodiacal social planning, the Voodoo economics, the incessant invocation of the Christian triumvirate/singular Deity were part and parcel of the Reagan Years- the Gilded Age of Republican Rule. Ah yes, remember when.
Remember when we smilingly went beyond flirting with fascism and started playing footsie?
Perhaps the afterlife does play a part in the present. Maybe it was the ghost of Karl Marx that used the invisible hand of Adam Smith to slap us upside the head. Maybe Ronnie Raygun is being gagged by a noodly appendage of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Almost seems anticlimatic to say "To Be Continued".