Can even someone as revered as their icon, President Ronald Reagan, possibly teach the boorish Boss Limbaugh and other right-wing extremists now poisoning the TV and radio airwaves to choose their words more carefully?
Or are even Ronald Reagan teaching moments wasted on the ideologues now recklessly and self-servingly invoking the name of Adolf Hitler?
The late president's son, Ron Reagan, is among those disgusted and appalled with Limbaugh and other poisonous talk-show ideologues referring to President Obama as a "modern-day Hitler."
Late last week at the open of his Air America radio show, Reagan revealed a personal family story about his late father to make a point about what the real Nazis actually did. (You know, Rush, the ones in 1940's Germany).
"When I was 12," Reagan recalled, "My father said he had something to show me. He said, "I think you're old enough to see the worst that humans can do to one another.'"
Reagan said his Dad reached into a closet, found a dusty old film canister, and put the celluloid contents on the family film projector.
"It was raw, unedited newsreel film of the liberation of Auschwitz," Reagan Jr. said, recalling his shock and horror as a boy seeing for the first time the stacked-up bodies and the walking dead.
"This was not some empty political rhetoric delivered with an eye toward ratings share and ad revenue," Regan said with ill-disguised contempt.
Reagan then added about this about his disreputable fellow talk-show hosts:
These well-fed media jesters can't imagine the suffering they are mocking, and it is shameful. And these are the people," Reagan sighed, "who these town-hall protestors look to for inspiration?
"They're not just being ugly and stupid with their thoughtless rants," the late president's son said angrily. "They are deeply, irredeemably offensive."
"This mindless evocation of Nazis being tied to Obama is disgusting."
The first 10 minutes or so or Reagan's Air America show is often as entertaining and topical as anything in radio. Usually, the talented younger Reagan's tone is sarcastic, mocking, and deliciously snarky when he goes after Limbaugh and "his acolytes, the town-hall ignoramuses."
But this day, when recalling that sobering boyhood episode with his Dad, Reagan's tone was clearly one of disgust.
This day, the president's son sounded even angrier at the poisonous Limbaugh and Glenn Beck crowd than most of us usually are.
My own father, a career Army officer, helped liberate those death camps. Unlike Reagan's father, my Dad could never bring himself to share any of that horrifying experience with our family.
You can hear the seven-minute Ron/Ronald Reagan Auschwitz segment here.