Saturday, November 15, 2003

This Is My Body, Given For You To Drop In My Blood

I don't have Showtime, so I won't find out whether the following anecdote (related by Michael Deaver in his book Behind the Scenes; I read it in Joan Didion's essay "In the Realm of the Fisher King", collected in her book After Henry) is included in "The Reagans" miniseries...

During the 1980 campaign, the Reagans attended a church service at an Episcopalian church in Virginia. Deaver didn't know that the service would be having holy communion, a ritual he describes as being "very foreign" to the couple. Communion goes as such:

Deaver assures Mrs. Reagan that it will be acceptable to just dip the wafer in the chalice. Mrs. Reagan chances this, but manages somehow to drop the wafer in the wine. Ronald Reagan is too deaf to hear Deaver's whispered instructions, and has been instructed by his wife to "do exactly as I do". He, too, drops the wafer in the wine, where it is left to float next to Mrs. Reagan's. "Nancy was relieved to leave the church," Deaver reports. "The president was chipper as he stepped into the sunlight, satisfied that the service had gone quite well."

So what tickles your funny bone more? That Reagan didn't know how a basic Christian sacrament works? Or the irony of all those Charlie Church conservatives supporting him?