Nancy Reagan’s one good quality, so far as I am aware, was that she gave the best blowjobs in Hollywood, back in her days as an on-the-make starlet. This is according to Peter Lawford, who may have been in a position to know but who also, as a quasi-Kennedy, is hardly a reliable source.

I would like to believe that it was so, since I don’t like to believe that anybody is all bad. Perhaps it even explains the characteristic expression of halfwit blissfulness that old Ronnie nearly always wore.

Incautiously, I expressed this observation yesterday, in my first flush of enthusiasm for a post-Reagan world, and encountered a good deal of chilly disapproval, from friends who I am pretty sure had no use for Pa or Ma Kettle, and who are not prudes.

Some of my pals seemed to think this was a misogynist thing to say, though I understand that blowjobs are not a female monopoly, and are frequently given and received, across this broad land, by all sorts and conditions of mankind, and often with considerable satisfaction to donor as well as recipient. That is to say, I agree with what seems to be a pretty broad consensus that blowjobs are not just a contribution to the ‘publick stock of harmless Pleasure’, but a downright Good Thing.

In the Nancy Reagan case, the piquancy of her rep as a mouth musician is of course much increased by the hypocrisy factor. In later life she became identified, as everybody knows, with the slogan ‘just say no’, and emerged as a staunch advocate of traditional morality. Whatever that means. Perhaps it allows for blowjobs, but only under carefully controlled conditions.

Did I show insufficient sympathy for what a girl needs to do to get ahead — no puns, please — in a man’s world? Perhaps. I don’t have much sympathy with people wanting to get ahead, in general. It seems like a bad character trait to me. But of course even-handedness is a deplorable quality too. One law for the wolf and the lamb, etc.

Nancy always just struck me as a very bad person, and a deeply unattractive personality: cold, ambitious, unspontaneous, affected, manipulative, false, callous, mean-spirited, vindictive, ignorant and smug. So while it’s possible to imagine her honing her technique to a high level — she was never lazy — it’s difficult to imagine her ever giving a sincere BJ, a BJ for its own sake, as opposed to an instrumental, tactical, career-enhancing BJ.

Reflecting on that aspect of the matter, what might have appeared an amiable trait in another person takes on a different coloration. The thought of that ferret brain scheming behind the pliant lips has, shall we say, a chilling effect.

I think some of my friends may also have thought it was tacky or tasteless to take a whack at somebody newly dead. Perhaps, but I don’t see it that way.

There are things I won’t say about the newly dead. I won’t say I’m glad they’re dead, for example. Nobody deserves to die, though we all do.

Nor will I say I hope they burn in Hell. Nobody is bad enough to deserve eternal punishment, though plenty of people are bad enough, as I may have said before, for a good long roasting in Purgatory.

But there are also people bad enough to have forfeited all the usual courtesies owed to Samael’s more recent clients. The Reagans fall into this category. Bad garbage; and though I won’t say good riddance to them, I won’t forbear to remark upon the stench they leave lingering in the air.