"Washington (CNN) - Don't invite the late President Ronald Reagan's two sons over for a tea party, much less a beer.
Well, maybe a beer, kind of like President Obama's "beer summit" last summer at the White House. That might be needed.
The brothers Reagan, Ron and Michael, don't agree on how their dad – often described as the father of the modern day conservatism – would view the Tea Party movement."
It was the kind of an idea that comes up after having a beer, actually a few beers, well, after a few too many beers. Ron and Michael Reagan, sons of the late President and Conservative God figure, met to settle their differences. It wasn't voluntary. An angry, screeching phone call from someone simply known as "mommy" had made the meeting mandatory.
Well, after the second six pack had been polished off, Michael was willing to admit gay was okay, since Dick Cheney's daughter was a lezzie. And Ron was willing to admit tea bagging was okay, but Michael didn't get that one.
After several slurred, long winded speeches about how the other brother was actually a-ok, they got to the subject at hand - what would their dad have thought of the Tea Party movement?
But slowly they came to the conclusion that after three six packs of PBR, they still disagreed.
"Dad hated commies, and Obama is a socialist commie," Michael slurred, trying to open another can with his teeth.
"Oh c'mon Michael," Ron chided, licking the foam off his lips deliberately and slowly (for some reason this annoyed Michael, real men don't allow foam to form when pouring a beer, only blonds do that, something about loving to get a good head). "There ain't no such thing as a socialist commie. You're either a commie or a socialist. Ya can't be both." And he dumped the rest of his can into his glass, creating a huge foaming head.
"Are you kidding me?" Michael shot back. "Did you see that Change poster? Wasn't that right out of 1930's socialist pride rallies?"
"Dude, Obama didn't draw that poster. Some PR type did. Don't blame the messenger."
"Huh?" Michael scrunched up his face. Ron was clearly missing a few stem cells. "By the way, this is good beer. I wonder what beer dad drank?"
"I think it was Sierra Nevada, but I can't remember... Hey! It just hit me!"
"What? You remember his favorite beer?" Michael was pouring a can into a glass slowly, down the side of the glass to show how it's done so no head of foam results. "You watching this?"
"You know how Mom used to go see astrologers and stuff?"
"Yeah?" Michael was so proud of his beer pouring skills. Not a tiny bit of foam. He looked over at his brother and felt revulsion watching him lick the foam out of the inside of the glass. That just wasn't right.
"Well, to answer the question what would Dad think about the Tea Party, why don't we ask him!"
Michael shook his head as if clearing cob webs. "Huh? You over your limit already?" Michael was seriously disappointed in his brother, who really needed to man up.
"No, I'm dead serious. Down on Palomar there's a tatoo parlor, it's where I got my Prince Albert, and right next door is a medium and fortune teller shop. I read the sign she talks to the dearly departed. Let's go there and ask him directly."
Michael stared at his brother like he had totally lost it. Why would his brother get a tatoo of Prince Albert? But then, slowly, like the way his brother kept licking the rim of that beer stein, it dawned on him that it was a brilliant idea! Just like a Reagan! "You're right! Let's go for it!"
A half hour later the two inebriated brothers stumbled into the medium's shop.
"You think it's ok that I parked like that on the curb?" Michael asked.
"Don't worry about it," Ron patted his brother on the back, "I do it all the time."
A woman came out of a beaded curtain and said nothing, staring at the two obviously drunk men.
"We want to talk to our dad."
"He's not here," she answered.
"No, no, you don't understand. We're Ron and Michael Reagan, we're the sons of President Reagan, and he's dead, and we're not, and we want to talk to him."
The woman just stared at them.
"You're a medium, aren't you? You talk to dead people?"
"Oh!" suddenly realization surfaced. "Yes, yes, of course, I don't get many requests for that sort of thing anymore. Just fortune telling, winning lottery numbers, is my boyfriend cheating on me, am I pregnant, that sort of thing. And after those disposable pregnancy tests, there went 25% of my business." She lifted back the beaded curtain and showed them to the back of the store. "Right this way."
Fifteen minutes later after candle lightings, incense burning, cash payment in advance (which Michael had to fork over since Ron had forgotten his wallet, and then lots of incantations, the medium went into a trance, rolling her eyes into the back of her head. It was a hard trick to do, but for five hundred cash, she could maintain this for an hour.
"Dad! Dad! Are you there?" Ron called. He wasn't sure on the protocol.
"Who the hell is that?" a strange voice came out of the throat of the medium. Even the medium was startled. She usually just garbled lots of strange scratchy grunts and the customers deciphered it for whatever they wanted it to be. But this actually sounded like someone was talking.
"Dad, it's me, your son Ron."
"Oh, the pansy. If your mom had had the abortion like I told her too, I would have been spared a hell of a lot of embarassment."
Michael came to his senses hearing his father's voice. "Daddy! It's me! Michael!"
"Oh what the hell do you want? At least Ron was honest enough to come out of the closet."
Ron did a double take at his brother. Michael ignored him. "Dad, we need you to answer a question."
"Answer you a question? No, you answer my question first. Why the hell did Gorby win a Nobel Peace Prize, and I didn't? Huh? Can you answer that one? I fucking bankrupted the Russkies with the arms race, watched the Eastern bloc collapse and the Berlin wall fall, and all I got was an Alzheimers defense, and they give him the god damn prize. Besides everything else I have to suffer through now, I have that one over my head as well. Every day Nybras chides me about it. Damn little fucking low rank demon, thinks he's hot shit."
"Dad," Ron asked, concerned, "where are you?"
"Huh? Oh, uh, I don't remember."
Michael cut in. "Dad, we just have one question. Would you support the activities of the conservative Tea Party?"
"Party? Who's having a party? And why the hell would they have tea? Somebody making a remake of Alice in Wonderland?"
"Dad, don't you stay up on current events up there?"
"Up there? Maybe they do. But down here, we have more important things to worry about than how the hell all of you keep fucking yourselves over."
"So you don't follow politics at all in the afterlife? I thought it was your life's passion!"
"The only goddamn politics I have ever cared about was getting rid of taxes. And I think I did a damn good job of it. And you would have thought that would have bought me a ticket. But no, supply one damn little dictator with canisters of gas to use on some no name Kurds, and I get a failing grade. What bullshit."
"So you don't have any opinion about the Republican backlash against the socialist policies of President Obama?" Michael asked.
"Obama? Oh my god, bless his soul. What a great man, what a right choice a bunch of dimwits finally made. You don't know how happy I was the day he was elected."
"You were happy he was elected?" Michael was incredulous.
"Damn right. It was thirty-two degrees for two weeks down here after that election. Pure heaven."
Suddenly the medium fell backward on her chair and hit the floor, coughing and gasping, ruining the trance for all three of them. The seance was clearly over.
Ron stood up with face beaming. "Hah, bro, you owe me on that one. Say, want to go next door and get a Prince Albert?"
***
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