Instead of an Email...

The Real Ronald Reagan, as Portrayed by Phil Hartman (by msaroff)

In this Saturday Night Live skit from the late 1980s, Phil Hartman plays Ronald Reagan as a man definitely in control — behind the scenes — while playing it dumb for the masses.  Very funny…

I had never heard of Phil Hartman (or his murder by his wife in 1998) as I wasn’t living in the country then, but after reading about him on Wikipedia, I feel like looking up more of his work.

I read a reference to this skit in Timothy D. Wilson’s book, Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious, as Wilson cites one theory of the relationship of the conscious self to the unconscious one as “consciousness-as-Ronald-Reagan,” i.e., a figurehead not exerting much control.