The Eighties Were Worth the Nostalgia

Ryan Reynolds kicked up a bit of a storm recently with comments that lashed the decade of the 1980s:

Reynolds, who is five years younger than I am (he was born in October 1976), undoubtedly has a skewed perspective on the Eighties even aside from being a typical Hollywood lefty. First, he’s Canadian — and while the Eighties was generally a good decade for Canada, especially compared with the Seventies, it wasn’t the same as here in America. Second, Reynolds’s elementary school burned to the ground in 1987, and there are reasons to think he set the fire. That sounds like a kid whose issues with the period were not about the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Reynolds has talked about having a difficult relationship with his dad, an ex-Mountie, if this gives one some insight into his thinking. (One might also doubt the judgment of a guy who is divorced from Scarlett Johansson.)

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Dan McLaughlin

Dan McLaughlin is a senior writer at National Review Online and a fellow at National Review Institute.

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Ryan Reynolds kicked up a bit of a storm recently with comments that lashed the decade of the 1980s:

Reynolds, who is five years younger than I am (he was born in October 1976), undoubtedly has a skewed perspective on the Eighties even aside from being a typical Hollywood lefty. First, he’s Canadian — and while the Eighties was generally a good decade for Canada, especially compared with the Seventies, it wasn’t the same as here in America. Second, Reynolds’s elementary school burned to the ground in 1987, and there are reasons to think he set the fire. That sounds like a kid whose issues with the period were not about the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Reynolds has talked about having a difficult relationship with his dad, an ex-Mountie, if this gives one some insight into his thinking. (One might also doubt the judgment of a guy who is divorced from Scarlett Johansson.)