“Just in case you forgot, 99% of the people in Hollywood are certified idiots. Ryan Reynolds, you know him from Deadpool and maybe a couple of rom-coms, thinks that the ‘80s are over-romanticized and had lots of trauma from various events. You know, like the Bay of Pigs Invasion and resulting Cuban missile crisis in 1962.”

Cheap shot. Reynolds didn’t say that the Cuban Missile Crisis happened in the 80’s. He said that people were anxious about their future in the Eighties because of Cold War events like that one. Here are more attacks on his comments:

I knew many, many people who were convinced that Ronald Reagan was going to start World War III, including my late wife. Why? Because the news media, though not nearly as biased and partisan as it is now, kept pushing that Democratic Party scaremongering talking point. In Washington, D.C, a snake-pit of the Left, the anxiety was palpable. Reagan talked tough to the Soviets and rejected Jimmy Carter’s weenie-ism regarding the USSR, aka. “detente.”

The Horror.

Today the average American under 30 knows almost nothing about the Cuban Missile Crisis, but Reynolds is right: in the 80’s, that experience was still raw in many people’s minds, including mine. Now, Reynolds is handicapped by being from Canada and his bubble is Hollywood, so he can be forgiven for having a warped perspective. Then there is this: A huge proportion of the movie community is gay or one of the other letters, and the Eighties were terrifying for that demographic. Reynolds isn’t going to be frank about that factor, so, searching, he defaulted to the peak of the Cold War as the source of 80’s terror. It is a fact, however, that the 80s were “really scary” if you were gay, bi-sexual, had multiple sex partners or thought you could catch AIDS from a kiss or a touch, as many kids Ryan’s age then (and their parents) believed.