Sorry: I wasn’t really aware that the name “RONALD REAGAN National Airport” was so infuriating to a bunch of people that I was already cheerfully contemptuous towards. Under the circumstances, my only regret is that I’m not writing thing on Saturday morning, so that my saying “RONALD REAGAN National Airport!” wasn’t contributing to more hangovers right now. Anyway, this is what I really took away from that article:
In the long run, it looks like “Reagan” will win out. Our survey found that younger generations are more likely to use Reagan, regardless of political affiliation. That may be because, to them, “Reagan” simply connotes “the convenient airport that’s on Metro” — just as “Dulles,” to many locals, means “the airport that’s way out in Virginia,” not “the namesake of John Foster Dulles, architect of Cold War brinkmanship.”
That’s certainly the case for Denzel Thomas, 25.
“I don’t know much about Ronald Reagan,” said the D.C.-based artist, while waiting for a flight to Miami. “I think he was president before I was born.”
Don’t be absurd: ’25’ means that the guy was born in… 1990.
Oh, God, I am old.
Moe Lane
Via @gabrielmayor.
Say my name…
Houston George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH) is even more fun because these people WERE alive when he was President, and there’s no way Texas will ever change the name.
Renaming it was worthwhile simply because of the folks it offended.
As I recall WMATA and Arlington County opposed the name change because it would make the name of the Metro station too long for the standard signs.
A few years later they renamed one of the Green line stations “U Street- Cardozo- African American Civil War Memorial”
https://xkcd.com/1093/
.
Mew
How about “Ronald Reagan Way the Hell Better than the Idiot Currently in the White House National Airport”?
you’re not old, Moe. grandkids are that particular marker.