I found the headline - "US media baffled by attacks on Lady Thatcher, Ronald Reagan's ally" - almost worthy of the satirical newspaper the Onion. Sometimes the line between parody and reality is dotted.
The observation made by the Guardian is a good one, though its treatment is a bit unavailing. It simply wouldn't occur to the major US news firms or those on Capitol Hill to voice understanding of the anti-Thatcher protests. To do so would be to acknowledge her (many) flaws and the harmful policies she championed. And to acknowledge those would be to, by extension, implicate the Ronald Reagan administration's very similar policy trajectory.
Condemnation of Reagan, open or otherwise, among news and political circles is simply forbidden; for that matter, so are accurate descriptions. For the "conservative" Republican Party, he exists as the archangel of free-market, fiscally conservative libertarian virtue. (He wasn't.) For the Democrats and the news organizations, he merely exists as an American icon: a grandfatherly cowboy who defeated the Soviet Union and ended the Cold War. (He didn't.)
Reagan's popularity was actually rather tepid during and following his presidency, but since then - owing to a sustained PR campaign - it has been elevated, with Americans now often viewing him in a rather positive albeit distorted way. To determine where Americans actually stand regarding his administration, one need only look at the polling data where people are asked about policy specifics, not questions couched in the context of partisan politics or personalities. And we know quite well the majority positions on these matters. Therefore, from this we can conclude that there are two Reagans: the one who existed and the one who has been idolized. For many Britons, however, there's only one Margaret Thatcher.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/13/margaret-thatcher-death-ronald-reagan
For reasonable comment on Thatcher, see author Tariq Ali's recent interview:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/04/12/decay-and-ruin-in-mrs-thatchers-england
