CBS Attacks The Reagans

October 29, 2003

The CBS fiction depiction entitled ‘The Reagans' that airs during November sweeps has caused a firestorm.   This hit piece, starring Mr. Barbra Streisand, James Brolin, is a concerted effort to destroy the loving legacy of one of our most popular presidents.   Streisand and her Hollywood cronies, frustrated by Republican control of the presidency and both houses of Congress, are lashing out the only way they know how, by rewriting history on celluloid.   But the winds have shifted and, like a California wildfire, this whole affair now threatens to engulf ailing CBS.

 

The two-part propaganda film is peppered with nice little quotes Ronald Reagan never made like this little jewel uttered by Brolin about AIDS victims.   “They that live in sin shall die in sin,” scriptwriter Elizabeth Egloff places in Reagan's mouth.   Trouble is, Reagan never said anything remotely like that and Ms. Egloff has now admitted as much.   Her reason for writing such libelous dialogue?   Well, that's something she thought he might say based on her ultra-left-wing perspective of the Reagan presidency.

 

Everyone from Ed Meese to Michael Reagan to Reagan's biographers has denounced this small-screen hatchet job.   Now the bigwigs at CBS are in a panic.   Les Moonves, CBS's entertainment chairman, who has spent vacation time with Fidel Castro and Renaissance Weekends with the Clintons, now says they're going back to the editing room.   “T here are things we think go too far,” he admitted to CNBC's Tina Brown.   Isn't that a diplomatic way of saying “we lied in this film?”   His damage control continued, “So there are some edits being made trying to present a more fair picture of the Reagans .”

 

Don't expect Moonves and company to try too hard.   Judy Davis, the Australian actress who plays Nancy Reagan, has stated publicly, “If this film can help create a bit more questioning in the public about the direction America has been going in since the 1970s, I guess then I think it will be doing a service.”  

 

Doing a service?   Does that not call these people out in the open?   This is not intended to be a historical account of the Reagans.   It's not even meant to entertain.   They hope to be “doing a service.”   For whom?   The radical left-wing, nutcase, lunatic fringe of the Democrat party?

 

Here's what to expect from those who have already gotten sneak peaks at parts of the film.   They try to resurrect the whole notion that Reagan was a “second-rate actor” or “B-movie star.”   I suppose since he did films with the likes of Errol Flynn, Lee Marvin, James Dean, Doris Day and Olivia de Havilland that means they were all “B-movie stars,” too.

 

They depict Nancy Reagan as some Mommy Dearest who handpicked Reagan's cabinet and even forced him into politics.   Those closest to Reagan, including his biographers, know that nothing could be further from the truth.   Reagan was convinced to run for governor by a group of California businessmen who were impressed with his televised speech in 1964 on behalf of Barry Goldwater.   Ed Meese, who was part of the whole cabinet-selection process during Reagan's first administration, says Nancy was never even remotely part of the process.

 

CBS is feverishly doctoring the two-part slam piece to make it more palatable to advertisers who now want to view the feature before committing dollars to hawking their products around it.   Who knows?   CBS may edit enough to make it a decent movie.   Then again, Barbra Streisand might become a Republican tomorrow but both are unlikely.   As I've said many times, and it holds true here: When you see Dan Rather, you C-BS.