Now the neo's are suppressing a TV show!
GOP Outcry Makes CBS Rethink Airing 'Reagans'
Critics say docudrama taints president's legacy. Network may shelve show or play it on cable.Executive producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron have told colleagues that they have lost control of their movie, with CBS stepping in and taking over its editing, despite initially signing off on the script.
" This decision goes beyond a television movie; it's precedent-setting in bowing down to conservative fringe groups," said a person close to Sony Pictures Television who asked for anonymity. Sony is the production studio for the project. "It creates a whole new environment for censorship on TV," the person added.
Among the protests against CBS: The Republican National Committee late last week asked CBS to screen the film for a team of historians. GOP Chairman Ed Gillespie suggested CBS run a "crawl" reminding the audience "that this is not a film that is supposed to be historically accurate." Brent Bozell, president of the Virginia-based Media Research Center, the largest conservative media watchdog group in the U.S., sent a letter to the country's top 100 corporate advertisers asking them not to support the miniseries. Radio talk-show host Michael Reagan, the former president's eldest son, vented his displeasure. Reagan's daughter, Patti Davis, wrote a commentary for next week's Time magazine but refused immediate comment. Maryland lawyer Michael Paranzino set up a Web site, http://www.boycottcbs.com, which he said received more than 50,000 e-mails protesting the show. [LA Times 11/04/03]
I wasn't going to watch the damned thing anyhow, but continuing strong-arm tactics of the far right are becoming more and more like this description from a 1936 novel by Eric Ambler:
"...there's a sort of seedy imperialist philosophy with a lacing of Fascism behind it all."
The "imperialist philosophy" got us into Iraq; the "lacing of Fascism" is making even more profound changes in the very nature of American democracy.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Tom Bux
No one is trying to supress anything. There is a freedom of speech and of the press. They have the right to show it just as conservatives have the right to not like it, and boycott it, or boycott advertisers. Just because conservatives are voicing their disaproval doesn't mean they are trying for censorship.
I guess when liberals got the Dr. Laura show off the air, or boycotted The Savage Nation on TV that was alright because it met your liberal agenda. I certainly hope you can be intelectually honest.
The problem with this show is it vilifies the Reagans, who are still alive with the President dying a slow death. When shows about other presidents are done, they are either done long after their deaths and try to be somewhat historically correct. If they are not historically accurate they don't pretend to document what actually happens and are advertised as a work of fiction.
2 - Joe
So why do you say it's the neo's? I didn't find anything in what you wrote to suggest Perle, Kristol, Wolfowitz et al were responsible. Frankly, it was probably the Illuminati or the Freemasons but I wouldn't put it past the Zoroastrians.
3 - Hal Pawluk
First, I don't have a "liberal agenda" and as far as your particular examples go, the shows were just too dumb to watch/listen to so I didn't but had no objection to their being on the air with their particular slants.
This situation is different, and there has been a huge attempt by the right-wing fans to make the show "politically correct," with calls for script approval rights, pulling it off the air entirely, etc.
Read the story and check some of the TV news show transcripts.
It's right-wingers trying to direct the creative expression to their liking, or failing that, to stop the show entirely because one of their idols is not being portrayed as they would wish (kind of like Russian movies in the Communist era).
As far as my personal beliefs about Reagan go, I was a Californian when he was governor and thought he did a pretty good job, as he did when he became president.
That doesn't mean that I have to become a Stepford-Republican and believe only the party line. Especially when it's the hard-core right wing spouting it.
4 - mike
It was the entire Right banding together in one great show of solidarity for the Gipper, aka the Great Leader, the One Who Made Us Whole, Who Completed Us: We Are But Putty in His Hands, Mere Servants of His Greatness, Specks in the Sands of Time. Thank God they succeeded. As we know, the liberals control all three branches of government, the regulatory agencies, most state and local governments, and the media. It's about time the brave dissidents of the Right stood up to their thuggish ways.
5 - Mark Fusco
This has more to do with bad timing than it does with freedom of speech. In addition to what was brought up in the comment immediately previous, we are also a nation in the middle of a major conflict. Now is not the time to paint the President (ANY President - Republican, Democrat or otherwise) as a buffoon.
6 - Hal Pawluk
"we are also a nation in the middle of a major conflict. Now is not the time to..."
Yeah, right.
7 - Chris
I actually don't support CBS pulling this. I think they should have run it and then did one of the old school Nightline type panel discussions.
BUT . . . to cry foul when this same type of pressure and crap is pulled to get Dr. Laura or Savage Nation taken off the air is disingenous. Liberal Interest groups hate it when their playbook is stolen.
8 - Chris Arabia
Bollocks! Reagan's supporters have every right to protest or complain. The First Amendment does not guarantee CBS an audience, just as it didnt guarantee Dr. Gomorrah and the Savage an audience (Hal, I agree that both of those people don't especially merit attention, but that is NOT the point). As long as nobody is barring the CBS show at gunpoint, this censorship message is nonsense.
CBS should be embarassed that they were going to air this hatchet job. If you are going to depict a fictional president in a fictional world, call it fiction! I don't support the show, but I am not about to boycott CBS either.
If the left is going to support these boycotts some times, they shouldn't whine now.
9 - Mark Saleski
it's funny how the left always "whines" while the right makes nothing but valid points.
sure.
10 - Chris Arabia
no, some on the right whined about the campaigns against laura and savage. here they make a valid point. i suppose if i had to defend the failed leftist ideology i'd focus on semantics the way the previous post does.
11 - Mark Saleski
suppose if i had to defend the failed leftist ideology i'd focus on semantics the way the previous post does.
oooh, oh so clever...and totally misses the point....which is that it's become very tiresome when people (on both sides) refer to opponents commentary as "whining"...infering that their words are worthless and somehow have less instrinsic merit than their own.
this makes the debate quickly fall down into yes-i-did-no-you-didn't land.
12 - Hal Pawluk
" when this same type of pressure and crap is pulled to get Dr. Laura or Savage Nation taken off the air is disingenous."
Just as a point of fact so I don't get tarred with a liberal label, I wasn't aware that those two shows had been pulled off the air, and certainly not through some concerted effort. The shows just weren't on my radar at all.
If I get time, I'll go Google them and see why they were taken off (in the belief that stupidity probably wasn't the reason).
13 - JR
"CBS should be embarassed that they were going to air this hatchet job. If you are going to depict a fictional president in a fictional world, call it fiction!"
I must have missed this Reagan movie. What part of it was inaccurate?
14 - Chris
Here is one piece on the campaign against Dr. Laura.
15 - Chris
Here is one on GLADD and Savage Nation.
Both campaigns were based on the content of the shows that the groups in question found questionable.
16 - Chris Arabia
i got the point--you were trying to insinuate that people on the right are uniformly hypocritical and thus their position on this issue is less valid. your second post mischaracterized then your first one to rebut my criticism (your second post also describes exactly what you did in your first post).
if you are going to imply that i am lacking in intelligence, fine. all i ask in return is that you don't misuse "infering" [sic] in the same post. i may be stupid, but i hate misuse of infer.
17 - Hal Pawluk
"to cry foul when this same type of pressure and crap is pulled to get Dr. Laura or Savage Nation taken off the air is disingenous. Liberal Interest groups hate it when their playbook is stolen."
After googling the old controversy, it strikes me that if you think the pressure to pull those two shows was wrong you would think the pressure to pull "The Reagans" was wrong, too, on principle.
Unless your position is based on just who was being bashed: one target was okay, the other one wasn't.
18 - Chris
Hal,
If you go back and read my original comment on this, I think what CBS did was stupid. If there was some question as to the historical accuracy of the events being portrayed, I suggested they do a panel after the show like Nightline used to do when ABC mattered.
19 - Hal Pawluk
"Reagan's supporters have every right to protest or complain."
Got it and I'm with you on that, except that "CBS should be" ashamed that they caved in.
20 - Joe
I think the entire brouhaha is rather silly, but I am pissed that I won't get to see the craftwork of the master thespian who brought us Fabbrizio Disguisey trying his hand at the Gipper.
21 - Chris Arabia
that's the same guy?
22 - Chris
One small quibble since I think we found common ground, but Chris Arabia is a different Chris.
23 - Chris Arabia
CBS has optioned the hatchet job in question to the minors, and it will air on ShowTime:
http://www.drudgereport.com
24 - Mark Saleski
gees chris...drink some decaf....
i was making the point about people on both sides of the debate...not you in particular.
and, ooh yea, i 'misused' "infer"...that's what happens when i watch the entire monday night football game, write a review, and go to bed waaaaay too late. big fuckin' deal.
25 - Chris Arabia
decaf is mastubratory.
i dont think the original post of yours was bipartisan, but i would agree, both sides do it.
i try to avoid correcting people, largely for reasons like those you cite (goddamn the pats have heart--to play that poorly (15-3 in penalties, 2-0 in turnovers), in denver, and WIN--jeeze), but i figure if you sarcastically call me clever, then it's fair game for me to snip back.
it is no big deal--i agree with that.