if so, where’s the thread- either praising or vilifying it?
Apos
December 2, 2003, 5:13am
2
I’m a bit irritated that after all that hubbub about the “they that live in sin, die in sin” line that Regan supposedly never said anything like, it comes out that Regan is quoted as saying something quite similar in Edmund Morris’ biography Dutch: " Maybe the Lord brought down this plague [because] illicit sex is against the Ten Commandments."
Op-Ed article by Edmund Morris, Ronald Reagan biographer, says historical figure will survive petty assault of television mockumentary; recalls hard metal core beneath Reagan's silvery voice and deceptively gentle manner, but warns that shrill chorus...
Granted, the latter statement is less decisive and blunt, but it’s hardly so dissimilar that the scriptwriters can fairly be accused of making something up out of the blue that Reagan would never say or think.
astro
December 2, 2003, 5:48am
3
I can’t get the article link, but IIRC wasn’t Morris’ book roundly crticized wehn it came out for the weird, near magical realism “Is is it a fact, or is it Morris’ imagination?” nature of his Reagan biography.
rjung
December 2, 2003, 8:57am
4
Of course not, silly – why else was the GOP working so hard to derail it into the ghetto?
Actually, according to the few reviews I’ve seen, it seems like the protesters were just being thin-skinned because the movie didn’t portray Ron as God:
Reagan drama 'is not hatchet job’
After seeing it, some critics were left asking what the fuss was about.
“The most astonishing thing about this is that it’s being taken so seriously,” wrote the LA Times’ Patt Morrison.
“The political fuss and bother that nudged this film from network to Sunday night pay TV is in some ways more engaging than the film itself.”
Despite the hubbub, ‘The Reagans’ is your basic TV biopic
Because after all the controversy, the accusations of historical revisionism and politically motivated censorship, “The Reagans” turns out to be a fairly ordinary TV biopic.
Beyond `Reagans’ hoopla, a critical, typical biopic
…not that any of this will matter to the Reaganites, for whom anything less than the deification of St. Ron is considered sacrilege.
Maybe no one gets Showtime?
*Originally posted by Apos *
Here if the full passage from Edmund Morris’ Dutch , found on page 457-8 of same:
Reagan (we may as well follow through with his own education in the matter) would remain unconcerned by AIDS at least until the death of Rock Hudson in 1985, which shocked him into asking one of his doctors a few shyly clumsy questions: “It’s like a virus, like measles? But it doesn’t go away?” My research cards have him finding it a fit subject for humor as late as December 1986, and five months after that waxing biblical in his opinion that “maybe the Lord brought down this plague” because “illicit sex is against the Ten Commandments.”
To be fair to him, he made no moral distinction between homosexuality, heterosexuality out of wedlock, or abortion on demand. All three were abhorred by God, in his opinion. The best that could be said about the first “sin” was that its consequence was, perhaps, a caution against the other two: “I think people were happier and better off when there wasn’t the tremendous plague of single motherhood cases or abortions – the thousands and thousands and thousands that take place regularly now and, uh, whether it’s going to take such a tragic thing as that disease…that horrible disease to return us to a a sense of values that were very much a part of our generation.”
Excerpt available from Amazon .
Ahem. Here is the full passage…
Since Morris diverted himself into fiction over so much of the book, as was well-reported at the time, it at least is not a reliable cite.
