This is nuts.
Is there any possible way fairness or democracy would be served by letting the Republicans change the Reagan bio? Is it a good trend to let partisans have direct editorial control over the (non-FOXnews) media?
What a weird series of threats against CBS:
A group of RNC-approved Reagan pals must review the movie, OR ELSE:
CBS must run a crawl saying “Its all lies!!!” every ten minutes during the movie, OR ELSE:
The RNC will be forced to sell its own hagiography of Ronny on DVD, possibly at a loss.
Attention, Ed Gillespie: You already control FOXnews. You can’t control all the media all the time. Reagan depicted as less-than-demigod? Cry me a river.
(Quick summary in Varietese: “Elephant stomps Eye net for Communicator Biopic: Dems ankle for exits!”)
Even the writers of the miniseries are admitting to just making shit up. Not that I expect that to bother Democrats and their ilk.
The GOP will do what is well within its rights to do: Organize a boycott against the advertisers that are signed on to the show, if the show turns out to be as big a peice of leftist fabricated fantasy as it already seems to be. And good on the GOP for standing up for Reagan.
Brutus, I agree that the writers made shit up. But as any biographer or historian will tell you, that’s what has to happen if you want to make a linear story out of someone’s life, rather than some kind of Rashomon collage. If they don’t like it, the RNC should organize a boycott. That’s just good politics. But this demand for editorial review is another steamroller tactic, like when Ed Gillespie (RNC head) declared HIMSELF a commentator for the Democratic debate on CNN, snuck in with false ID, and had to be escorted from the building.
Of course, if you make shit up about someone else, and it’s (a) utterly false and (b) utterly negative, it seems perfectly reasonable for you to be expected to mention that you’ve made it up and that it doesn’t depict reality. And this is not fair somehow?
I personally think it would virtually impossible for any side to portray an accurate biography on a political figure, whose politics are still fairly fresh. The republican party for the Reagan era is still basically the same party as it is now, where republican party of let’s say, Hoover is quite different. We could probably find someone to do a historically accurate mini series of Hoover, because nobody cares anymore. People still care about Reagan, especially the Reagans.
I can’t imagine that any good is served by giving a political party editorial control over anything that it doesn’t happen to like on TV. Giving the RNC an editorial cutting knife on the Reagan broadcast would be a bad, bad, bad precedent for the free press; it is exactly why we have a free press. The media is certainly influenced by economic forces but it should not knuckle to purely political power struggles.
If the broadcasters feel they are doing a historical disservice, they can feel free to edit it themselves and duck controversy. If they perpetrate a broadcast of lies and slander, their advertisers will be free to pull their commercial support of the broadcasters. (Though, for good or bad, they may appreciate the added publicity.) If the public feels that it has been served garbage, they may feel free to boycott the commercial interests that do support the broadcast. That’s how I expect the system to work.
If the RNC wants editorial control over entertainment television that shows a leftist agenda, what’s next? Do they want editorial rights on NPR too? Will they push for a bitchy ‘Lies! Lies!’ crawl across The Daily Show or The West Wing?
The RNC shouldn’t be involved in the editing of this or any other mvoie, and the same goes for the DNC. They should hold their fire until after the series is shown.
In some ways this may be perfect for Republicans. If the movie turns out to be anything like what the Drudge Report says, then conservatives can not be brushed aside when they charge liberal bias, in CBS at least.
And I don’t think it will really have much impact. Those who love Reagan will see it as lefie propaganda. Those who dislike Reagan will be able to cite stronger arguments than quotes from a CBS movie of the week. And people who are too dumb to know any better will remain too dumb to know any better.
I remember a similar stink about CBS’ “Hitler” TV movie earlier this year, and that was a total flop.
This whole thing is so bizarre. I can’t think of why the RNC is doing this. I guess they know CBS will tell them to stuff it, and they feel this will strengthen the ol’ ‘liberal media’ canard. That or else convince everyone the 'Publicani are turning into the Bolsheviks, but with crappier slogans.
I didn’t hear any Republicans complaning a few weeks ago when Showtime ran the fluff piece on Bush and 9/11 a few weeks ago. I don’t hear them complaining about the Jessica Lynch movie on NBC. The hypocrisy would be mind-boggling if it weren’t par for the course.
IMO if that is the standard the RNC wants, then the recent Showtime movie on Bush and 911, should have been subject to the same; but by the other side, IIRC many pointed at how Bush sounded more decisive in that movie than what happened in reality: http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/main/essayaninterestingday.html
Even tough I don’t agree with all that is in that timeline/report, it seems to me that if Bush was not ahem slow, his staff then dropped the ball on informing the president promptly and on the SERIOUSNESS of the situation. Even so, I would not have agreed if the movie producers had to go to a party apparatus to make the movie more “accurate”, I say to the RNC to kindly bug off.
Actually, didn’t say much of anything about that, Shodan, 'cause I didn’t much give a shit. Anybody dumb enough to buy into that tub of crap about evil doin’s by William Jefferson “Fat Tony” Clinton is grist for some brisk Darwinism.
I’m not going to watch this, I don’t know anybody who would. Not even if they promised authentic and verified videotapes of Ronnie stuffing kittens into blenders.
Now, a stirring tribute to our glorious military campaign against the ruthless and tyranical Grenada…well, that would be different.
I realize that any biography is going to have to make up some filler. But confabulating the, “They that live in sin, etc” line is far more than merely creating some filler.
You just really wanted to use that link, didn’t you? It has nothing to do with anything here, but you just had to use it, eh?
