So Reagans Friends Are the Real Villains?

So Reagans Friends Are the
Real Villains?

Who cares if the mini-series on Ronald and Nancy Reagan was unfair and unbalanced, a fact that CBS executives now concede? Some liberal critics think CBS should have aired the mean-spirited movie anyway, rather than acknowledge that conservatives were right.

Indeed, many liberal media types argued that for CBS to pull The Reagans after determining it was biased set an alarming precedent. On CNBC Tuesday night, future NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams blamed mostly Republican pressure groups for the movies cancellation, asking former Reagan aide Mike Deaver whether CBSs decision was dangerous. He asked New York magazines media critic Michael Wolff, Do you believe what has happened here with this mini-series on CBS amounts to extortion?

Certainly capitulation, Wolff agreed, warning: There is no group as well-organized as the right wing in America at this point in time.

Newsweeks Jonathan Alter couldnt wait for next weeks magazine. He posted a column on Newsweeks Web site on Tuesday, castigating CBS as gutless for siding with conservatives: It's a big victory for the Elephant Echo Chamber, the unholy trinity of conservative talk radio, conservative Internet sites and the Republican National Committee, Alter mocked. As opposed to the unholy trinity of ABC, CBS and NBC?

The New York Times, which in a Wednesday editorial characterized the series merely as less than complimentary, condemned CBS as wrong to yield to conservative pressure. The Times also insulted Reagan fans as akin to the communist menace: His supporters credit him with forcing down the Iron Curtain, so it is odd that some of them have helped create the Soviet-style chill embedded in the idea that we, as a nation, will not allow critical portrayals of one of our own recent leaders.

Philadelphia Daily News TV critic Ellen Gray voiced her disgust to the Washington Posts Lisa de Moraes in a quote that appeared in Tuesday mornings Post. Referring to CBSs May mini-series on the Nazi dictator who killed millions, Gray grumbled, If Hitler had more friends, CBS wouldnt have aired [its Hitler mini-series] either.

The networks generally refused to admit that the criticism of the mini-series was the profoundly unfair and dishonest way it fictionalized Reagans life. Instead, ABC anchor Peter Jennings on Tuesday portrayed the critics as thin-skinned complainers who howled when word got around that it may not have been as faithful to the Reagan story as some conservatives wanted it to be.

This mornings Today portrayed conservatives as intolerant of any negative portrayal. Katie Couric framed it as the heated debate over what can and cant be said about this countrys 40th President. Is Ronald Reagan untouchable? She grilled Reagans 84 campaign manager Ed Rollins about those awful conservatives: Does it bother you at all, that one group in America, or many Americans, can basically exert this kind of political pressure and create an environment where, perhaps, free speech is not exercised?

But the facts undermine pundits who argue conservatives were just being ultra-sensitive. New York Times TV writer Alessandra Stanley today revealed how the stars gloated about how controversial their film would be. James Brolin said his portrayal of Mr. Reagan was partly inspired by the Reagan puppet on the British satirical show Spitting Image, a show which portrayed the President as a mindless dolt.

And last night, CBS chairman Les Moonves told a Yale audience: Upon seeing the finished product, I felt the movie was quite biased against the Reagans. No wonder some liberals wish CBS hadnt dumped it.