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POLLDid you watch The Reagans on Showtime? Did the movie change your opinion about the Reagan Presidency? How do you think the movie will influence other people's opinions of the Reagan years? How would you characterize the point of view of the movie? How warranted was the controversy over the movie "The Reagans?" How much do you agree with CBS's decision not to run the movie? Did you vote for Ronald Reagan in either 1980 or 1984? To delve into the polarizing issues surrounding the hotly debated movie, SHOWTIME will present a special round-table forum, CONTROVERSY: "THE REAGANS." The forum...

The Real Story Behind the Reagan Movie By Cliff Kincaid November 25, 2003 Some opponents of the entertainment industry believe they scored a victory with the announcement by CBS President Leslie Moonves that the network was transferring a movie smearing former President Reagan from CBS to the Showtime cable channel. One of several controversial aspects is a depiction of Reagan as someone who believed that people with AIDS get what they deserve because "they that live in sin shall die in sin." The rest of the article is below.

<p>The director of "The Reagans" complained Monday that CBS butchered his made-for-TV movie, ultimately making it too incoherent for the network to air.</p> <p>"We were, in a sense, banished" from the editing process before CBS ditched it, director Robert Ackerman said.</p>

<p>November 25, 2003 -- THE president of Show time had some strong words yesterday for the chairman of CBS about the ill-fated miniseries about Ronald and Nancy Reagan that was cancelled by CBS, then dumped on Showtime by their parent company, Viacom. "If [CBS Chairman Leslie Moonves] didn't know what movie he was getting, that's not the fault of the producers, the director or anyone associated with the film," said Robert Greenblatt, president of entertainment for Showtime Networks, in a telephone news conference yesterday with TV critics.</p>

November 16, 2003FRANK RICHAngels, Reagan and AIDS in America onight is the night when Americans might have tuned into Part 1 of "The Reagans" on CBS. But the joke is on the whiners who forced the mini-series off the air. Just three weeks from tonight, HBO will present the first three-hour installment of Mike Nichols's film version of Tony Kushner's "Angels in America," starring Al Pacino and Meryl Streep. (Part 2 is a week later.) This epic is, among other things, a searing indictment of how the Reagan administration's long silence stoked the plague of AIDS in the 1980's....

Two Sundays ago, CBS broadcast their grand 75th anniversary celebration. Audiences were reminded of the rich history of a network that has, until now, put artistic integrity and principled news above politics. From I Love Lucy to Murphy Brown in the entertainment arena and from Walter Cronkite to the impressive team behind 60 Minutes in news, we have come to depend on CBS for their high quality programming. As a wonderful recent letter to the New York Times reminded me, it was Edward R. Murrow of CBS who stood up to Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s, "a genuinely risky...

Did CBS chairman Leslie Moonves cave in to political and economic pressure when he canceled 'The Reagans' miniseries? The network honcho vehemently rejects the suggestion, calling it an "absolute lie." "It was a moral decision, not an economic or a political one," Moonves stressed in an interview with Daily Variety. "And I don't know how more plainly I can state that." A network statement issued last week following the cancellation of the controversial miniseries similarly insisted the decision had nothing to do with the backlash from Reagan supporters. "This decision is based solely on our reaction to seeing the final...

CBS dancing to Republican tune ANTONIA ZERBISIAS I'm thinking of having the above photo retaken in order to show the drywall embedded in my forehead. It's a wonder I stopped bashing my head long enough to eke out this column. It's been that kind of week. First, there was CBS's dumping of its sweeps period biopic The Reagans after a right wing-organized backlash, and then, at Thursday's Canadian Journalists For Free Expression awards dinner, I got into a surreal argument with a TV network foreign affairs producer who made the outrageous claim that the U.S. never lied about its motives...

<p>We hit a milestone with CBS's canceling of "The Reagans."</p> <p>CBS blinked.</p> <p>We hit a milestone in the culture wars last week with the internment of the threatened Ronald Reagan hit job. For once, perhaps for the first time, one of our pre-eminent cultural institutions conceded that the great unwashed had it right. Instead of wrapping itself in the First Amendment right to be irresponsible, the network looked for the least graceless way out.</p>

Here is the link: The ReagansYou will need Adobe and a good connection but may be worth it. Report here any "gems" you find.

Letter to the Editor After reading Greg Ehrhardt's letter to the editor titled, "Note to Democrats: The rich are here to stay," I was delighted someone finally pointed out many college students are deficient in their knowledge of economic issues. My hope was that maybe Ehrhardt would have bothered to read a history book, or at least an economics book, before he wrote this response. As I read his letter, I felt a nauseous feeling in the pit of my stomach, and an overwhelming sense of impending doom that could only be caused by one thing: Republican rhetoric. It seems...

Thunderous protest has persuaded CBS to cancel The Reagans, its miniseries about America's 40th president and his second wife. (The series will air instead on Showtime, which shares a corporate parent with CBS.) It isn't especially troubling that CBS would bow to angry protesters in canceling The Reagans, given that the miniseries itself, if at all typical of the genre, is likely a piece of hackwork. (Those who live by popular tastes, die by popular tastes.) But it is troubling that the public, or at least a highly influential segment of it, has apparently ruled any criticism of President Reagan...

NEW YORK (AP) - In protesting "The Reagans," the miniseries that CBS decided to pull this week, supporters of the former president were defending not just a man, or a politician, but his principles. "This was a left-wing smear of one of the nation's most beloved presidents and CBS got caught," says Brent Bozell, founder of the conservative Media Research Center, which had asked advertisers to consider boycotting the film. All modern presidents have their advocates, but Ronald Reagan's legacy is guarded with an intensity not seen among supporters of Jimmy Carter or Gerald Ford. For many, Reagan personifies the...

we learned in the great debate over the Ronald Reagan TV miniseries is that many conservatives, including the chairman of the Republican National Committee, think you're stupid. Yes, you. And you. And everybody out there in TV Land. They think you can't tell the difference between James Brolin, who played Republican presidential candidate Robert Ritchie on "The West Wing," and Ronald Reagan, who was president of the United States for eight years. They believe you can't figure out that a mini- series starring the Australian actress Judy Davis as Nancy is not a documentary, but a "docudrama." Before CBS announced...

Loaded question - but - SOUND OFF--Did CBS give in to right-wing pressure when it cancelled its miniseries on Ronald and Nancy Reagan? Scroll down page to "Sound Off".

The head of a Washington, D.C. - based media watchdog group is asking that advertisers demand to preview a planned CBS mini-series on former President Ronald Reagan before sponsoring the program. Media Research Center President L. Brent Bozell Tuesday sent a letter to each of the nation's top 100 advertisers, urging them to preview the movie before making a sponsorship decision because it is what Bozell called a "partisan political attack against one of America's most beloved presidents." A review of the script by New York Times reporter Jim Rutenberg noted the two-part mini-series, scheduled for broadcast next month, makes...

On Friday I Emailed the General Manager of our local CBS Station regarding the Reagan mini-series. The following letter: Dear General Manager, It has come to my attention that the upcoming CBS mini-series on Ronald Reagan depicts one of our greatest presidents in a derogatory manner. The show is full of misrepresentations, misquotes, and flat-out lies. CBS has made a conscious decision to conspire with the left wing fanatics of Hollywood in an endeavor to attack and rewrite history on one of the greatest presidents of our time, former President Reagan. As General Manager of a CBS affilate, you have...

If Ronald Reagan were still in his prime, presidential 1980s form, he’d be saying to Hollywood: "There you go again." There are two kinds of films about presidents. There are documentaries which usually try to dwell in factual examination; and fictional movies which have a habit of wildly making things up to satisfy the demands of making either effective entertainment, or effective propaganda. Now CBS is preparing a dramatic and quite fictional miniseries for November titled "The Reagans." CBS promised reporters it would be "meticulously researched." Researched fiction, that is. The last Reagan-fictionalizing offender was Showtime, whose 2001 film on...

A lot of people were skeptical when Mr. Barbra Streisand, James Brolin, won the starring role in the CBS miniseries "The Reagans." His wife today confirmed their suspicions of a hatchet job. On her TV show this afternoon Oprah Winfrey asked Babs about the oddball casting. "How is that for you, Miss Democrat?" A smirking Streisand responded to titters, "I said as long as they tell the truth about Ronald Reagan, I have no problem." Considering her history of distorting the truth to suit her partisan agenda, expect Hollywood to be even more inaccurate than usual on this "biography."...