What a Surprise [IBD editorial on CBS's miniseries on Ronald Reagan]

History: Next month, CBS will broadcast "The Reagans," a two-part miniseries on the former president and his family. Asking for a fair portrayal was apparently too much to expect from the entertainment industry.

We haven't been invited to a prescreening, nor do we have a copy of the script. But from reports, there is enough to piece together a framework of the miniseries' message, and it doesn't look as if the intent is to celebrate Ronald Reagan's presidency.

But then, with James Brolin, Mr. Barbra Streisand, playing Reagan, does anyone think it will be a glowing study of the man?

Streisand, of course, is a large donor to the Democratic Party and just the sort of person who'd see Reagan as a crusty old right-winger out to ruin her fun instead of the vibrant defender of freedom and opportunity that he was. At a Democratic fund-raiser, she once sang "Send Home the Clowns," a version of one of her hits slightly altered to mock the Reagan administration.

Brolin's politics are less well-known. But he is by his own word a man of the left, and he did sign a letter urging a "no" vote on the California governor recall. He has also already played the role of a doltish Republican, as cast by the left-wing team that produces NBC's "The West Wing," so he should know exactly how to do that again.

The politics of CBS Chairman Leslie Moonves are more conspicuous. He is everything one would expect of the Hollywood left. His credentials include partying with Fidel Castro for four days in 2001 and defending the far-left Bryant Gumbel when his CBS morning show was tanking some years back.

Moonves was also star struck by a certain family from Arkansas that could not be mistaken for Reagan Democrats.

"I used to watch Moonves fawning over the Clintons at the annual Renaissance Weekends on Hilton Head Island," syndicated radio talk show host Neal Boortz said Tuesday in his blog.

With these facts in hand, there's no wondering why the miniseries, according to Jim Rutenberg of The New York Times, who has a final version of the script, left out Reagan's top accomplishments.

No credit for the 1980s economic rebound fueled by tax cuts. No mention of his infectious and unfailing optimism that lifted the nation from the malaise of the Carter years.

Who can be bothered with these details when there's an opportunity to vilify? To remind the country of what a dimwitted, religious zealot Reagan was, the movie has a scene where his wife, Nancy, played by a self-confessed leftist, asks Reagan to help AIDS patients. He responds, "They that live in sin shall die in sin." Then Reagan, according to Rutenberg, "refuses to discuss the issue further."

That's beyond literary license; Reagan never said that, a fact script writer Elizabeth Egloff even admits to. But because "we know he ducked the issue over and over," she told Rutenberg, she obviously felt it was more a defining moment of his presidency than the historic economic recovery that brought extraordinary job creation.

Journalism is a genre of nonfiction entertainment.

Journalism's business essence is to prevent people from walking past the newstand without buying the paper.

To prevent that journalism assaults the passerby with challenges on the order of, "Is Your Drinking Water Safe?" And although the everyday blessings of God are great, they almost never make "good copy." The business imperative of journalism, IOW, is to project a know-it-all, anticonservative image. And journalists do that, not just once but day after day. A conservative who could do that well would be a freak of nature, which explains the paucity of conservative reporters.

Notwithstanding the obvious facts above, appologists of journalism (Marvin Kalb, poster child) style journalism "the first draft of history." That begs the question of what kind of history can be made in a second draft of CNN's Baghdad Bureau coverage,

which admittedly was systematically silent
about historically significant information in its possession. Or what edits historians can make of what Novak did not say about the identity of the source of that notorious CIA leak.

Nonetheless it is the testimony (Treason) of Ann Coulter that history is in fact sometimes written as merely the second draft of journalism. Coulter was referring to the journalistic witch hunt against Senator Joseph M^cCarthy, but the CBS hit piece on Mr. Reagan is cast from precisely the same mold. It is a lie in service of the larger "truth" that journalism is the gospel truth, and all of it.

(The development of these ideas is found here.)

I heard about this miniseries a few days ago. When I read about the Brolin(AKA Streisand)/CBS connection, I didn’t have to read any further to know that it will be a hatchet job. But, unfortunately, most of those who watch it will not be able to connect the dots. They will no doubt come away believing that Reagan was a doddering old fool who accomplished little of note, whose wife did most of the decision-making, and who laid the economic groundwork for our obscene deficits and fiscal irresponsibility. There will be little or no mention of the long-term positive effects of (genuine, as opposed to historically revised) Reaganomics, the incredible global psychological effect of his Strategic Defense Initiative, the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the rebuilding of the military, the reclaiming of America’s national dignity and worldwide respect.

There’s the tragedy in all of this. The greatest president we’ve ever known, who accomplished more in eight short years than even his most ardent supporters (yours truly included) imagined he could, will be vilified .... and most viewers will swallow the vilification, and pass the lies on to countless uninformed others.

I did substitute teaching (trig/pre-calc) last week at a local high school. While sitting in the teachers’ lounge on a break, I got to talking with an economics/history teacher. It turns out that this young fellow had Walter Williams as a professor in college, and was extremely bright and well informed. What was sad was that, when we had to return to classes, he told me that he isn’t able to speak with anyone else (ANYONE else) in the school the way the two of us had spoken in that brief forty-five minutes (we talked about everything from the Constitution, to teachers’ unions, to the leftist media, to the war in Iraq, the general situation in the Middle East, North Korea, the outsourcing of American jobs, etc.) He said that everyone else there (including all of the other teachers) ‘has been successfully brainwashed,’ to one degree or another.

Several of his former students who have gone on to college keep in touch regularly, and, to a person, they report to him about their generally left-leaning professors -- yet all of these students appear to be retaining the seeds that he planted while they were in his classes. (yippee!)

The reason for this digression: He had invited me to stop by his classroom after school was over, which I did. The most prominent thing on the walls in his room was an enormous framed picture of The Gipper. It really did my heart good to see that.

Although they comprise an ever-shrinking minority, it’s nice to know that there are young teachers out here who are filling even younger minds with the truth about our genuine heroes and the reasons we (at least those of us who know the truth) revere them as such.

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