CBS Lawyers Worried Over "Reagan" Miniseries

[The Mad Monk]

Originally posted by MrFun


I believe the iniative went through the appropriate government agencies, rather than the executive itself.

In that case, we still don't have an instance of any president prior to Reagan acting the way you say he should have. There is simply no precident. I doubt you will find one, either, since the type of action you appear to want, in the field you appear to want it in, simply wasn't considered to be part of the job at the time.

If that is the only complaint you have against him, you really should re-assess it.

[techumseh]

Does the miniseries contain explicit "docudrama" scenes of Frank Sinatra's "visits" with Nancy at the White House while Ronnie was away defeating Communism?

[The Mad Monk]

Don't know -- but it does have footage of Reagan reading about the antichrist, and saying, "that's me!"

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

What would you have the government do when the main people being affected with a disease at the time were resistant to taking any steps to slow its spread?

VERY good question. I think the actions of the gay community showed that no one knew about the horridness of the AIDS disease... so to heap all blame on Reagan for not doing anything about it is a bit silly.

Yep -- for the 10,000th time, I agree with you that we cannot blame Raegan by himself for the AIDS crisis.

[MrFun]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: CBS Lawyers Worried Over "Reagan" Miniseries

Originally posted by DinoDoc
You still didn't answer the question. What would you have the government do when the main people being affected with a disease at the time were resistant to taking any steps to slow its spread?

City health departments/agencies could have muscled their authority to force a temporary shutdown of all bath houses until a new program of public information about safer sex was implemented.

On the federal government level, the president could have proposed to the legislature to finance this new public information effort. The president could also have opened his eyes to the information that the Cancer Development Center had about this new strange disease and also opened his eyes to the ever-increasing number of deaths from this strange, new disease.

The president could have also pressured for greater, immediate financing -- his stumbling and bungling with the actual financing he helped implement was too little, too late.

[Sava]

I think its funny... I'm not convinced this is at all accurate. I hate Reagan, but not for fictitious reasons.

[MrFun]

And why should CBS cow to extreme right-wing censorship just because they want to portray Raegan's positive attributes and his negative attributes??

Nothing horrible about portraying him as a human being with self interests, rather than as a deity or demi-god.

[MrFun]

dp

[MrFun]

One more point -- I would expect the same for a bio-documentary on Bill Clinton.

Portray him for what he was/is -- with the mistakes he made, along with his accomplishments.

But this objectivity might be too hard to grasp if you are the type who gets all lovey-dovey over any political leader.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Nothing horrible about portraying him as a human being with self interests

If that was it, you wouldn't have the hubbub, but it seems like it is going further and portraying him as an evil man who conned the US, making up things just for kicks.

[MrFun]

If they're going too far the other direction to distort him as evil incarnate, then that's just as wrong.

But showing that he lacked compassion for, and was ignorant about the conditions of the early AIDS victims, would still be accurate.

[Imran Siddiqui]

But showing that he lacked compassion for, and was ignorant about the conditions of the early AIDS victims, would still be accurate.

Showing he was ignorant about AIDS is fine, showing him saying (basically) that AIDS was the plague to kill gays is a bit too far in other direction, don't you think?

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

But showing that he lacked compassion for, and was ignorant about the conditions of the early AIDS victims, would still be accurate.

Showing he was ignorant about AIDS is fine, showing him saying (basically) that AIDS was the plague to kill gays is a bit too far in other direction, don't you think?

Well now this thread is moot in light of recent development.

But let me say this -- if CBS would have had no primary source with Raegan saying this, then I agree with you -- that would be blatant slandering.