Off switches on their televisions.
Or channel changers.
Here’s a fact: All the people on this board currently discussing the yanked Ronald Reagan biopic? They haven’t seen it. Everyone’s depending upon what other people have said. Biopics, movies about real events…their accuracy is routinely challenged. People see it and then decide for themselves.
But not in the case of Ronald Reagan.
Don’t let yourself get buffaloed into thinking this incident is anything other than just another case of someone else deciding on your behalf what you should be allowed to see or not see. They’ve come to the conclusion the biopic is inaccurate. But they don’t trust *you* to come to that conclusion independently. They figure, y’know, you’re not as smart as they are, or clever, or knowledgeable.
So CBS, which just last Sunday was laughing over how silly it was that they dumped the Smothers Brothers because they jabbed at the establishment, did it again. They bowed to conservative pressure, just as Warner Bros. did when the Nixon White House insisted that the song “Cool Considerate Men” be excised from “1776” because it made conservatives look bad. The CBS eye blinked.
And this business that James Brolin shouldn’t have been cast because of his *political beliefs*? Oh my God. That is the single dumbest casting debate I’ve heard since the notion that the casting of Vanessa Redgrave as a concentration camp resident in “Playing For Time” was an insult to Jews because she harshly criticized Israel. I mean, are we *really* back to that now? Politicizing casting? Paging Joe McCarthy. Joe McCarthy, come to the Senate, please.
It’s not just that it’s about Reagan. I’d have just as much contempt for them if they bagged a Clinton/Lewinsky biopic because liberals squawked (which, by the way, we all know they wouldn’t.)
PAD
• 
Jeff: The public spoke out expressing their displeasure, leading the network to change when and where it would be shown. The public?
Brak: More like pro-Reagan furvor. This was a total non-issue until certain conservatives made it an issue.
Define irony…someone complaining about free speech issues, and using as their arguement, how some people shouldn’t have been listened to.
Sigh.
And the picture WILL be shown! If you don’t have Showtime, you might have someone tape it for you, or wait until the DVD/video comes out, but I fail to see how folks can still scream censorship when it’s going to be shown.
Define irony…someone complaining about free speech issues, and using as their arguement, how some people shouldn’t have been listened to.
Listening to critics is one thing. But one can listen and still not do what they say.
It’s a juvenile attitude to believe that listening automatically requires acquiescence. Anyone who’s ever had a teenager scream, “You’re not listening to me!” and stomp away simply because you won’t give them what they want can attest to that.
PAD
But, listening to critics and doing what they say is wrong? Or is it OK, but just not in this case?
And the teenager could be trying to tell the parents that their younger sibling is in the kitchen playing with knives. Then the parents could chose to believe the teenager and go check, or not believe the teenager, leading to the “you’re not listening to me” response.
Once again, leftists are activists,
The rest are just whiners. It is very clear Jeff.
There’s something wrong when a film claims to be a historical movie and doesn’t bother to ask/interview any of the people they’re making the movie about (Michael Reagan, Patti Davis, Nancy Reagan etc).
You could fill a large library with made for TV movies that didn’t interview the people they were about. Why the Reagan movie is being held to a higher standard then the dozens of other made for TV movies over the years, (including ones about other polictical figures) is, frankly beyond me.
<<>>
Since when? There are tons of biopics that were made when the subjects were still alive, and even more when the main subject was dead but many of the supporting players were still alive and kicking. (How many movies about John Lennon have been made that prominatly featured the other living Beatles or Yoko as characters? 3 or 4 at least if not more). Hëll wasn’t there a Martha Stewart TV biopic recently as far was I know she’s still alive.
<<>>
Actually this episode was pulled from the original syndication package due to the controversy, although I believe it’s been released and is now being shown in syndication there was a year or two when you couldn’t see it.
<<>>
Have you ever acatually watched any of those movies? I suspect that many of those boycotting the movies did not. Aside from the fact that those movies often gave work to Asian Americans at a time when racist attitudes in the industy prevented thier hiring anywere else, (Asians were very often protrayed by White actors in makeup, not true in many of the Chan files), Chan was smarter and more heroic then the white characters in those films. If anything he’s a good role model, not a negative sterotype. At a time in history when Asians were typically the “yellow Menace” bad guys, the Charlie Chans films gave us a smart heroic Asian character. That is something you would think would be celebrated, not surpressed.
Does it really matter how many people claim that they will/will not watch this “Reagans” miniseries if they’re not Nielsen families? I was always under the impression that unless your TV was hooked up to whatever it is the ratings-tracking people use, the Powers That Be would never know if you watched a given program or not.
Although, now that I think about it, TiVO would allow someone to know if you were watching “The Reagans” or not. Hmmmm…
But, listening to critics and doing what they say is wrong? Or is it OK, but just not in this case? And the teenager could be trying to tell the parents that their younger sibling is in the kitchen playing with knives. Then the parents could chose to believe the teenager and go check, or not believe the teenager, leading to the “you’re not listening to me” response.
Okay…now you’re just using reductio ad absurdum, a fairly crap-ášš debating technique in which one attempts to attack the simple truth of an argument by slapping on patently false statements and pretending the former leads to the latter and, therefore, the former is incorrect. It’s a desperation ploy and, frankly, a pathetic one.
The argument was put forward that liberals were stating “some people shouldn’t have been listened to.” My response was that they could have listened to them, and still not been obliged to do as they say. And that there is a juvenile attitude which believes that if one does NOT do as a complainer says, then one was not “really” listening in the first place, because if they “had” been listening, they would have done what was demanded of them.
And in this case, yes, I believe they were wrong to do as critics demanded, for the reasons that BrakYeller so eloquently laid out above.
And your response? A nonsensical “what-if” that has nothing to do with what I said. I put forward a clear example of teenage pique, and you come back with a life-threatening scenario exacerbated by a clearly bone-headed parent ignoring a warning of imminent danger.
As I said: Pathetic.
Once again, leftists are activists,The rest are just whiners. It is very clear
Actually, many liberals are just as aggressive at censorship as conservatives, if not moreso. I’ve said this many times in the past, which you might know if you weren’t so busy just whining.
PAD
I get it, so they’re all incredible couch potatoes, aren’t they? Hee hee! 😀
I meant the GOP, of course. 😉
There’s a strange double standard going on in this discussion. First we wave the First Amendment flag, then when someone takes the flag and runs with it- conservatives who believe the show portrays the Reagan’s innacurately- you complain that the network caved under their pressure. Yeah, this is America. You are entitled to say what you want, no matter how idiotic it may be. If you accept that right you must accept the responsibility for your actions. In this case Dan Rather’s network (hardly a conservative bastion) decided they didn’t want to take the chance airing it. That’s their right.
And, vis your comment regarding Primary Colors: was that about the Clintons? What was the clue? The corruption? The infidelity? The body count? Jeez… I just thought it was a bad movie.
By the way- I’m really digging the Legions Of Fire series. I don’t agree with you, but I can still appreciate you.
Gentlemen, gentlemen. The man requested the name of a liberal talk show host. I supplied Colmes, who is a) liberal and b0 a talk show host. His lack of stones is another matter altogether.
He would have to actually say something on TV first before he could qualify as a “talk show host.”
Oh, and I almost forgot, you’re quite right that the casting of Redgrave was most truly obscene in its time. It reminds me of how a lot of comics even from Marvel and Wildstorm are being politicized, and Global Frequency is one title from the latter that really turned me off with its ludicrous implications.
What’s wrong with giving comics a political slant? Dennis O’Neil did some of his best work when he took the political gloves off.
True indeed, and I admire plenty of his work too, but the difference is that he wasn’t doing it out literally biased intentions, making implications and accusations against this or that country/system for unjustified reasons. Nor do I think he was ever being anti-military or anti-war, he was just against one war, that being Vietnam, and that was a justified position back then. Global Frequency on the other hand is anti-military and potentially anti-American(!), making claims without genuine proof that the army abuses its own soldiers into being fighters for no good reasons. Not what I enjoy reading, that’s for sure.