you might consider this a footnote to chuck's post on a recent senate republican hearing on the "liberal" university.
i should mention that, having recently read joan didion's political fictions, my tolerance for "the system" is once again on the descent. i offer this as a futile excuse for the excess of sarcasm on the horizon. mea culpa.
by way of the washington post, i see that cbs is waffling on its miniseries, the reagans, now that republican national committee chair ed gillespie has notified the network of "conservative" concerns about the biopic.
the letter, and its accompanying supportreagan.com aren't terribly surprising, given the tenacity and size of reagan's army of admirers. what seems worth a moment's reflection is this passage from the rnc chair:
"If your series contains omissions, exaggerations, distortions or scenes that are fiction masquerading as fact, the American people may come away with a misunderstanding of the Reagans and the Reagan Administrations."
gillespie, we are told, suggests that cbs keep the masses straight with a regular crawl explaining that "the program is a fictional portrayal of the Reagans and the Reagan Presidency, and they should not consider it to be historically accurate. . . ."
as a vapid viewer, one of those uncritical couch-occupiers who has no use for second thoughts, i would like to thank cbs for its apparently impending decision to keep this disinformation out of my infotainment experience. i would also like to thank the rnc for helping me get the true story. now, when i go looking for biographies, i will have a better method for selection; i'll simply get the accurate one, so i won't have to waste my time with all that dangerous fiction. i'd also like to thank the house committee on unamerican activities and senator joseph mccarthy for all the good work they did to keep our nation straight. the last thing the infotainment industry needs is the wandering imagination of some "creative" writer who has not been taught the true story.
Posted by dave at November 4, 2003 10:44 AM | TrackBack