TRUTH ALERT:
October 30, 2003

What's all this fuss about Barbra Streisand's involvement in the upcoming CBS biopic about Ronald and Nancy Reagan? The Republican spin machine would like you to believe that Ms. Streisand, a well-known liberal activist, was intimately connected to the making of this film. The Drudge Report even said that she spent weeks on the set!

The truth? Ms. Streisand was on the set of The Reagans for a total of only 4 hours of one day. Any one of hundreds of people involved in its making could have told Mr. Drudge this truth, if he had only bothered to ask.

Furthermore, Ms. Streisand has never even read the script! She has also never seen the film, which stars her husband James Brolin. Mr. Brolin, as an actor in the movie, himself was not responsible for what is depicted in it - that was left up to the screenwriter, producers and director involved in the movie's production. Saying that Mr. Brolin's marriage to Ms. Streisand would have affected his performance is as ludicrous as the complaints about the way President and Nancy Reagan are depicted in the film.

What is going on instead is that the Republicans, who deify President Reagan, cannot stand that some of the more unpleasant truths about his presidency might be depicted in the movie, along with his positive actions. In fact, the film, we're told, presents a balanced portrait of a complicated man who said, when confronted with the AIDS crisis, "Maybe the lord brought down this plague because illicit sex is against the ten commandments." This has been changed in the film to, "Those who live in sin shall die by sin," but clearly the sentiment behind that statement is the same. No less a source than the World Health Organization recently said that Reagan was slow in responding to AIDS as a public health crisis, and could have even stopped the epidemic if he had taken it more seriously. Public records and multiple sources show that everything in the film, including his controversial statement about AIDS, is based on irrefutable facts.

Reagan is glorified by conservatives because what other Republican leader of recent history are they going to point towards? Richard Nixon? George H.W. Bush? Newt Gingrich? Are these men worthy of exalt? Conservatives love to boast of the 16 million jobs Reagan's economic policies generated. What they are more reluctant to mention, however, is that by cutting taxes and raising military spending, Reagan also created record budget deficits, increased inequality and tripled the national debt. Judged on their own terms, Reagan proponents would have to admit that Bill Clinton, who generated 23 million new jobs in the same amount of time in office and also turned a major deficit into the largest surplus ever, was a more successful president.

Speaking of Clinton, can you imagine what a biopic of Clinton would include? Of course, Clinton fans understand and accept the truth about the former president. They know that although he was a great president in many ways, overseeing economic prosperity and making great strides in creating a more peaceful world, he was also flawed. They don't try to prevent depictions of the truth from getting out there. Similarly, it is accepted by Democrats that portrayals of the Kennedy Family often include scandals. We must all understand that every human being embodies the good and the bad. There is no one out there who is perfect, not even our most prominent leaders ... and we must be honest in the way we portray them.

But this is what the Right Wing does when they are faced with a truth that is not 100% positive for their side - they spread vicious lies and attacks and scream and yell until they get their way. Instead of boycotting and trying to have the movie changed, why don't they all just wait to see the film when it airs like the rest of us.

Hopefully, the public will tune in to CBS on November 16th, and 18th to see the truth behind all this nonsense, and to watch what is sure to be a very interesting and well-made movie.