Diller, Karmazin on The Reagans
: There was much discussion of The Reagans at the Foursquare conference. Since it was off-the-record, I didn’t report it. But the New York Post just did.
8 responses to “Diller, Karmazin on The Reagans”
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“Diller….told a room full of media moguls”
So now you’re a mogul, eh? -
Just a hired hand.
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So, if they wanted to run, say, a miniseries version of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, or a documentary that claims the Holocaust did not happen, no one should complain about that either?
Which would be a perfectly valid viewpoint. I’m just trying to see how far you would take this. -
D: No, such a movie should not be made. There is an absolute right and responsibility for CBS to exercise its editorial judgment on what it puts on its air. What is suspect is that that did not happen much sooner in this process, before millions were spent on making the movie. Now they suddenly decide it’s bad? That’s not the way big entertainment companies work. They give themselves many opportunities to stop a project before big money is spent (and ads sold); they didn’t do that. If the movie was bad and irresponsible, it shouldn’t have been made and shouldn’t be shown.
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If you phrase your point in that manner, it seems to me that the only reason you and the vast majority of your readers are having a difference of opinion, is that you accord a greater amount of respect and benefit-of-the-bout to the craven Big Meeja.
You’re right. The movie shouldn’t have been made. Why was it made then? Because Les Moonves, the same guy who greenlighted a miniseries explicitly equating Hitler and Bush, greenlighted it. It was greenlighted because he and the rest of his cronies in Big Media for the most part have a pathological, noxious hatred of all Republicans, but most especially of Ronald Reagan. We see its current guise in the fanatical Bush hatred of the day, but the Reagan hatred runs just as deep. I’m just old enough to remember. They have the most massive distribution network around, though it’s at the beginning of a long, slow death, and they will stop at nothing to use it to further their worldview, sometimes including lies and propaganda. (Jenin “massacre” anyone?) Barry Diller and every other media mogul on earth, except for Rupert, would have gladly greenlighted that movie. When the details of the extent of the outright fabrications it contained leak and there was a resulting public outcry, Moonves cravenly caved in and decided to drop the film, hedging his bets by allowing it to be sold to Showtime, just as he hedged his bets by firing Ed Gernon, the writer who brought up the Hitler/Bush parallel, but still airing the Hitler/Bush miniseries with all of the Hitler/Bush parts left in. There is nothing mystifying at all about the fact that it was made. In fact, it’s all too predictable. If you’re saying that Moonves should have the courage of his convictions and air his mendacious left-wing agit-prop, and suffer the full backlash you’re probably right. That would have been ultimately even better for all us right-wing deathbeasts. The world could have seen the perfidy of Big Meeja in its full ignominy. Your problem is with Mr. Moonves, not with letter-writers, bloggers, and Matt Drudge. -
Eric Deamer, can you provide more information about this Hitler-Bush miniseries? I’d not heard of it.
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infamouse:
It was the “Hitler: the rise of evil” or whatever minseries that was done during the previous sweeps period starring Robert Carlyle as Hitler. Ron Rosenbaum covered it very well for the New York Observer. I don’t have time to look for the link now, but if you go to the observer and search through the Rosenbaum archive you should find it.
Essentially, the writer, Ed Gernon, said that now was a good time for the miniseries because what we’re going througn in America is just like Germany during the rise of Hitler. Moonves then fired the guy, and said “Move along folks. No Hitler/Bush moonbattery to see here”. However, in the Reichstag fire scene, the minseries put words in Hitler’s mouth that sounded very similar to Bush’s speeches immediatley after 9/11. They had Hitler saying “We’ll strike back at the terrorists” etc. and using that as an excuse to crush dissent. (You know, just like Bush and like the people who wrote letters to CBS)However, Hitler didn’t blame “terrorists”, an external threat, he blamed communists, an internal threat. And, if course it goes without saying that 9/11, you know, wasn’t a Bush plot, while the Reichstag fire actually was a Hitler plot, not that Gore Vidal knows. -
Streisand, Moonves, et al demonstrate the ole “Now that we have our captive audience,let’s roll out the propaganda. We own the air.” West Wing is doing the same thing. Take a wonderful dramatic opportunity and cram in political lectures for the masses. Guess what? It’s dull, obvious, and cruel. Politics aside, people love Reagan as a warm, optimistic human being suffering a terrible illness, and mocking him with lies to rewrite his history when he can’t defend himself is unacceptable. Moonves and Streisand have the right to speak, but the public has the right not to listen. They are not our gods. They pervert art. Like pornographers, they are dirty rotten scoundrels.
