Chevrolet and Hallmark (if the latter’s involvement was finally confirmed by the internet sleuths at forums like Free Republic) apparently got ... the ... message.  They contacted executives at CBS, it seems, and pointed out that their commercial support of liberalism in America stops at the point where fifty million people announce that if they see those commercials they are going to cease buying their cars and their cards. There is these days, I am happy to report, a certain risk when a corporation decides to finance a “literary” version of a DNC campaign attack commercial. 

As storm winds blow towards the low with angry purpose, radio and the internet made a connection between the national high pressure of stored conservative frustration and the intellectual and artistic vacuum – the region inhabited by Barbra Streisand, Tim Robbins and the CBS programming department’s proposed airing of a film that trashes the Reagans.

The angry winds did blow with a wondrous force.  Arrogant liberal eyes narrowed, and arrogant liberal heads swung to the right and saw with growing apprehension the thunderclouds of a titanic storm racing towards them.  CBS, which unlike PBS does not survive on tax-deductible citizen handouts (yet), headed for the nearest safe harbor, and rightly so.  Or, perhaps a more apt simile would be that CBS was sailing the world’s largest luxury liner on a perfectly calm sea, but paid attention to ice flow warnings clattering in on their wireless in time to alter their course.  (CBS doesn’t have enough lifeboats for everybody on board, either.).

Dancing Dixie Chicks flew through the storm winds like sparrows in an icy November blast.  Not even the lords of the Democrat aviary, left-winged vultures like Reiner, Rather and Rose were secure in their aeries.  The network reeled from the early blasts and, for one brief moment recognizing the truth as more than one of many equally valid options, decided to not air that fictional docu-dramatic late-stage abortion.

It all reminded me of Charleton Heston standing before Yul Brynner, saying, “Let my people go!” 

On Tuesday, November 4th, the son of Ronald Reagan who is a national talk show host talked to the substitute host for Rush Limbaugh.  Mike, like some lucky American children, had both a mother and a father who lived in the same home. Like all those lucky children, Mike heard what his parents said to each other.  He was outraged by the film’s dialogue.  Mike says he might call someone an S.O.B., but not once did he hear his father call anybody that name.  And that was just for starters.

The writers and producers of that film, says Mike, never asked anybody in the family about the veracity of the conversations they created.  In a film that was not a parody, and so proposed to be a serious drama about the subject matter, no effort was made to determine if any of it was historically accurate.  Here’s something from CyberAlert. 

Merv Griffin told Joe  Scarborough that claims of ignorance about the script don’t wash since in TV production the network pre-approves the script before the filming process begins. And as for the charge that after the Marines were killed in Lebanon Reagan referred to himself as “the anti-Christ,” Griffin revealed he can personally attest to the fallaciousness of that line since he spent the day with Reagan.

After Mike departed this morning’s Limbaugh program, a liberal called and said that conservatives aren’t interested in the arts, and that there is a thing called “dramatic license.”  The first point is false, the second a rape of the literary tool in question.  Here is the truth.

Because of the liberal lock on poetry, sculpture, painting, the publication of fiction, the theatre, films and television – and the funding organizations for the arts, both private and public --  a conservative artist has about as much chance to succeed as a lone zebra crossing a croc-infested African river during the saurian dinner hour. You have to get published to get published.  A museum has to show your art before your art is shown.  If you are a conservative is it virtually impossible to get your foot in that first door.

From there, it gets even worse.

Academic programs, awards from the Putlitzer to the Nobel, the very librarians in our schools and city libraries, are liberals to a man and a woman.  “Dramatic license,” to these people is not only permission to, but a requirement to, lie as much as necessary to achieve the objective, which is an Orwellian philosophical and historical attack on the Right.

Conservatives aren’t interested in the arts?  The reason why there are so few conservatives in the arts is because the entire American artistic and literary establishment is one giant socialist propaganda mill!  Goebbels’ fascist German artistic and literary police state had more anti-Nazi opportunities than America offers to conservative creators.

(Here is this author’s review of what PBS describes as the “most popular opera of all time.” LaBoheme.  Conservatives reading this essay will instantly understand why the opera plays well with the elites in New York City and European “intellectual” centers like Paris.)

To the new and curious visitor to thought like that in this essay, I say, “Once you understand why the machine was constructed and how it works, you will then be a proper attendee at America’s literary brickyard, where unless your vehicle turns exclusively left, you don’t get in the race.”

The only question I had when I first heard of the CBS project on the Reagans was just to what degree the lie would be taken.  Had I heard that a history of Reagan by Doris Kearns Goodwin was to be published by the Harvard press, I would have assumed the same thing.    Had I heard that the New York Times was about to begin a series on the Reagans, I would have assumed the same thing. 

The West Wing is a leftist network television harlot, spitting on our founding principles while glorifying liberal rot.  Hollywood continues to pump out La Boheme lookalikes portraying the economic lifeblood of America, business, as fascist, heartless and greedy – portraying profit as evil.  Jim Lehrer and Charlie Rose continue to misinform the public about the issues of our day, the Nobels continue to reward communist playwrights, the Oscars still go to leftist garbage, the Pulitzers still celebrate propaganda outlets for the DNC.

Nothing has changed but this.

Until they get control of talk radio and the internet, and can squash these only outlets for free speech in America, liberals will look at what happened to the CBS Reagan film, and as with the Dixie Chick flap, feel a terrible, cold wind. 

What, they will ask, if this is the future?  Something must be done.  The answer, as always, will be the same.  Opposition to their gargantuan arts and media propaganda production facility must be silenced.

Postscript:  "I don't believe Democrats often, if ever, try to muscle the First Amendment like this. For example, in 1983, no one stopped NBC from airing Kennedy, a biopic that portrayed President Kennedy and other members of his family and administration as deeply flawed, even though the movie could have potentially been hurtful to Jackie Kennedy, who was still alive to see it, as well as to her children."  -- Barbra Streisand

Ever hear of Clarence Thomas, Babs?  When your liberals discovered that he was going to speak at the University of Hawaii, they saw to it that the invitation was rescinded.  And, what of the vaunted Columbia University where conservatives are drowned out by the catcalls and insults?  In the home of the Pulitzers, Babs.  And what of Dr. Laura?  What happened to her television show?  Your beloved liberals in congress want to reintroduce the "Fair Practices Act" to destroy conservative free speech in American radio.  Defense of free speech should be made of sterner stuff.  Why do your public schools deny access to Christian speakers while celebrating witches, and even Islam?  Where is the modern Ayn Rand, Babs?  The descendant of George Orwell?

You are a moron, Babs.  Every time you open your mouth to speak you prove that you have the brain of a toad.

(LL). 

© 2003 Oregon Magazine