--- Begin Message --- Title: Insider Report
Nov. 9, 2003 Insider Report from NewsMax.com
Headlines (Scroll down for complete stories):
1. Why Hollywood Poisoned 'The Reagans'
2. Howard Dean: Kill the Helpless
3. Mexico to U.S.: Put Us on Your Dole
4. America-Hating Socialists Proven Wrong
5. Lieberman Targeted for Observing Sabbath
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1. Why Hollywood Poisoned 'The Reagans'
Amid all the hullabaloo about CBS's decision to demote "The Reagans" to the cable channel Showtime, a lot of people didn't notice the fascinating reason the miniseries evolved into such a venomous hatchet job: Tinseltown's abhorrence of the decent and the normal.
Producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron initially brought the project to ABC, which enjoyed hits with their musical version of "Cinderella" and their movie about Judy Garland.
But ABC rejected "The Reagans" because an early version "was very soft; it was not controversial in the least," one network executive was quoted as saying.
Yes, the media bigwigs couldn't stand to run anything positive or even neutral about the Republican icon. Time to bring out the arsenic.
CBS bought the $16 million production only after the filmmakers made it nasty enough.
When the network announced it would air "The Reagans," it deliberately lied in describing the program as a love story between Ronald and Nancy.
NewsMax was the first to point out, many months ago, that the film was set to be a hatchet job on Reagan. We knew that when the producers openly talked that the movie would delve into the Reagans' "troubled" relations with their children.
Those of us who eventually saw the promotional video and read the leaked excerpts of the script know that the schlockumentary is the opposite of a love story. It's all about La-La Land's hatred of anyone with a differing viewpoint.
According to the New York Times, "one executive involved in the production said the producers had made it clear in several meetings they were aiming to produce a highly controversial film. That was also the message they conveyed in an article in The New York Times on Oct. 21, that for the first time provided details about the portrayal of the Reagans, and that alerted conservative backers of the former president that the film was not going to be entirely sympathetic."
Note to the Times: If you want to be accurate, try changing "entirely sympathetic" to "at all sympathetic."
We have to give the Times' critic Alessandra Stanley credit, though, for noting that the "producers appear to have sacrificed showmanship to self-righteousness, adopting a preachy, liberal agenda.... Rather than treading lightly, the stars gloated about how controversial their film would be. James Brolin said his portrayal of Mr. Reagan was partly inspired by the Reagan puppet on the British satirical show 'Spitting Image.' Judy Davis, who plays Nancy Reagan, pompously said she hoped the film would teach Americans to scrutinize their elected leaders more carefully."
"Handled more delicately, the series could have been shown on CBS," Stanley wrote. "The eight-minute trailer that CBS sent out ... suggests that the movie is bad history and good television."
In particular she faulted the partisan but usually talented Davis for abandoning all nuance and portraying Mrs. Reagan as a monster.
As for Malibu Barbi Streisand, Little Tommy Daschle and the other Democrats crying foul about CBS's decision, let's see if they would object to a pseudo-biopic in which Bill Clinton is falsely quoted as calling himself "the Antichrist" and saying that AIDS patients deserve to "die in sin."
That we'll never know, because Democrat-run Hollywood, of course, would never invent such lies about its fallen idol.
Plenty of NewsMax readers wrote in to put the issue in perspective. Rich Engle of Elk Grove, California put it best: "The liberals who are crying foul on cancellation of CBS's hack job of President Ronald Reagan are truly out in left field. The U.S. Constitution's First Amendment right of free speech has no bearing on this case. No government agency demanded the cancellation of the program, popular opinion did. The fact is that the producers made a poor quality product, and consumers rejected it. Citizens of the United States of America have conducted business in this manner for well over two hundred years with unequaled success."
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2. Howard Dean: Kill the Helpless
Has Dr. Howard Dean forgotten the Hippocratic oath he took? If he had his way, Terri Schiavo would suffer an agonizing death by starvation.
Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and the Legislature should be "embarrassed" for passing a law to prevent the brain-damaged woman from being slowly put to death according to her husband's desire, said the Democrat front-runner, who professed to be "appalled."
"I'm tired of people in the Legislature thinking that they have an M.D. when what they really have is a B.S.," he said this week in Tallahassee.
As usual, self-described feminist groups were silent about yet another politician calling for a woman to be killed according to her husband's wishes ... for the crime of being inconvenient and expensive. Does NOW think Mrs. Schiavo is mere chattel?
Years ago we used to work in nursing homes and can tell you they are full of helpless people dependent on feeding tubes. If Dean wants them all dead he'll be too busy to do anything else.
Let's hope that, should he ever be sworn in as president, he doesn't abandon that oath as well.
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3. Mexico to U.S.: Put Us on Your Dole
The media didn't pay much attention to Mexican President Vicente Fox's visit to the southwestern United States this week, but it sure caught our eye.
In Texas he refused to say when Mexico would hand over the more than one million acre-feet of water it has stolen from the Rio Grande by violating a treaty.
In New Mexico he addressed the Legislature in Santa Fe: "We also share nation and language. One of every five inhabitants of New Mexico is of Mexican origin, and Spanish is one of the state's official languages."
What?! Democrats fight all attempts to make English the official language of the United States, but Spanish is an official language of an American state?
Mexico's leader said it was "urgent to have political will to improve the quality of life" of illegal aliens, a term that he of course never used.
"We need initiatives that provide opportunities and facilitate access to health care and education services for all those who share our border. Without this, it is impossible to think about the path to greater integration and shared prosperity."
He urged that illegal aliens be allowed to pay lower tuition than U.S. citizens from other states, an insane practice of rewarding foreign criminals that California and several other states already allow.
He whined that Mexicans in the U.S. needed "access to decent health care" and that "certain groups of migrants [i.e., illegal aliens] are only cared for in charity clinics. We must work together so that they can have health insurance."
He thanked Clintonista Gov. Bill Richardson and New Mexico's legislators for, like California, allowing illegal aliens to have driver's licenses.
We couldn't summarize this one better than Richard Vanden Bosch of Modesto, California who wrote: "Why in the hell does he think Mexicans persist in coming to this country? If he and his administration were performing the inadequate services about which he is chiding us, the fence between our two countries would be non-existent and unnecessary. Canada doesn't seem to have a problem with our treatment of their citizens. I'm furious at the hypocrisy, and need you to expose it!"
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4. America-Hating Socialists Proven Wrong
Even as the world's socialists were meeting in Brazil to rant against America and capitalism, reality interfered yet again. A new report showed how wonderful America and capitalism are.
A "Declaration of Sao Paulo," approved by the 22nd Congress of Socialist International, attacked national sovereignty by denouncing attempts to "dismantle all forms of global governance, to minimize the role of the United Nations, to undermine multilateral institutions, to promote unilateralism and the consecration of the market, and to impose the will of the powerful to decide the future of mankind."
Socialist International president Antonio Guterres, a former socialist prime minister from Portugal, naturally singled out President Bush.
"It is obvious that with the present administration in Washington, a dialogue about this new vision is quite difficult," he huffed.
"We have an answer: a coalition to create a new world order based on multilateralism for sustained economic development, free trade and the fair distribution of wealth."
Other self-described socialist leaders, who of course were enjoying the lap of luxury during their junket, tried to outdo each other in attacking America and whining about the free market.
Sorry, Antonio, the greedy socialists have been smoking that pipe dream for centuries, and their idea of "fair distribution of wealth," i.e., stealing whatever they feel like from the hardworking and successful and giving it to the shiftless, has never worked.
Witness the annual ranking of nations' economic success. The United States is an impressive No. 2, and the costly war on terrorism is the main reason it didn't keep its No. 1 place from last year, according to World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Report.
Finland came in first this year, but the big story was the huge advances taken by the former communist countries of Eastern European. Escaping the yoke of socialist oppression proves once again to be the key to rising prosperity for the people.
Asia's capitalist powerhouses did well too, with Taiwan ranking fifth place and Singapore sixth. Japan took 11th place and South Korea 18th.
Germany was No. 13, France 26 and communist China 44 - way behind the free Chinese.
And what about such communist paradises as Cuba and North Korea? We couldn't even find them on the list.
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5. Lieberman Targeted for Observing the Sabbath
White House contender Sen. John Kerry rubs a lot of people the wrong way, but he did the right thing in rejecting a supporter who tried to exploit the religious practices of rival Sen. Joe Lieberman.
Democrat Arizona state Rep. Ben Miranda was trying to persuade Lieberman's backers to switch to Kerry because Lieberman, an Orthodox Jew, does not campaign on Friday nights and Saturdays in observance of the Sabbath.
After the Arizona Republic blew the whistle and Lieberman's campaign manager urged Kerry to take action, Miranda got the heave-ho.
"We have expressed our deepest regrets to Senator Lieberman, a friend of Senator Kerry's for many years, and made it clear that, of course, Senator Kerry deplores and will not tolerate the injection of religion into this race in any manner whatsoever," stated Kerry spokesman Robert Gibbs.
Of course, Kerry scored brownie points in Taxachusetts for years by implying he was Irish Catholic until the Boston Globe exposed the deception, but nevermind.
If Lieberman really wants to make a splash, he might try following Orthodox Judaism's stand against abortion. And the allegedly Catholic Kerry could do the same. But the Democrat tent wouldn't be big enough for that sort of diversity, would it?
Just ask Al Gore and Dick Gephardt, who years ago were anti-abortion until they developed ambitions for the White House.
Editor's Notes:
Drink coffee with presidents - get their coffee mugs - Click Here. Ronald Reagan said, "It CAN be done." Check out his official Oval Office deskplate - Click Here Now. "Live Free or Die" Check out the unique t-shirt - Click Here Now.
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