Ferrell, O’Reilly and the Fiction of Reagan

[Ubiquitous]

There they go again. And again. And again.

Generally speaking, Hollywood tells history one of two ways. They
either use small lies to tell big truths or they use small truths to
tell big lies.

Lately, though, they’ve streamlined the process by simply using lies to
tell other lies. While this might be permissible in Hollywood, where
ticket sales are the ultimate barometer for success, this blasé
approach to fact has spread to the book world with unsettling results.

Films like the excellent, critically acclaimed, Gladiator used a myriad
of half-truths to construct a compelling narrative that was at its
core, completely historically inaccurate. Yes, there was an Emperor
Commodus and, yes, he was a few spokes short of a chariot, but no, he
was not killed in the middle of the Coliseum by a general-turned
gladiator-turned martyr. This is not a criticism of the film; quite the
contrary, it was a triumph (no pun intended), but it was not
historically accurate.

Conversely, Hollywood has embellished somewhat over the years, with,
say, The Alamo, but the story was essentially correct. Patton was very
accurate, as was MacArthur, as are other important portrayals of
American history.

Recently, Stephen Spielberg’s Lincoln contained some historical
inaccuracies and several significant embellishments, most notably the
fictional lot of lobbyists who conned, connived, and cajoled enough
members of Congress to support the 13th Amendment to the Constitution,
despite little evidence of their existence.

Nor did Lincoln keep speeches in his hat; nor did his son Tad play with
glass negatives; nor did the 50-cent piece bear Lincoln’s image; nor
did Mary Todd Lincoln watch the House vote from the galleries. Creative
license and small fibs can be essential for crafting a compelling
narrative that can fit in a film, sub-3 hours, and the end result was a
masterpiece.

It was a wonderful film that was at its core truthful and accurate, and
its merits far outweigh these small deceptions.

Present-day Hollywood can be forgiven for small errors of fact, as can
present-day writers and aspiring historians, but not for large, glaring
revisions. Sometimes a confluence of egos and ambition collide and
leave the truth as the flotsam and jetsam on the sands of American
history.

Which brings us to the most recent historical abomination birthed of
Hollywood: the recently announced Reagan screenplay.

The script has yet to be made public, but from the table read in March
of this year, the script’s logline, and a recent Hollywood Reporter [1]
article, the artists intended vision comes into focus. That vision is
mean-spirited, gauche, and without any basis in objective reality.

Ronald Reagan, following a successful reelection, falls into dementia
and must be manipulated into leading the country by a fictional low-
level aide whose experience with his dementia-crippled father makes him
the man most able to literally lie to, take advantage of, and trick a
now-mentally handicapped Reagan into leading the nation. One might
think that having a father suffering from dementia would give the child
a sense of empathy or respect for those suffering from such mental
afflictions, but that basic respect for humanity is conspicuously
absent.

Let’s set aside the unfathomably offensive elephant in the room that is
this approach to satirizing and skewering millions of dementia stricken
humans and focus on the scholarship of the script.

In the script, according to the Hollywood Reporter’s reporting on it,
Former Treasury Secretary Don Regan, who famously attacked the Reagan
administration after being dismissed, is “a stern, mentor-like figure
[1].” Meanwhile, the celebrated chief of staff James Baker has "…
nervous eyes [1]." Other falsehoods abound.

The noble and reluctant heroes are almost all cabinet members who have
turned away from the Reagans in recent history and the villains and/or
bumbling fools are almost all “loyal Reaganites.” The one exception is
a female White House speechwriter who is portrayed positively, but
still willing to manipulate a dementia-riddled man.

The screenwriter for the Reagan movie, Mike Rosolio may have drawn
inspiration from Bill O’Reilly’s deeply flawed book, “Killing Reagan,”
which also falsely charged Reagan with being addle-brained in his
second term, holed up in the second floor of the White House watching
soap operas while Nancy Reagan ran the country.

This book led to a now famous war of words between the author and famed
columnist George Will [2], in which O’Reilly failed to rebut Will’s
assertion that he, O’Reilly, never saw the memo on which the book’s
criticism was based. O’Reilly was reduced to purple faced ranting,
calling the Pulitzer-prize winning, universally respected author a
“hack.”

O’Reilly also revealed that he does not interview people with “skin in
the game” which literally means he doesn’t interview anyone who
actually was involved in the things that he’s writing about.
Journalists nationwide should rejoice; Bill O’Reilly has finally
liberated you from the burden of ever conducting another interview.

The highly skewered revisionism in O’Reilly’s book and in the “Reagan”
screenplay is unambiguously biased and mean-spirited, but not unusual.
The real insult is the crux of what both the book and the film—that
Reagan was crippled in his second term—inject into American history.

Annual Mayo clinic checkups, physician testimonies, and a record of
tremendous achievement during his second term is still not enough to
eliminate the falsehood that Reagan was mentally impaired during his
second term. The basis of these false claims is usually a memo authored
by James Cannon that Cannon himself later disavowed.

Yet the scurrilous rumors persist and are used to cast aspersions on,
and dismiss, the legacy of a man whose fundamental beliefs were an
anathema to the narrative of many hardline liberals and for-profit
talking heads. If you think these don't matter and "it's just a
fictional movie," or "it's just a book," well there are many Americans
who will go to their grave believing that the U.S. government killed
President John F. Kennedy based on the fiction of Oliver Stone.
Embedding the seed of doubt in a foundation of truth is sometimes more
than enough for many to advance the fictional narratives that serve the
interests of the intellectually bankrupt.

Will Ferrell had the good sense to walk away from this train wreck of a
movie script, after the tender pleading of Reagan’s daughter, Patti
Davis, and son, Michael Reagan. Despite the damage done by O’Reilly,
let’s hope others follow Ferrell’s lead. But it’s not over. National
Geographic is scurrilously making a movie based on O’Reilly’s fiction.

There they go again.

: Craig Shirley is widely recognized as one of the leading biographers
: of Ronald Reagan, having written four books including Last Act: The
: Final Years and Emerging Legacy of Ronald Reagan. He is the Visiting
: Reagan Scholar at Eureka College and had lectured frequently on the
: 40th president including at the Reagan Presidential Library.

--
Republicans freed the slaves, but we Democrats and our liberal
policies enslaved 95% of their descendants.