OK. Who thinks we're going to have a real election in 2004 if major networks aren't allowed to do a mini-series about Reagan unless it is hagiographic?
We don't have a real media at this point except for out of the mainstream magazines like The Nation that cannot compete with the big networks and newspapers. If they didn't bother to question Bush during the first election about anything -- his Viet Nam record, his corrupt business practices, etc. -- do you think his Democratic opponent will have a chance when the GOP will argue that questioning the President during a war is unpatriotic?
As I heard Mark Crispin-Miller say last night, if Ralph Nader had never been born George W. Bush would still be our President. The kicked thousands of people off the voter rolls illegally in Florida (see Greg Palast), and the Supreme Court had his father's appointees make sure the election went to the person with fewer popular votes.
The idea that people are offended when Reagan is portrayed as indifferent to people with AIDS is laughable. The first time he said the word was 1987, and by that point at least 25,000 Americans had died of AIDS.
In a portion of the script published in The New York Times last month, Reagan was depicted as uncaring and judgmental toward people with AIDS. "They that live in sin shall die in sin," Reagan's character tells his wife as she begs him to help AIDS victims.
Here is a quote via 365Gay.com
In "Dutch," Reagan's authorized biography, the author, Edmund Morris, writes that Reagan once said of AIDS, "Maybe the Lord brought down this plague," because "illicit sex is against the Ten Commandments."
Reagan, you will remember, divorced his first wife to marry Nancy. Illicit sex, indeed.
