What CBS is doing is truly Orwellian, exactly what the Ministry of Truth was designed to do in Orwell's "1984" -- rewrite history to deceive and propagandize those who had no other source of truth.

One of the differences between Americans and our communist and Nazis enemies was said to be that we stood for truth, and that they denied and twisted truth, and lied deliberately, for their own ideological ends. Is this not exactly what Hollywood and CBS are doing with "The Reagans"?

"It's horrendous, it's absolutely horrendous," says Michael Reagan. The president's son saw eight minutes of excerpts. "They paint my father as a buffoon." They imply that President Reagan had Alzheimer's in the White House. They have him using God's name in vain. They portray Nancy as an abuser of pills who, in disciplining her 5-year-old daughter, calls to mind Joan Crawford in "Mommie Dearest."

Who did the hatchet job? Its producers, Neil Meron and Craig Zadan, are leftists. Judy Davis, who plays Nancy, sees this show as an antidote to "the ugly specter of patriotism" that swept America after 9-11. James Brolin, who plays Reagan, is the husband of Barbra Streisand, who was seen hanging around the set for weeks.

What Hollywood is about in "The Reagan's" is the trashing of his legacy, the demonizing of the man, and the destruction of his good name and image in the minds of the young, by using lies.

For they could not do it with the truth. If this is not the politics of hate and the politics of personal destruction, what is?

For its role in this cruel attack on a man they could not defeat, but who cannot now fight back, CBS is guilty of the premeditated assassination of the character of Ronald Reagan. A thoroughly rotten piece of business.