What's worse in this film are what the producers and writers are "adding" to the historical record. Rutenberg noted that the writer creates a conversation between Reagan and his agent during the Hollywood years about offering the names of communists to Congress, in which fake-Reagan declares, "I've never called anybody a commie who wasn't a commie." In real life, Reagan denied doing that, although he did cooperate with FBI investigations. This is a good thing, even if Hollywood will never catch a glimpse of Reagan's moral vision: an unemployed communist screenwriter is hardly a historical atrocity compared to communists starving millions in the Ukraine.
The Times also reported that the script accuses Reagan of not mere apathy in facing the outbreak of AIDS, but of "asserting that AIDS patients essentially deserved their disease." During a scene in which his wife pleads with him to help people battling AIDS, fake-Reagan says, "They that live in sin shall die in sin" and refuses to discuss the issue further. This is not only fake history, but terrible Christianity. We are all sinners, and we all die requiring the grace of a forgiving God.
This is where Rutenberg's script scoop is a little short on context. Why would Reagan be portrayed as a death-wisher? The producers of "The Reagans" are Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, who've been instrumental in bringing TV revivals of classic musicals to television for Disney. They are also openly gay activists who will be honored in Hollywood next March with an award at the "Building Equality" dinner from the gay-left lobby called the Human Rights Campaign.
In 1995, Zadan and Meron produced another "historical" film for television with their pal Barbra Streisand called "Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story," with Glenn Close playing the lesbian military nurse who came out of the closet and defied the Pentagon's "homophobia." This movie did not invent nasty doings or sayings to cast Cammermeyer in a negative light. On the contrary, this was uplifting propaganda. Amazon.com reminds us that the script "captures the sad irony of doing everything right -- serving one's country, taking care of the people in one's life -- yet still being treated like a pariah for entirely irrational reasons."
Inquiring minds should also remember that CBS chief Les Moonves won't be making any Clinton-bashing TV movies. In fact, in 1996, Bill Clinton talked Moonves into making "A Child's Wish," a heart-tugging propaganda film dramatizing the wonders of his Family and Medical Leave Act. Clinton even made an appearance in the movie as himself. Nobody said those fictional "history" movies can't be very political. And very dishonest.