CBS weenies cave in to political pressure

Truth is, indeed, stranger than fiction – and the latest TV follies prove it.

Would you believe? On Nov. 4, ABC aired one of the most controversial TV specials ever, called “Jesus, Mary and Da Vinci.” Expanding on legends from the best-selling novel, “The Da Vinci Code,” ABC told viewers that Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute, after all. She was, according to some theologians, the wife of Jesus and the mother of his child.

That’s right, sports fans. ABC says Jesus was a married man who fathered a child by Mary Magdalene. You would expect a hurricane of outrage, but there was barely a whisper. Why? Because conservatives were too busy protesting a CBS movie about former President Ronald Reagan.

Then, to make things worse, CBS management caved in to a bunch of screaming right-wing talk-show hosts, cancelled the Reagan movie, and pledged to air it on Showtime instead. The once-mighty network is now run by a bunch of weenies.

CBS, I admit, bungled this project from the get-go. It was dumb to schedule a biopic about Reagan while he lingers on his deathbed. And they should have realized that giving the lead to actor James Brolin, husband of Barbra Streisand, would fuel charges of a left-wing conspiracy. But once having made the movie, CBS should have stuck to its guns.

Based on the few pages of script obtained and published by the “Drudge Report,” Reagan supporters cried foul. The movie didn’t portray the real Ronald and Nancy Reagan, they insisted. She came across as a real shrew. He came across as a bumbling idiot who couldn’t even remember the names of his key advisers. Worse yet, he swore like a sailor and, for years, refused to take the AIDS crisis seriously. And, they argued, young people discovering Ronald Reagan for the first time might get the wrong impression.

Nonsense. Young people, and older, are smart enough to know they don’t look for historical accuracy on the big screen, the little screen, or the pages of a novel. This is not a documentary. It’s a TV movie. But, even so, it appears more accurate than not.

According to excerpts in the New York Times, there’s a lot more positive than negative in the movie. Reagan gets credit for winning the Cold War, restoring the economy, inspiring an entire nation and cracking down on terrorists. He gets no blame for running up huge deficits or selling arms to the contras. At the same time, it does not say Reagan walked on water. Because he didn’t.

Let’s face it, Reagan wasn’t perfect. No president is. He ran on a promise to balance the budget, yet saddled us with the biggest deficits in history to that point (George Bush has far surpassed him). At one Oval Office meeting, he famously did not recognize Samuel Pierce, his own Housing Secretary and the only African-American in his administration – greeting him, instead, as “Mr. Mayor.” And, on AIDS, Reagan was indeed slow to act.

It was in May 1981 that a mysterious new illness among young gay men was first reported in medical journals. It was not until six years later, in a Washington speech on May 31, 1987, that President Reagan finally mentioned the word AIDS. By that time, 36,058 Americans had been diagnosed with the disease and 20,849 had died, including Reagan’s friend Rock Hudson.

My point is not to condemn Reagan for not acting sooner. It’s simply this: Ronald Reagan did some good things and some not-so-good things. And like any other president, he is fair game – both to historians, who must be accurate, and to moviemakers and novelists, who are not expected to be.

In his movie “Nixon,” Oliver Stone portrayed the 37th president as a mean, ugly drunk. Where were the protests? In “JFK,” Stone showed LBJ plotting the assassination of President Kennedy. Where were the protests? There weren’t any, because everybody understood: These were movies. Moviemakers are free to exercise their artistic license. Or used to be, until they set their sights on Ronald Reagan.

But now we know the new rules: You can say anything you want about John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon or Lyndon Johnson. You can even make up lies about Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene. Just don’t touch Ronald Reagan.