COLUMNIST’S NOTE: The following is an updated reprint of a column written last June, shortly after the death of former President Ronald Reagan, one of the greatest presidents to ever grace the Oval Office, as we commemorate what would have been his 94th birthday on Feb. 6.
When the late great former President Ronald Reagan unflinchingly called the Soviet Union and its oppressive, totalitarian forces an “evil empire,” media leftists around the globe went absolutely ballistic. After all, one of their sacred cows had been kicked; one of their anti-American paradigms they so greatly treasured had been slightly shifted off its axis – especially after decades of observing their fellow Communists engineer state-controlled, Pravda and Samizdat propaganda to the unsuspecting masses; and what they feared the most: Their so-called Utopian ideals were being threatened with extinction.
Similarly, when Bush referred to Iraq, Iran and North Korea as “the axis of evil,” these same media leftists reacted with much the same angst, which is also why they have hated Bush as much as they hated Reagan.
Even with all the pro-Democrat media’s snake-oiled platitudes, pleasantries and predictable leftist propaganda they displayed for Reagan after his death last June, there was still an underbelly of anti-Republican rage that bubbled up to the surface as they kept their guns superciliously aimed at The Gipper.
Like Bush, media leftists hated Reagan with a vengeance they just couldn’t see fit to edit.
“The most notable omission in all the gracious obituaries and histories is the media’s own role in the Reagan era – fiercely hostile and often indistinguishable from the Democratic talking points of the day,” said Brent Bozell, Media Research Center director (6/9/04).
For the last decade of Reagan’s extraordinary life, ever since he revealed in 1994 that he was in the initial stages of Alzheimer’s disease, the media elites were lying in wait for him to pass on. As the American public compared and contrasted the moral clarity of the Bush administration, with the aimlessly unethical wanderings of the Far Left-hijacked Democratic Party last year, the media elites still scrambled to get in their last-minute digs on all things GOP before the 2004 election.
While major newspapers and networks routinely prepare stories and obituaries long in advance of any U.S. politician’s death, the leftist media useful idiots had already egregiously ratcheted up their vitriolic carpet-bombing in advance, specifically directed at The Great Communicator – and indirectly intended for President George W. Bush.
By undermining Reagan’s legacy, the media elites were on a trilateral mission: To further smear President Bush; to resuscitate the humiliatingly dilapidating legacy of Bill Clinton; and to give John Kerry’s sorry excuse for a campaign another mind-numbing jump start.
In fact, media leftists have been so deplorable in their dealings with Republicans that they even accused Bush of playing off the death of Reagan. Media leftists wanted to help Democrats in their selfish quest to regain power, while glossing over their many political failures, especially their softness in dealing with terrorism (i.e., Carter, Clinton). They thought slamming Bush by undermining Reagan’s legacy would accomplish that goal.
In the fall of 2003, that was on display in spades when CBS leftist boss Les Moonves tried to re-script Reagan’s legacy by touting a cheap, Michael Moore-style hit piece they begrudgingly never aired. It fallaciously depicted Reagan as a drunk who allegedly cursed and abused Nancy and their children. CBS and the Hollywood Left also pushed the conspiracy theory that Reagan had Alzheimer’s while he was in office. In the end, CBS was deliberately trying to put words in Reagan’s mouth that he never once uttered.
The anti-Reagan mini-series claimed that Reagan told Nancy (concerning Reagan’s alleged callousness toward the AIDS epidemic) that “they that live in sin shall die in sin.” But Elizabeth Egloff, the playwright who wrote the script, admitted to the New York Times that there was no evidence such a conversation ever took place.
Eventually, CBS’ anti-Reagan hatchet job went to Showtime, as media elites frantically scurried to propagate their malice towards Reagan, Bush and all things conservative to try to effect the 2004 election.
“I’ve never seen my Dad that angry, and I’ve never heard him use the ‘G-D’ word in my life,” Reagan’s son, Michael Reagan, told Sean Hannity in October 2003.
He also told Talon.com that the obvious hatred the Left had for his father “led them to create the fictitious movie about his life, including poking fun at his Alzheimer’s disease. [Liberals] dislike my father, and you can see that,” he said. “They actually infer that Alzheimer’s was setting in at the time the whole thing was going on with Ollie North and Iran-Contra – which is absurd.”
But this certainly wasn’t the first time Moonves developed a made-for-TV hit piece. Opinionjournal.com’s John Fund said Moonves’ last movie, “Hitler: The Rise of Evil,” created a stir earlier this year when “it drew ominous parallels between a society that allowed a Hitler to rise to power and the reaction of the Bush administration after 9/11.”
“You’d think CBS would be a little more careful in its Reagan-bashing,” Fund noted on Oct. 21, 2003. “The man who green-lighted the Reagan project, CBS Chairman Les Moonves, is already somewhat exposed on the issue of liberal bias. He allowed himself to be seen sitting next to Hillary Clinton at the 2000 Democratic convention in Los Angeles…and hobnobbed with Fidel Castro.”
What was equally unconscionable about the anti-Reagan vehicle was the fact that these CBS and Hollywood leftists made it when Reagan was never in a position to defend himself against their slanderous accusations. They tried to defame his character as another way of further attacking and denouncing Bush. John Kerry was also getting away with being reverent towards Reagan, while secretly hating him.
In fact, Kerry, the consummate Communist defender, first copiously displayed his classic hypocrisy about Reagan in 1985, which of course the media elites blatantly ignored during Kerry’s disgraceful campaign run.
“I’m proud that I stood against Ronald Reagan, not with him, when his intelligence agencies were abusing the Constitution of the United States and when he was running an illegal war in Central America,” Kerry declared after Reagan tried to prevent Nicaragua dictator and Marxist thug Daniel Ortega from blocking $14 million of aid to Nicaragua’s Contra freedom fighters.
After all, while Reagan was still in office, Kerry’s animosity wasn’t so hidden as he tried disguising his hatred for Reagan. Kerry had proven that to be true as his media allies helped his struggling campaign by openly displaying their contempt for Reagan and downplaying his historic presidency that forever changed the pro-Communist world.
According to The American Spectator’s June 8, 2004 editorial, Kerry was so phony in his forced platitudes during the week of Reagan’s death and subsequent funeral processional that Kerry’s political operatives actually instructed campaign workers to use the words “optimism” and “optimist” whenever they were asked about Reagan.
In effect, Kerry was so desperate to win the 2004 election that he was still invoking Reagan’s name in his stumps, while using the political expediency to disingenuously go after Bush. But it only served as a mere smokescreen to deflect from how Kerry really felt about Reagan.
The Associated Press reported on June 24, 2004 that Kerry, who had worked with Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin in cozy negotiations in 1985 with Ortega in their efforts to discredit Reagan, went so far as to claim that Bush himself was not living up to Reagan’s legacy.
“Leadership is lacking that asks people to come to the White House and sit for hours, as we used to with Ronald Reagan, with George Herbert Walker Bush, with Bill Clinton, working at trying to find real solutions,” Kerry claimed at a June 21, 2004 luncheon fund-raiser in Aspen, Colo. “But not with these folks (in the Bush administration). It’s my way or the highway.”
This, coming from the one senator who hadn’t cast a single vote for his state since the start of his fledgling campaign and had been asked to resign his seat because of his apparent lack of interest in his job as Massachusetts senator. In fact, according to the Associated Press on June 18, 2004, Kerry’s last missed vote cost the state of Massachusetts an estimated $75 million in federal dollars.
Perhaps one of Kerry’s most arrogant moments came when he had the unmitigated gall to ingratiate himself at Reagan’s repose. Kerry, who vehemently fought to stop Reagan’s Cold War victory from transpiring, wasted no time getting in his usual photo-op.
Moreover, in a feeble attempt to prop up Kerry, while trashing Reagan and Bush, the vitriolic reactions from media leftists had ranged from surprisingly restrained to downright volcanic, as they pushed Kerry’s malfeasance as credible.
Ever eager to trash Reagan’s legacy, while re-scripting Clinton’s and undermining Bush’s authority, like Kerry, media leftists were actually surprised that Americans turned out in the tens of thousands to pay tribute to Reagan, a great man who left an indelible mark for freedom and changed the course of history by winning the Cold War.
According to an Associated Press poll, taken the week of his death, most Americans said they believed Ronald Reagan would be remembered as a better president than Bill Clinton, who’s still trying to change his private persona by re-working his public image.
But despite the call from Reagan family members for media elites to refrain from commentary during the processionals, many media leftists just couldn’t hold back their criticism of Reagan.
New York Times reporter Todd Purdum even felt the need to critique the grieving Nancy Reagan as “tired and frail, and holding oversized eyeglasses.”
ABC News correspondent Kate Snow compared Reagan mourners to “people waiting in line for a football game or a rock concert.”
In that same vein, Associated Press writer Ryan Peterson that same day snipped:
“Californians converged by the tens of thousands to pay their respects to former President Reagan, choking freeway traffic, shuffling in long lines and forcing surprised organizers to extend Tuesday’s viewing period. Some came in their Sunday best, while others looked ready to hit the beach in shorts and flip-flops...”
Reuters reporter Deborah Zabarenko worried that the Reagan funeral was getting in the way of Congress doing their job.
“Reagan’s death has muffled the business of government in Washington, with the U.S. Congress largely occupied with resolutions honoring the late president.”
Seemingly desperate to find anyone to complain about Reagan, New York Times reporters John Broder and Charlie LeDuff located someone willing to help them vilify Reagan.
“After filing past the coffin, Caryn Fate, 52, of Simi Valley offered a different sort of admiration,” they wrote. “Ronald Reagan was not the finest president I’ve known, but he was a human being and showed it,” she said. “He was not a role model but a public figure. I didn’t agree with him all the time, but I have major respect for him as a man.”
CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer seemed to have injected a racial tone in his “coverage” when asking CNN reporter Thelma Gutierrez about the crowds waiting at the Reagan Library.
“Can you tell, Thelma, and clearly this is unscientific, but, if the crowds really look like America?” said Gutierrez, noting that there were “many Asians.” “Are they ethnically diverse, African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, or is it largely white?”
Showing that the gloves were already off, NBC anchor Tom Brokaw blamed Reagan for the AIDS epidemic, editorializing that “the Reagan legacy has some scandals,” including “his failure to recognize early on the AIDS epidemic. He made some controversial appointments.”
But putting Brokaw’s rant into prospective was New York Post columnist John Podhoretz, a former Reagan speechwriter and author of “Bush County: How Dubya Became a Great President While Driving Liberals Insane.”
According to Podhoretz, media elites like Brokaw needed to be honest, stop being special-interest cheerleaders for the Left and just simply report the facts concerning Reagan, who had already spent over $5.7 billion for AIDS during his tenure as president:
“What the people who issue this criticism are complaining about has little or nothing to do with AIDS funding,” Podhoretz said in his June 9, 2004 column. “Rather, they were and are unhappy with Ronald Reagan because he did not agree to turn the bully pulpit into a gay-rights pulpit.”
Moreover, Brokaw groused about the “balance” between passing presidents and news objectivity (of course, only when it applies to Republicans).
“[Reagan] was a beloved American leader, but at the same time our journalistic obligation is to put his whole life and his political career in context,” Brokaw told the Philadelphia Inquirer. “It’s a very delicate balancing act. In a time of national mourning, let the first day or so pass, then go back and respectfully examine the person’s record.”
Not surprisingly, CBS News anchor Dan Rather, who, at the time, was still riding the wave of euphoria over his travesty of an “interview” with Bill Clinton – pre-Rathergate – opined that “news anchors see excess in Reagan funeral coverage” and that it “will be over-covered.”
“When a twice-elected, two-full-term president dies, it’s not the time for a seminar on his strengths and weaknesses, in my opinion,” inveighed Rather, “whatever mistakes [Reagan] made were lost” with his passing.
Rather further griped to Philadelphia Inquirer TV columnist Gail Shister that “even though everybody is respectful and wants to pay homage to the president, life does go on. There is other news, like the reality of Iraq. It got very short shrift this weekend.”
Recall that Rather foamed at the mouth about Reagan during his Nov. 18, 1987 broadcast rant.
“Congress had its say today about President Reagan’s secret sale of U.S. arms to Iran and who got the money,” Rather blathered. “A year after Mr. Reagan’s weapons to Iran debacle exploded the House and Senate select committees put out their assessment of what went wrong and who was responsible. For President Reagan the words sting. The 700 page report is filled with words such as deception, dishonesty and cover-up.”
Rick Perlstein of Salon.com, a Far Left, Bush-hating Web site, charged that Reagan “chose a career of public service when he could have made a lot more money doing something else, and not least because he took genuine risks for peace.”
The Boston Globe’s Far Left columnist Derrick Z. Jackson parroted leftist Bishop Desmond Tutu’s words, charging that more reporters should be “exhuming” Reagan’s legacy as “immoral, evil, and totally un-Christian.”
The New York Times editorial board on June 8, 2004 also proved they still didn’t understand the history-changing legacy of Reagan, who single-handedly defeated Communism. They falsely claimed that Reagan “profited from good timing and good luck” in his rise to political fame, and was “fortunate to have as his counterpart Mikhail Gorbachev, a Soviet leader ready to acknowledge his society’s failings and interested in reducing international tensions.”
These same media leftists continue to help their fellow Democrats re-stack the brick wall of Communism that Reagan tore down. One of the ways they try to re-write history is by smearing those who have changed it, namely Ronald Reagan and now George W. Bush. Both Reagan and Bush understood that enemies must be defeated instead of appeased – a concept that still boggles the minds of today’s terrorist sympathizers in the press.
The New York Times to this day still refuses to let go of the Abu Ghraib brouhaha, after nearly one year of wall-to-wall coverage, with over 50 front-page stories to date. Desperately trying to deflect attention away from Reagan winning his 40-year war against Communism, while offering further sympathy to these suspected terrorists, the Times editorial board accused Bush of “a morally dubious culture at the top of the administration.”
“It is part of the price the nation must pay for President Bush’s decision to take the extraordinary mandate to fight terrorism,” the Times editors fumed, “that he was granted by a grieving nation after 9/11 and apply it without justification to Iraq.”
These same New York Times editors on June 10, 2004 also snidely complained that Reagan’s popularity shouldn’t warrant a change in the currency, with talk of placing his face on the $10 bill.
“There will be plenty of ways Americans can further honor his memory in the months ahead,” the Times editors groused. “But Congress should not rush to alter American currency as a reaction to the passions of the moment. Even Mr. Reagan’s most ardent fans should be calling for restraint, lest we wind up with a frenzy of new but short-lived currency designs. Some years need to pass so the country has more perspective on the Reagan presidency. Whatever honor the Treasury then accords him will be more meaningful, not to mention more enduring.”
New York Times leftist columnist Maureen Dowd, spewing her usual caustic venom, coldheartedly compared Bush’s political connection with Reagan to a “paternity suit,” while taking her habitually vicious swipe at Donald Rumsfeld and our U.S. military:
“At every opportunity, as the extraordinary procession solemnly wended its way from California to the Capitol, W. was peeping out from behind the majestic Reagan mantle, trying to claim the Gipper as his true political father,” Dowd protested on June 10, 2004.
“Finally, there’s a flag-draped coffin and military funeral that President Bush wants to be associated with, and wants us to see. (It’s amazing they could find enough soldiers, given Rummy’s depletion of the military.)”
Dowd continued her ferocious rant, claiming that the “Bush hawks were visibly relieved to be on TV answering questions that had nothing to do with prison torture, phantom W.M.D. or our new C.I.A.-operative-turned-prime-minister in Iraq.”
“What a glorious respite to extol a strong, popular, visionary Republican president who spurred democracy in a big backward chunk of the world — even if it isn’t W., and it’s the Soviet bloc and not the Middle East. Showing they haven’t lost their taste for hype, some Bushies revved up the theme that Son of Bush was really Son of Reagan.”
“The Bush crowd’s attempt to wrap themselves in Reagan could go only so far…Whether he was right or wrong, Ronald Reagan was exhilarating. Whether he is right or wrong, George W. Bush is a bummer.”
New York Times’ R.W. “Johnny” Apple thought of Reagan’s role in ending the Cold War as a fluke, since Apple thought Reagan “came to power as the Cold War was nearing a denouement,” suggesting “it was the result of 45 years of aggressive allied containment, but the commander in chief, as always, got much of the credit.”
Likewise, Dan Rather, on a follow-up broadcast, claimed that Reagan only “helped to end the Cold War” and “didn’t do it alone” because, purportedly, “Reagan and Gorbachev together stepped back from the nuclear abyss.”
But what Rather and other pro-Communist media leftists still fail to grasp is that without Reagan, Gorbachev never would have budged.
What’s more, Time magazine’s resident leftist and Clinton-admirer, Joe Klein, callously recalled talking with Reagan on the campaign trail. Klein admitted that as the press corps would follow Reagan, they “would sometimes leave the room when Reagan began to speak and play liar’s poker in the hall, a designated note-taker remaining behind in the unlikely event that the man actually said something new.”
In fact, Klein claimed Reagan was “always so rote and mechanical that it was easy to miss the big picture…with his “gauzy, Morning in America mythmaking apparatus was going full tilt from the moment Reagan entered the White House…unlike other Presidents…Reagan came to power as the leader of an ideological movement: in his case, a fierce conservatism forged and tempered by decades of disdain from the nation's moderate media and political establishment.”
Is it any wonder? Like Bush, Reagan was hated by the establishment media for what he stood for. They hated the fact that his conservative ideas and Christian faith were influencing Americans and having a profound effect on the culture. In fact, when Reagan declared 1983 as “The Year of the Bible,” media leftists went nuts.
But like other media leftists, Klein missed the whole point about what made Reagan a great president. Reagan wasn’t popular because of what Klein charged was Reagan’s “disdain” for the media or the Democrats: Reagan struck a chord with America because, unlike the vast majority of today’s bitterly partisan Democrats, Reagan had a core and a set of deeply ingrained values that guided him – and resonated with the public, which is exactly the same reason why they hate Bush. But it’s this kind of positive public opinion that media leftists like Klein have sought to change through their Dan Rather-style editorializing.
While President Bush has tried to restore the traditional values that reflect America, of which Bill Clinton mocked continually, John Kerry wanted America to reflect Europe – particularly France. But, then again, Kerry never wanted the Cold War to end. And media leftists actually encouraged that kind of anti-American tone that Kerry nursed in Vietnam – and eventually brought back again to the campaign trail last year.
The reality is, Reagan never saw the presidency as a popularity contest or a self-aggrandizing, self-indulgent playground as Clinton did – and what Kerry drooled over. In fact, Reagan revered the sacred responsibility as president so much so that he even refused to take off his coat in the Oval Office. To Reagan, the word “compromise” wasn’t in his vocabulary, as it was missing from Bill Clinton, who later claimed it was a “badge of honor” to circumvent, skirt, break and thumb his nose at the rule of law.
What’s more, like Bush, Reagan knew the hand of Almighty God had placed him in the Oval Office. Bush also knew his place in history, despite the media elite’s and Al Gore’s criminal efforts to hijack the 2000 election – and Dan Rather’s felonious attempt to destroy Bush last fall. Although the America public elected Reagan, God had cast the deciding vote, which was the main reason that media leftists also hate Reagan and Bush.
Ultimately, unlike Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan knew that what you do in private, behind closed doors, is a mirror into your heart and soul, as well as your public life, and actually does matter to the governing of a nation. And, unlike Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan knew the Oval Office was sacred ground because he knew the One who put him there and treated his presidency as such; Clinton’s reckless disregard for the office spoke for itself.
Sean Hannity, on his June 9, 2004 broadcast, observed that the anti-Reagan books from the Left would likely follow, which “60 Minutes” would eagerly push.
“They hated Reagan because he humiliated them and defeated them. They were wrong and Reagan was right,” adding that if the Left had their way, “those nuclear weapons would still be pointed at us…[Reagan] stood strong against that opposition.”
But media leftists continue to distort Ronald Reagan’s legacy. They try to skewer Reagan’s accomplishments, as well as the breadth and depth of his character that only a few presidents like him and Bush have displayed.
Even as Americans filed in by the tens of thousands in the Capitol Rotunda to pay their last respects to Reagan last June, media leftists even refused to acknowledge young teen-agers who openly wept as they saluted Reagan – children who were only a glimpse in their parents’ eyes at the time, yet felt the impact of Reagan’s amazing life and the mark he indelibly left on this world.
What media leftists will never comprehend is that Reagan knew God divinely placed him in the White House at that particular moment in history – and Reagan took it seriously as a sacred duty.
Larry Elder summed up the ultimate comparison between Reagan and Bush, that Carter, Clinton or Kerry would never be able to claim, when he addressed President Bush in his June 10, 2004 column.
“President Reagan, like you, felt God’s hand as he navigated through his presidency. He urged peace through strength and criticized Communism as ideologically and morally bankrupt, and called the Soviet Union the “evil empire.”
“You, of course, called Iran, Iraq and North Korea an “axis of evil,” and correctly understand that ultimate victory over terrorism lies in changing the conditions in countries that house, protect or are indifferent toward Islamic terrorism.”
Despite the derision in the Democratic Party, sparked by media leftists, in their anti-American efforts to dismantle Reagan’s astounding legacy, the fact that Reagan ultimately won his 40-year fight against Communism was the one thing they could never take from him.
© 2004, 2005 by Doug Schmitz. All Rights Reserved.
Doug Schmitz, who holds a master’s degree in journalism, is a conservative columnist and regularly contributes to Etherzone.com, Michnews.com and has been a frequent guest columnist for Accuracy in Media (www.aim.org), a watchdog group for the liberal media.
