CBS's decision to exile its controversial miniseries on Ronald and Nancy Reagan to cable's "Showtime" has liberals crying "censorship." Of course, that charge more appropriately describes actions by government, not decisions by a private company responding, in its own best interests, to fears of bad publicity or boycott threats against its advertisers.
Liberal gay activists should know this, since they've use these tactics to perfection themselves. My message to liberals: live by the sword, die by the sword. I remember back in 1992 (I think) participating in a protest by the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation against the movie "Basic Instinct," which hadn't yet been released and which none of us had seen -- but we were told it was full of hateful depictions of "killer lesbians" (a bit of an exaggeration, as it turned out). More recently, activists targeted "Dr. Laura" Schlessinger's syndicated TV talk show before its launch (see stopdrlaura.com) and Michael Savage's CNBC talk show, alleging that both of these "talents" had prior histories of anti-gay comments in other media. Following low ratings and advertiser flight, both TV programs were soon canceled.
The gay angle. Concerning the CBS miniseries, topic "g"
played a big role: Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, executive producers
of "The Reagans," are (according the Washington
Post):
"well known in TV circles for their gay advocacy TV projects and remakes of old Broadway musicals. Those advocacy projects include the NBC film "Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story," which is based on the true story of an Army officer's legal challenge to her involuntary discharge after revealing she was gay, and the Lifetime movie "What Makes a Family," about a lesbian's fight to retain custody of the baby her late partner bore.
Zadan and Meron worked on those projects with Hollywood heavyweight Barbra Streisand, whose husband, James Brolin, was cast to play the president in "The Reagans." Streisand, an outspoken liberal, was not involved in the CBS miniseries but weighed in yesterday with a lengthy statement on her Web site titled "A Sad Day for Artistic Freedom."
One of the more controversial scenes was one in which the president was shown saying to his wife, "They that live in sin shall die in sin" when addressing the AIDS crisis. The quote, the filmmakers conceded, was fictitious, according the New York Times.
The strangest gay angle. A story at newsmax.com is headlined "CBS Nixed 'Reagans' Following Letter From Rock Hudson's Ex-Lover." Yes, it claims that "CBS's decision to pull the plug on its miniseries "The Reagans" came on the heels of a letter to the network from Rock Hudson's ex-lover [Marc Christian], who complained that the film's portrayal of the 40th president as a virulent homophobe was false." The letter was made public by Christian's friend, conservative and openly lesbian commentator Tammy Bruce.
Now back to the 'censorship' issue. The fights taking
place on college campuses over speach codes and the like have some
bearing here. A USA Today story, "On
campus: Free speech for you but not for me?" reports
that:
On campuses large and small, public and private, students describe a culture in which freshmen are encouraged, if not required, to attend diversity programs that portray white males as oppressors. It's a culture in which students can be punished if their choice of words offends a classmate, and campus groups must promise they won't discriminate on the basis of religion or sexual orientation -- even if theirs is a Christian club that doesn't condone homosexuality.
The Seattle Times reports, for example, how a peaceful protest against racial preferences was shut down. Other, similar accounts of hostility toward free speech -- from both the left and the right -- abound in the new book "You Can't Say That!: The Growing Threat to Civil Liberties from Antidiscirmination Laws" by David Bernstein. The book deals briefly with how attempts by gay activists to suppress the speech of their opponents can subsequently be used by anti-gay activists to suppress what they find to be offensive gay materials.
What's it all mean? Liberals and conservatives, gays
and anti-gays, should be fully free to criticize each other's
views, books, movies and miniseries. That's democracy. But if
either side is going to turn to advertiser boycotts, or try to
preemptively block the publication or viewing of materials they
find either "hateful" or "offensive," they should be aware that
such tactics are only legitimized to be used against them in the
next battle. That's not censorship, but it's how the culture
wargames are now being played.
Update: GLAAD, having perfected the advertiser-boycott-threat strategy against ideologically suspect programming, now joins the liberal chorus denouncing CBS's decision to pull "The Reagans." Couldn't you guess?
The Next Generation.
A new
Gallup poll of 18- to 29-year-olds has some good
news:
Young Americans are substantially more likely than older Americans to support marriages between homosexual couples -- 53% vs. 32%, respectively. This greater acceptance of gay and lesbian rights among young Americans has been a consistent finding in Gallup Polls for a number of years.
But this generation is not more "liberal," politically speaking.
Nearly half (45%) say they are politically independent, with the
remainder more likely to identify themselves as Republicans (30%)
than as Democrats (24%). Also, "By a margin of 82% to 58%, young
Americans are much more inclined than older Americans to support a
proposal that would allow people to put a portion of their Social
Security payroll taxes into personal retirement accounts that would
be invested in private stocks and bonds." Yes, the future may well
be ours! (thanks to
andrewsullivan.com for the original link)