HBO Filmmaker Slams Reagan: “His Policies Hurt Those He Sought to Help”

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Those who admired Ronald Reagan may want to steer clear of the HBO documentary (will re-run Wednesday, February 9 at 8 PM EST and PST) on the former president if that film’s director’s comments, on Monday’s Hardball, are an indication of how slanted the project will be, as he denied many of Reagan’s historic accomplishments. From reinvigorating the economy to defeating the Soviet Union, Eugene Jarecki, who also wrote the film, was egged on by MSNBC host Chris Matthews to disallow the 40th president much of his legacy as he charged Reagan’s economic policies “hurt the very people he sought…to most help” and claimed the idea he ended the Cold War was “a myth.”
Matthews, wasted no time in getting Jarecki to slam Reagan’s policies, as seen in the following exchange:

MATTHEWS: What do you make of him, in terms of the bad side of him? I want to talk about the part you didn’t put in, perhaps, in the documentary. He didn’t really care about the environment. He seemed to have a hard time figuring out the role that social policy, Social Security, Medicare, how they helped real people. Yet if you he confronted a case of a real person in trouble he would sort of write a check to that person. How do you put that together?

EUGENE JARECKI, FILMMAKER: Well as many people in the film told us, especially his family members, talked about a man who, yes, on a personal level could really have his heart go out to people. If you had a problem, he’d give you the shirt off his back but then he would turn around and engage in policy making that was deeply hurtful to people. As if, when he saw a group of people, he had trouble seeing them as a group of individuals he might care about. And so the heartbreaking part about him, and it is in the film, a little bit, in part of the whole bigger picture that we show about him is that Ronald Reagan, in many ways, presented himself as a friend to Main Street America. He’d come from the heartland. He’d come from a small town. And yet, at the end of the day that Reader’s Digest America, that’s the very America his policies did the most to hurt. I think he didn’t mean to do that. I agree with definitely the portrait of Ronald Reagan where this is a man of deep care and deep intentions and deep love of his country. But I think there were mistakes made. There were policy ideas he had, Reaganomics and others that just hurt the very people he sought, I think, to most help.

Later on in the interview Jarecki also shared that “Everybody wants to play the sort of ‘Ronald Reagan ended the Cold War’ game…it’s one of the many myths we hear about him” and on Iran-Contra told Matthews: “I think there were many voices around…who thought what he was doing in the Iran-Contra affair was both impeachable and also felonious” and added “when told it would break the law, Ronald Reagan forged right on ahead. So I don’t know that even the best advisers would have been able to stop him.”

CBS: Aaron Sorkin Bashes Palin for ‘Glamorization of Dumbness,’ Claims ‘She Needs A Therapist’

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In an interview with 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl for CBS’s Sunday Morning, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin made his latest attack against Sarah Palin, ranting: “I have a big problem with people who glamorize dumbness. And demonize education and intellect. And I’m giving a pretty good description of Sarah Palin right now.” [Audio available here]

Stahl made no effort to challenge Sorkin’s vicious personal attacks, simply remarking: “He seems to be having a second career these days, going after Sarah Palin. In an essay for The Huffington Post, he called her a ‘witless bully.'” Given the media’s concern with civility and harsh political rhetoric in the wake of the Tucson shooting, one wonders why Stahl did not condemn such language.

Sorkin went further, even questioning Palin’s mental stability: “Sarah Palin, she needs a therapist, okay. We need the smartest guys, the best Ph.D.’s around, to be solving these problems. I don’t have any patience with the glamorization of dumbness.” Only seconds earlier in the interview, Sathl was asking Sorkin about his past addiction to crack cocaine, for which he attended rehab twice.

Stahl concluded: “Sorkin only dabbles in political commentary. What he works really hard at is writing his plays and movies.”

In the same December 8, 2010 Huffington Post article cited by Stahl, Sorkin compared Palin hunting on her TLC show to the animal abuse football player Michael Vick was found guilty of in promoting dog fighting. On CNN’s Parker-Spitzer on October 4, 2010, Sorkin declared: “Sarah Palin’s an idiot. Come on. This is a remarkably, stunningly, jaw-droppingly incompetent and mean woman.”

Kyle Drennen is a news analyst at the Media Research Center. You can follow him on Twitter here.