Still no link to a n…

Still no link to a news report or press release, but this morning Drudge is saying the CBS will air the miniseries “The Reagans” on Showtime rather on their network.

I’ve recently started listening to the nationally syndicated radio show “Good Day, with Doug Stefan” (there’s a show web site, but it’s apparently not working at this moment). They covered this topic yesterday, and his co-host Nancy (sorry, don’t recall her last name…I’ve only just started listening) insisted that if CBS didn’t air the miniseries, then that was censorship. However, Doug had a bit more sense about it, saying that CBS ought to pull it because the movie was in bad taste and attributed some serious lines to Reagan that he never said. Nancy was wrong; censorship is not the voluntary refraining from speech, it’s the legislated prohibition of it. So if CBS does move the movie to Showtime, that’s not censorship; it’s responding to pressure, which we, as free citizens, are all allowed to exert.

At the same time, I agree with Bill O’Reilly’s take on this. We haven’t seen the movie and so it’s hard to really judge it completely. CBS, if they really want to, ought to show it, and let the ratings speak for themselves. I suspect that if they did, they’d be in a world of hurt soon after, since advertising rates are set based on Sweeps Week ratings, when the miniseries would air, and their budget would be curtailed due to their own poor choices and their lack of understanding of the feeling much of this country has for Ronald Reagan. In the liberal bubble they live in, there was probably nary a hand raised when the AIDS line (“They that live in sin shall die in sin”) was put into the script or reviewed later on. No one wondered if he actually said this because they all figured he probably could have. It would be those kinds of decisions and that sort of lack of understanding that would hurt CBS’s advertising income. (Although I would wonder if they’d really understand why it happened had there not been this sort of uproar in the weeks leading up to its airing.)

So yeah, I think they should air it, if they have the guts to, but I wouldn’t watch it. Some might say, “Well how could you truly judge it if you haven’t watched it?” That’s a fair question. Let me answer it this way.

Person 1: “No, I don’t want to be hit in the head with that club.”
Person 2: “Why not? Have you ever been hit by one before?”
1: “No, not really.”
2: “Well then how can you really judge whether or not you’ll like it?”
1: “Well, because I’ve talked to people that you’ve hit with things before, and they didn’t like it.”
2: “But no one’s been hit by a club before. Are you going to judge this based on what others tell you about being hit by a metal pole? Or are you going to judge for yourself?”
1: “That’s easy for you to say. You get paid for every person whom you club!”
2: “That’s not the point. You’re judging something based on what others think instead of trying it out for yourself.”
1: “Hmmm, you do have a point. OK, let’s try it.”
>club<
1: “Ouch! I didn’t like that!”
Person 3 (in marketing exec outfit): “Well, they do like it, don’t they?”
2: “Yup. So that mean your brand name on this club is worth more.”
3: “OK, here’s my check.”
[Time passes]
2: “Excuse me.”
Person 4: “Yes?”
2: “Would you like to be hit with this club?”

Let CBS walk around with its club, but let me decide whether or not to be hit by it.

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