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Column: Was the Republican Party Trying to Protect Us from "The Reagans"? How Very PC

by P. M. Carpenter
Mr. Carpenter holds a Ph.D. in American History and is a syndicated columnist.
It seems there's a good reason conservative activists prefer to paint their faces and travel by night. By day, they're dreadfully insecure and afraid of their own shadow. That, anyway, would explain perhaps the silliest political controversy ever: "The Reagans" mini-series … scandal?

Rather than dismissing four hours of typical TV wasteland with a manly indifference of yesteryear, today's quiche-eating conservatives threw a hissy fit. Arm in arm with a couple of burly "Judy Garland" producers, Barbara Streisand's hubby was coming -- and he threatened years of panegyric mythology. The specter caused fainting spells in conservative circles. And why not? In a mere two November evenings that awesome influence on national political opinion -- James Brolin -- was about to undo the Republican Party.

Indeed, the son of the conspiracy's chief target, radio talk show host Michael Reagan, declared Hollywood's minor indulgence nothing less than being "all about … dismantling the conservative movement." Similar sky-falling proclamations uttered by the likes of he-men Pat Buchanan, Bill O'Reilly and Joe Scarborough made the figment of nineteenth-century female hysteria seem mild by comparison. Plainly, conservative feelings are too delicate to abide anything but niceness -- enforced niceness, if necessary.

Say nothing bad about the Gipper. His political heirs might get the vapors.

Such is the made-over face of political correctness, that scourge of liberal modernity that conservatives have -- rightly, in my and most progressives' opinion -- scoffed at for decades as overreaction. The right's advice has always been to lighten up and accept the free, turbulent, occasionally even unfair, marketplace of discourse. We shouldn't have to watch every little word. Americans are tougher than that, for heaven's sake.

America is indeed tougher than that, but by recent accounts its leading conservative inhabitants are not. They have seen the light of discarded liberal PC and it is, hallelujah, pretty good after all. Mandated political correctness may have approached strained absurdity on matters of gender and race, but when it comes to conservative politics, baby, PC is right on. Commoners' sensibilities can handle only so much. They can't just go running around, unsupervised, watching films the Republican National Committee hasn't first cleared as emotionally suitable. Some unauthorized films might even foist the unspeakable on our impressionable minds: viz., "The Reagans," which L. Brent Bozell of the right-wing Media Research Center gravely lamented as a rabid "partisan attack" against an American president.

Worthy of Ripley's, yes, but that's what the man said.

It got even sillier. According to the exclusive-viewers club that has actually seen the film, "The Reagans" in fact portrays the former president as a loving husband and talented politician who presided over the Cold War's end through personal determination, was innocent of Iran-contra goings on and admirably stuck to his ideological guns. It did not, however, explore what conservatives regard as Reagan's successful fiscal policies. Inexcusable. Only a scheming Hollywood director out to manipulate the viewing public would omit the very real and sexy high drama of tax cuts.

Someday a film will be made of Bill Clinton's tenure. The temptation to get sleazy and downright off topic will, no doubt, haunt its producer. But thanks to the now-politically correct right-wing TV police, you can rest assured that as Bill enjoys Monica's "company," he'll be moaning good-news economic data for the audience's edification. Sensitive conservatives will insist on it.

Pity the Republicans, forced as they are into unseemly censorship -- the honest term for political correctness -- only to protect a carefully constructed if rickety iconography. Of no small irony is that many social conservatives railing against "The Reagans" grew to loathe the protagonist during his White House years, for his focus on supply-side oddities and evil empires rebuffed their cultural agenda - a large part of which entailed the ridicule of PC. Now, perforce, PC is all they have.

But don't pity them too much. Oblivious to naked hypocrisy, they're happy as quahogs in their new role as America's PC police. We always knew they had it in them.

© Copyright 2003 P. M. Carpenter

Mr. Carpenter's column is published weekly by History News Network and buzzflash.com.