Subject: The Butler from Another Planet -
Michael Reagan -
Interesting
comment from President Reagan's own son about Hollywood's production, "The
Butler" by Michael Reagan! AAAAHHHHH Hollywood, !!! or
should it be UUGGGHHH Hollywood again?
8/22/2013 8:57:00 AM - Michael Reagan
There
you go again, Hollywood.
You’ve
taken a great story about a real person and real events and twisted it into a
bunch of lies.
You
took the true story of Eugene Allen, the White House butler who served eight
presidents from 1952 to 1986, and turned it into a clichéd “message
movie.”
“Lee
Daniels’ The Butler’” stars Forest Whitaker as Cecil Gaines, a fictional
character supposedly based on Eugene Allen’s real life.
But
let’s compare the two White House butlers.
Guess
which one grew up in segregated Virginia, got a job at the White House and rose
to become maître d’hôtel, the highest position in White House
service?
Guess
which one had a happy, quiet life and was married to the same woman for 65
years? And who had one son who served honorably in Vietnam and never made a peep
of protest through the pre- and post-civil rights era?
Now
guess which butler grew up on a Georgia farm, watched the boss rape his mother
and then, when his father protested the rape, watched the boss put a bullet
through his father’s head?
Guess
which butler feels the pain of America’s racial injustices so deeply that he
quits his White House job and joins his son in a protest movement?
And
guess which butler has a wife (Oprah Winfrey) who becomes an alcoholic and has a
cheap affair with the guy next door? (I’m surprised it wasn’t the vice
president.)
After
comparing Hollywood’s absurd version of Eugene Allen’s life story with the
truth, you wonder why the producers didn’t just call it “The Butler from Another
Planet.”
Screenwriter
Danny Strong says he was trying to present a “backstage kind of view of the
White House” that portrayed presidents and first ladies as they really were in
everyday life.
Well,
I was backstage at the White House -- a few hundred times. I met and knew the
real butler, Mr. Allen, and I knew a little about my father.
Portraying
Ronald Reagan as a racist because he was in favor of lifting economic sanctions
against South Africa is simplistic and dishonest.
If
you knew my father, you’d know he was the last person on Earth you would call a
racist.
If
Strong had gotten his “facts” from the Reagan biographies, he’d have learned
that when my father was playing football at Eureka College one of his best
friends was a black teammate.
Strong
also would have learned that my father invited black players home for dinner and
once, when two players were not allowed to stay in the local hotel, he invited
them to stay overnight at his house.
Screenwriter
Strong also might have found out that when my father was governor of California
he appointed more blacks to positions of power than any of predecessors --
combined.
It’s
appalling to me that someone is trying to imply my father was a racist. He and
Nancy and the rest of the Reagan family treated Mr. Allen with the utmost
respect.
It
was Nancy Reagan who invited the butler to dinner – not to work but as guest.
And it was my father who promoted Mr. Allen to maître d’hôtel.
The
real story of the White House butler doesn’t imply racism at all. It’s simply
Hollywood liberals wanting to believe something about my father that was never
there.
My
father’s position on lifting the South African sanctions in the ‘80s had nothing
to do with the narrow issue of race. It had to do with the geopolitics of the
Cold War.
But
facts don’t matter to Hollywood’s creative propagandists. Truth is too
complicated and not dramatic enough for scriptwriters, who think in minute
terms, not the big picture, when it comes to a conservative.
Despite
what Hollywood’s liberal hacks believe, my father didn’t see people in colors.
He saw them as individual Americans. If the liberals in Hollywood -- and
Washington -- ever start looking at people the way he did, the country will be a
lot better off.
