YOU CAN LOATHE REAGANISM AND STILL BE OFFENDED BY THIS

(UPDATE: Will Ferrell now says he won't be involved in this project.)

I'm still angry at what Ronald Reagan did to this country, but I'm not amused by this:

Sources tell Variety [that Will] Ferrell is attached to star as President Reagan in ... “Reagan.”

Penned by Mike Rosolio, the story begins at the start of the then-president’s second term when he falls into dementia and an ambitious intern is tasked with convincing the commander-in-chief that he is an actor playing the president in a movie....

Ferrell is no stranger to political humor having portrayed former President Bush several times over the years on “Saturday Night Live.” ...

Reagan has the first signs of Alzheimer's, and that's supposed to be funny? In my twenties, sure, I joked about Reagan being a simpleton -- but real dementia isn't amusing. It's miserable and it impossible awful burdens on caregivers -- and the fact that Ronnie's principal caregiver was Nancy Reagan, a woman I didn't think much of either, doesn't change how I feel.

If you're having trouble understanding why I've gone softhearted on this, imagine a film in which the source of humor is the mental impairment of Gabby Giffords after she's been shot in the head. I'd be outraged at that. I'd be outraged at people who treated it as light entertainment.

And Hot Air's Allahpundit has a point:

Frankly, if they’re going to milk it for laughs, I hope they’re savage about it. No mercy. The worst would be if they spend 100 minutes having Reagan drooling on himself and then give Ferrell some poignant humanizing Oscar-bait-ish scene in the final 10 about struggling with memories so that critics will walk out pulling their chins about the “surprising empathy” the film showed.

Really, just don't do this.

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On the other hand, I think Sonny Bunch of the Washington Free Beacon misses the point with these "Four Political Comedy Pitches to Help Hollywood Prove Conservatives Wrong" ("wrong" referring to the belief that Hollywood is always reverent toward liberals and Democrats and contemptuous of conservatives and Republicans):

Our nation’s horniest ex-president and his billionaire buddy, Jeffrey Epstein, hop on board the famed Lolita Express in order to settle a bet: who can seduce a supermodel on every inhabited continent first? Whacky hijinks ensue....

Long before he became president, Barack Obama was a member of the most powerful teen troop in all Hawaii: THE CHOOM GANG. After a night of ‘sweet-sticky Hawaiian buds’ and ‘green bottle beer,’ Obama and his pals can’t remember where they left the future president’s grandma’s sweet-ass El Camino. Turns out they didn’t lose it: It was stolen by a rival gang, one that will stop at nothing to discover the source of the Choom Gang’s powerful weed! ...

After eight long years of Gen. Squares McDork in the White House, the Kennedy Bros are finally going to Make The White House Fun Again. Unfortunately, all is not well between Jack, Bobby, and Teddy: They’re fighting over women again! ...

A president beset by crises at home and abroad comes face to face with a truly unstoppable foe: a rabbit that can swim. And he’s out for blood! ...

Hasn't Hollywood already gone there with Clinton, in Primary Colors? And haven't there been a thousand books and miniseries that portrayed the Kennedy brothers as sex addicts? As for Obama, well, there's this:



A Choom Gang feature film? I say bring it on. Maybe Kal Penn should do it.

Hollywood may not make a lot of feature films poking fun at Democrats, but high-level Democrats have never been spared by liberal comics. Prior to the current GOP civil war, I don't think that was ever true about right-wing comics and Republican politicians. We my not be nice to the opposition, but we're not reverent toward our own.