I spoke with Cyrus last night, offering him the opportunity to discuss/rebut criticism that he has received on this site (and other places, obviously). i expressed to him my feeling that the kos site has seen
reckless speculation, rumor-mongering, and
character assassination, and the
transitive property of evil, all directed against him personally.
more on the flip:
cyrus claims many things--i'll link to his op-ed in the wall street journal on saturday if they run it, and if not i'll try to get him to post it here. he has been kind enough to allow me to repost it here in its entirety (i suppose the WSJ may not feel the same way--i'm going to try to sort that out as well.) he points out that he wrote both "The Day Reagan was Shot" and "10,000 Black Men Named George". he points out that he's not an ideologue. he feels strongly that this community in particular has attacked him above and beyond what the facts suggest is reasonable. i'm inclined to agree with him.
in the case of the Reagan movie, many friends of mine were involved in production, and Oliver Stone was the exec producer. at no time did cyrus evince any political leanings according to those who were there or worked on this production, although he was taking on a historically sensitive subject (and one upon which CBS would stumble a couple of years later). it's a solid movie, as well. "10,000 Black Men" has a strong pro-union storyline and pulls no punches in showing how important the union movement was to building a strong country. i would characterize it as a strong john saylesian left movie, myself.
he sounds like a right-wing nutbag, sorry a nuanced political thinker, that's what i meant. I've seen comments here that he is a young writer (he wrote his first piece in 1989 per IMDB, so that makes him a seasoned vet), that he lied about his upbringing (though the evidence suggests no such thing upon further review unless you do the "i'm a total pissed off asshole" reading of it), that he wasn't qualified legitimately to get such a big project (tell spielberg, for whom he wrote Into The West two years ago), that he's been interviewed by David Horowitz, and we all know that's a crime! i've seen endless comments and diaries that fundamentally misunderstand the hollywood process, both business and creative. i've seen them from people who do all kinds of jobs, i'm sure, but not necessarily that relate to this business. and yet they've felt free to assume attack opine bloviate without hesitation about WHAT REALLY HAPPENED HERE!!!!!
i don't know much about pipe-welding. if there's a big pipe-welding scandal, i won't write the 5000th fucking diary about how all left handed pipe-welders are evil. mostly because, as i said, i don't know much about it. i'd rather listen to people who have some clue, see what they have to say.
let me make something unequivocally clear: there is a left wing majority amongst the artisitic community in hollywood. i'm guessing somewhere between 80 and 90% of the artists here (and i'm including all talent plus producers/agents and studio executives in that group). I will argue in a different diary that that does not get reflected in the same ratio in terms of output for many reasons, but not now. given this, those on the right feel left out. they really do. this ain't red state america. and they have meetings!!!! they have an agenda!! they want to make movies that reflect what they feel are their values.
i'm pretty sure that's not a crime.
HOWEVER
with all of that said, i don't like what they did with Path to 9/11. i think that cyrus and david cunningham (oh, by the way, as anyone who has read my diaries know, i'm an equal opportunity hater of everyone's religions, and david's alleged adherence to a cult was not reflected in the movie he made. god was left entirely out it.) made a movie that was too partisan and should have been more balanced. however, having said that, i watched the second night, and it clearly was not complimentary to bush. it was especially harsh on rice as well (i think the sexism argument might have merit, given how i hear albright was portrayed as well). if i hadn't known about the first night, i wouldn't have concluded this was an unfair portrait at all, most likely. but the first night went (IMO) too far out of its way to place blame on clinton, instead of sticking to the facts, which, as we must recall, were that both clinton's team AND the republicans (with an emphasis on the latter) in congress dropped the ball.