This is Pastor Tim’s article which appeared in the Evening Leader on Tuesday, Sept 10, 2024
Over Labor Day Weekend, I went to see the new Ronald Reagan movie. I really enjoyed it, especially given the absolute garbage that has been coming out of Hollywood these days. I have very little memory of Reagan as president. When he was elected in 1980, I was 5 and when he left the office in 1988, I was in Junior High. I was not all that politically aware during those stages of my life.
The movie seemed to be pretty balanced and included Reagan’s most iconic moment (Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall) and they also included the Iran Contra scandal. It is my opinion that they did what they could to portray a balanced story on Reagan’s life. They did not make him a saint, but they also did not attempt to character assassinate him. It was a fair portrayal, and I was honestly moved by it in the end.
Reading the movie reviews makes me wonder if I watched the same movie they were reviewing. The movie rating website, Rotton Tomatoes, has two different rating metrics for movies. They have professional critics and they have average movie goers, people like you and me. The professional critics give it a terrible 19% rating where the average people give it an incredible 98%. That is a 79% difference in rating, which is a pretty wide margin.
I will say that usually when there is this much difference between the professional rating and the regular person rating, it means the movie is pretty good. That is my commentary presented with no scientific proof or anything other than my opinion. But I do wonder what did the average people saw that the professionals did not? Then I started reading some of the written reviews of the movie and here is what I found. The people who wrote some of the worst reviews of the movie started their review by saying: I didn’t watch the movie, but…
What that means is they rated the movie based on their personal feelings about Ronald Reagan. Reagan was a political figure and that means there is a very wide range of opinions about him. With a movie like Reagan, it is impossible to get away from this. But a 79% gap between movie critic and average movie goer? I am wondering how many people who hated this movie without having seen it feel so compelled to downvote any other movie they did not see.
This is surprising that Hollywood would be so critical of Reagan in that one of the roles he had prior to being president of the United States is that he was also president of the Screen Actor’s Guild in Hollywood. He was one of Hollywood’s leaders for a long time, yet when a movie is made to commemorate his life, people trash it without having seen it even though Reagan was one of their own.
One of the best scenes in the movie is right after Reagan was shot by John Hinkley Jr. In that scene, speaker of the house, Tip O’Neill, is in the hospital room with Reagan. If you remember Reagan’s administration, these two men were outspoken in their disagreements, but when the cameras were off, these two men were friends. In this scene, Reagan is laying on a hospital gurney and these two men shared a pretty awesome moment together. Politics aside, these two men respected each other even though they agreed on very little politically.
I miss a time when politicians were more than their public persona. O’Neill and Reagan were brutal in their criticism of each other and it was clear they were not on the same page, but they also knew that they were serving a higher purpose than their own agenda. They were co-workers on behalf of the American people, and they knew that fighting and being awful to each other was not how our country was going to be made better.
You and I have no control over what goes on in our country on a national level. But what I want to challenge both you and I to see the good in the people you interact with. Agreement is not required to be respectful, nor is agreement required to care about the people in your life. It is time we quit with all of the pettiness and see the value of the relationships we have. Reagan was portrayed doing that many times in the movie and it was part of how he was able to accomplish so many of his goals. That is true no matter if you agreed with Reagan or not, he came across as personable and that was a big part of his power.
I won’t speak for you, but I will admit that being personable is something that I have plenty of room for improvement.