Lee Daniels’ The Butler is a pretty huge hit, both with critics and moviegoers, as it’s tracking at 73% on Rotten Tomatoes and has grossed $53 million in its first two weeks. That’s good news for anyone hoping for the sequel, Lee Daniels’ The Second Butler: The Butlering of Lee Daniels, which will be about how Lee Daniels can now afford his very own butler. But just because nearly 3/4 of the critics like The Butler and Americans are throwing money at it, that doesn’t mean that everyone likes it.
After all, this movie includes a portrayal of Ronald Reagan, and the Hollywood liberati must tread lightly when it comes to the Gipper. And that’s not a political opinion, as much as it’s stone cold fact. But forget John Q. Red State’s opinion, because today’s outrage is coming straight from Michael Reagan, son of Ronald and Nancy.
“My father was not a racist, but the whole story … is really a bogus story,” says his son and Newsmax contributor Michael Reagan in an exclusive Newsmax interview. (Via Newsmax)
It’s not really an exclusive when the guy already writes for you. That’s just convenient. It’s like if Vince wrote an “exclusive” story about how much I love going to strip clubs. But I digress…
“Eugene Allen — whom I knew, by the way — is a guy who comes from segregated Virginia, gets a job at the White House, works there 34 years, retires in 1986.
“The story in the movie about Cecil Gaines, he was born and raised in Georgia, his mother was raped, his father was shot, he got a job at the White House, then he quit the White House to join a protest against America and what’s going on in Vietnam and race, which is the farthest from the truth about Eugene Allen,” Reagan explains.
“You could have done a movie just about Eugene Allen and it would have been a great movie about somebody working at the White House. But instead, Hollywood decided they want to make this about Ronald Reagan and disparage Ronald Reagan and others, and did the same thing to Eugene Allen’s wife. To sit there and take his wife, make her an alcoholic, as Oprah Winfrey did, and have her have an affair with the neighbor is outrageous.
“I hope people who go see it don’t believe it’s a true story. Once again, it’s a fictionalized account of a true person at the White House, but it’s written and directed by a person who, in fact, has another agenda, and that’s to disparage the memory of Ronald Reagan.”
Meanwhile, a relative of John F. Kennedy also wrote in response, “Yeah, and JFK wasn’t a mutant who shot laser beams out of his eyeballs either!”
But Michael makes a very good point at the end, that people far too often see a movie that is based on a true story, but features some artistic liberties, and take it as gospel. That’s why when parents took their kids to see Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter last year, it was their obligation to tell them, “Abraham Lincoln didn’t actually fight vampires in the Civil War, this is just a really, really, really, really shitty movie.”