Ed. Note: Monday, HBO will air Eugene Jarecki’s documentary “Reagan.” The video embedded below is a 40 minute interview with the director that we’ve added to the Fox News piece. More on the great man here at Big Hollywood tomorrow, the Centennial of his birth.
Hollie McKay over at Fox News:
President Ronald Reagan is getting a lot of attention across the United States this week, including a special video tribute during the Super Bowl, as the country honors the centennial of his birth.
In conjunction with the commemorations, Eugene Jarecki’s new documentary “Reagan,” which explores the “glamorous leading man with the common touch,” debuts on HBO Monday night. Jarecki told FOX411 that most Americans will probably be surprised to learn about the “real” Ronald Reagan, a man he feels is quite different from the one portrayed by the media and history books. …
[youtube X9E1xJ2UsWs nolink]
—–
“One of the great myths about Reagan was that he was an amicable dunce – a guy that floated his years throughout the White House and was just the puppet of smarter men. That could not be farther from the truth from what I saw in getting to know Reagan very intimately through the footage and interviews that I did with people who knew and loved him and worked with him, and also people who were very critical of him,” Jarecki said. “He was a shrewd thinker in many ways, and far smarter than people gave him credit for. He was also a man with blind spots and shortcomings. But the idea that he was just a figurehead and not the driving force of his presidency is to not understand that he was really the driving force of a massive life that began with small town roots and ended up in the most powerful office in the world and arguably one of the greatest presidential legacies in the world. That did not happen by accident.”
Interestingly, Jarecki also told FOX411 he didn’t think doesn’t Reagan, an advocate of limited government, would necessarily approve of the Tea Party, a vocal proponent of limited government. Why? Namely, the issue of immigration.
“The Tea Party is very strongly anti-immigration, and Ronald Reagan was the complete opposite of that,” Jarecki said. “Reagan publicly declared his support for amnesty, I have clips of it in my film, and while doing so, he also signed a bill that gave 2.6 million immigrants amnesty while he was in office.”
Much more at Fox News.
Comment count on this article reflects comments made on Breitbart.com and Facebook. Visit Breitbart's Facebook Page.