Listen carefully on January 20, and you just might be able to hear the gnashing of liberal teeth issuing from your television set. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting will be commemorating the sixth anniversary of the Reagan Revolution by broadcasting The Conservatives, Neal B. Freeman’s new documentary on the rise of the Right. The penance owed by PBS for its myriad ideological sins is a good deal more substantial than usual these days, thanks to The Africans, and so it’s hardly surprising that the fourth network’s annual homage to the forces of darkness is coming a little early this year. But the punishment, not surprisingly, doesn’t quite fit the crime. Instead of a nine-part BBC-type extravaganza on, say, the joys of covert action, Mr. Freeman has been given a measly ninety minutes in which to convey the complex essence of an entire ideology. To which must be added the regrettable fact that The Conservatives, for all its undeniable virtues, probably won’t make much of an impression on the kind of person who tends to watch PBS documentaries.
Not that Mr. Freeman’s intentions are anything less than honorable. The purpose of The Conservatives, he says, is to “fill the holes in public knowledge about the intellectual premises of conservatism, while refreshing the public memory of the events that propelled Ronald Reagan into the White House.” The problem is one
Comments