I’ll take all the credit I deserve for this bit of entertainment/political news.
Will Ferrell has dropped out of a proposed movie about the debilitating disease that took the life of President Ronald Reagan.
The film is intended to satirize the Alzheimer’s disease that stripped President Reagan of his memory, his cognitive skill, his very essence. He died in 2004 of complications from the disease after bidding farewell to the nation a decade earlier in a heartbreaking letter disclosing he had been caught in the disease’s early onset.
Yes, I was one of those who said the idea of such a satire went beyond the bounds of taste and class. And it disappointed me greatly that Ferrell — one of my favorite comic actors — was considering playing the stricken president in this so-called “satire.”
There is not a single thing funny about the disease that afflicts more than 5 million Americans — and inflicts an unbearable burden of pain and heartache on the loved ones who care for them.
So, Ferrell has dropped out. The backlash against the film was intense.
“There’s nothing funny about Alzheimer’s. It is terrifying for the families of those who suffer from it. They live with the fear [of] what will change next, they have to live with this terror and grief every day,” Reagan’s daughter Patti Davis told Page Six. “This movie is cruel, not just to my father, but to the millions of people who have the disease, and the millions more who care for them and watch them suffer every day.”
https://highplainsblogger.com/2016/04/theres-nothing-funny-about-alzheimers-disease/
Now, let’s hope that the producers of “Reagan” will think better about poking fun at a relentless, ruthless killer … and its victims.