Eugene Jarecki
Eugene Jarecki
Eugene Jarecki is an American author and a dramatic and documentary filmmaker based in New York. His works include Why We Fight, The Trials of Henry Kissinger, Reagan, Freakonomics, Quest of the Carib Canoe, Season of the Lifterbees, The House I Live In, anderror. Why We Fight and The House I Live In were both winners of the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival, in 2005 and 2012 respectively...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionDirector
CountryUnited States of America
appeal money needed public run taller tougher
The thing that happens is that politicians run on tough-on-crime rhetoric. You appeal to the public and say, 'Let's put more money into taller fences, tougher laws, tougher sentencing, handcuffs,' and where does that money come from? Well, immediately, it comes out of all the money needed for corrections.
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The Tea Party is a group that rejects deep thinking, it rejects the very complex analysis that is involved in public policy, it rejects the kind of textured decision-making that Ronald Reagan prided himself on.
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I think the film was sort of a rock in a storm for Wilton. For me, Wilton was, and is, a force in my coming of age. He opened my eyes to just how textured the thinking has to be about America now, about the grief that Americans feel, the desire for revenge, and not allowing myself to have any kind of distance from that, or ignore it - which is too often the mistake of those who do not - shall we say - concur with policy.
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All defense contractors have public affairs departments. They know they appear to be war profiteers to the public. They want to tell you that the bombs they make make war safer for civilians.
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By the time I got to him, I felt like I was following an international man of mystery. He was on a boat somewhere in the Bahamas, and I had to get myself out there, which I did, Dramamine and all, to interview him.
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Reaganism as a political movement has enormous resources behind it and it seeks - through stagecraft and through a tremendous level of effort toward propaganda - to present an image of Reagan that is so much larger-than-life that it sort of blinds us all, and keeps us all in a warm, happy, nostalgic state, thinking of a man who can do no wrong.
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You can call me an Eisenhower Republican. There is a gigantic gulf between an Eisenhower Republican and the kind of fringe brand of Republicanism that is being so vocally promoted today.
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My father left Nazi Germany a year after Dr. Kissinger, and so in my household he was very much an icon. He was a kind of immigrant success story, a refugee success story.
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Reagan himself, for much of his life, was devoted against the elites. His antagonism to the Soviet Union is antagonism against oppression by the elites of the many.
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To say that Reagan teaches us that we should be against amnesty for illegal immigrants is to contradict what Reagan himself stood for - that he was in favor of amnesty.
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Ron Reagan amazingly qualifies as an honest broker. I asked him if he was a mamas boy and he said no, more of a papas boy. At the same time he was willing to say that his father had many shortcomings and needed to be held accountable.
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Ronald Reagan had many fine qualities and he had many shortcomings. He's not the simple, folksy figure that he's often portrayed as.
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It was natural to see the struggle for dignity for black people in America as a sister struggle of the Jewish struggle. So growing up, it was always a part of my breakfast cereal to think of myself as someone who was part of a larger struggle.
discussion
You can't have a discussion about politics without mentioning Ronald Reagan.