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
father boys mama
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.
mother growing-up father
As I was growing up, you know, I'm a white Jewish American born to Holocaust parents. My father fled Nazi Germany in 1939 and my mother's family had fled the czars of Russia before that.
pros-and-cons ends servant
Ronald Reagan, whatever his pros and cons were, was a public servant in the end.
country men voice
Like most Americans, I live in the line of fire of a shooting match that is going on over Reagan's legacy. It's between shrill and extremist voices who alternately conceive of him either as an icon of all that's great and good or a representative of everything that's gone wrong with this country. And obviously neither is the case. He is just a man.
real intelligent simple
The big lesson of Reagan is: To think that he was some sort of simple figurehead and didnt do the thinking and simply read a script in front of him woefully underestimates him. Ronald Reagan was an extremely intelligent person with a real V8 engine under his hood.
unions oppression antagonism
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.
growing-up struggle thinking
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.
people political criticism
I have criticisms of Ronald Reagan, but he lives in another universe from the kind of political theater that is represented by people, like Sarah Palin, who aren't really public servants.
war fighting thinking
Frank Capra made a series of films during World War II called 'Why We Fight' that explored America's reasons for entering the war. Today, with our troops engaged in Iraq and elsewhere for reasons far less clear, I think it's crucial to ask the questions: 'Why are we doing what we are doing? What is it doing to others? And what is it doing to us?'
country ideas feet
The whole idea of a democracy is that we ourselves, the people, are supposed to make a path of our politics, and it is we who with our feet and our vote and our labors and our vigilance are supposed to shape our country.
father years icons
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.
war drug black
What was happening was the war on drugs. That was the primary culprit I could see that was getting in the way of black progress.
eight views years
Reagan is held up to us as an example of never raising taxes. Correction: Reagan raised taxes six of his eight years as president. Why? He was a pragmatist, not doctrinaire. He saw problems emerging, and when his policies faltered he changed his views. Flexibility, not rigidity.
past understanding teach
It is only education and understanding of the past that teaches us not to repeat history.