By Steve Levy
I finally caught the HBO documentary on Billy Joel last week after many friends told me to check it out. I was really enjoying it and was learning a great deal about the Piano Man of which I was previously unaware.
I was all set to pen an article about the documentary and how admirably loyal Joel is to Long Island, and was to the backyard musicians he grew up with.
But then my hair went on fire, when midway through the documentary, they shifted from the emphasis on Joel’s songs about relationships to a focus on the world around him.
He talked about the writing of Allentown, which highlighted the depression that rust belt working class folks felt as the factories closed down and jobs were shipped overseas. The two-part series seemed to blame that on President Reagan, which was historically incorrect, but I let it slide because after all, Joel is a songwriter, not a politician.
But then the film went over the line. The documentary focused on Joel appearing at a concert with a yellow Jewish star. What could’ve been the purpose of this, since Joel never really in the past got political on stage and rarely talked about the fact that he was Jewish?
Oh, but this was an exception that rocked his moral core. It was prompted by the mean orange man, Donald Trump, who, according to Joel, had shown indifference to Nazis marching in Charlottesville. Joel was outraged that Trump allegedly claimed that there are good Nazis when he stated there were good people on both sides.
This claptrap had been debunked years ago. Yet the producer, Tom Hanks, allowed it to air, nonetheless. Trump was referring to the people protesting the taking down of statues and clearly said he was NOT talking about White nationalists or Nazis. The full unedited quote was as follows:
“There were very fine people on both sides, and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and white supremacists because they should be condemned totally.”
Again, I can give a pass to Joel, who made those atrocious comments in the immediate aftermath of the biased media coverage of the Charlottesville debacle. It’s no wonder Joel believed that Trump was saying that Nazis were good guys. This is the hoax that was deliberately perpetrated by a mainstream media that wanted Trump impeached. Even Joe Biden took this falsehood and lied about it again, claiming it was the predicate for him jumping into the race in 2020.
Eventually, anyone who followed the news was aware that this was a mainstream media concoction. It was totally false. But that didn’t stop Hanks, the producer, from keeping that portion of the documentary intact. In other words, Hanks and other producers left this lie in the documentary — a lie that was defamatory to Donald Trump.
A good lawyer could bring a lawsuit on Trump‘s behalf and possibly win a defamation case. While it’s a high standard to prove libel for a public figure such as Trump, it can be done when two elements are evident. The first is that the statement is clearly false. The second is that it was said anyway with knowledge and with malice aforethought.
Well, there’s no doubt that this statement has now been proven false, and the only reason that a partisan Democrat such as Hanks would put it in the documentary was because of his hatred and malice toward Trump.
Interestingly, I was prepared to write an article a week or two ago that was going to lambast the Trump administration cheering on the revocation of an award ceremony that was going to be in Tom Hanks’ honor at West Point. I thought it was petty on the administration’s part to weigh in on the event simply because Hanks is a partisan Democrat, who has opposed Trump and supported his opponents.
Nevertheless, Hanks has done a number of good things for veterans, including his work on outstanding series such as Band of Brothers, which reflected upon the valiant American efforts in World War II.
But after seeing that Hanks’ approved inclusion of the Charlottesville Nazi hoax in the Billy Joel documentary I’ve changed my mind. I think Trump is totally justified in not wanting a person who just potentially libeled him honored by one of our federal institutions.
It’s indeed a high bar that you have to meet to justify such a cancellation, but Hanks allowing this blatantly false, libelous information to exist in his documentary meets that high threshold.
Steve Levy is President of Common Sense Strategies, a political consulting firm. He served as Suffolk County Executive, as a NYS Assemblyman, and host of “The Steve Levy Radio Show.” He is the author of “Solutions to America’s Problems” and “Bias in the Media.” www.SteveLevy.info, Twitter @SteveLevyNY, steve@commonsensestrategies.com