It’s quite true, as Think Progress says, that in your review you have repeated a lie about the 9/11 commission report perpetrated in Disney’s $30,000,000 plus exercise in rightwing propoaganda. But what the hell is this supposed to mean?
In 2001 President Bush and his newly appointed aides had ample warning, including a briefing paper titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.,” and they failed to take it seriously enough, but their missteps are not equal [to the Clinton administration’s]. It’s like focusing blame for a school shooting at the beginning of the school year on the student’s new home room teacher; the adults who watched the boy torment classmates and poison small animals knew better.
This is about the worst analogy I’ve read outside of a Thomas Friedman column. Suffice it to say that while those fighting bin Laden in the Clinton administration most certainly were knowledgeable adults, any homeroom teacher so utterly incompetent as George W. Bush wouldn’t last two days.
Please correct your mistake and please permit your reviewer the opportunity to explore a new career path.
The senate Democratic leadership has released a scathing letter to Robert Iger, president of ABC. Americablog has the whole thing posted, but this passage is just amazing:
Disney and ABC claim this program to be based on the 9/11 Commission Report and are using that assertion as part of the promotional campaign for it. The 9/11 Commission is the most respected American authority on the 9/11 attacks, and association with it carries a special responsibility. Indeed, the very events themselves on 9/11, so tragic as they were, demand extreme care by any who attempt to use those events as part of an entertainment or educational program. To quote Steve McPhereson, president of ABC Entertainment, “When you take on the responsibility of telling the story behind such an important event, it is absolutely critical that you get it right.”
Unfortunately, it appears Disney and ABC got it totally wrong.
[…]
That Disney would seek to broadcast an admittedly and proven false recounting of the events of 9/11 raises serious questions about the motivations of its creators and those who approved the deeply flawed program. Finally, that Disney plans to air commercial-free a program that reportedly cost it $40 million to produce serves to add fuel to these concerns.
These concerns are made all the more pressing by the political leaning of and the public statements made by the writer/producer of this miniseries, Mr. Cyrus Nowrasteh, in promoting this miniseries across conservative blogs and talk shows.
Frankly, that ABC and Disney would consider airing a program that could be construed as right-wing political propaganda on such a grave and important event involving the security of our nation is a discredit both to the Disney brand and to the legacy of honesty built at ABC by honorable individuals from David Brinkley to Peter Jennings. Furthermore, that Disney would seek to use Scholastic to promote this misguided programming to American children as a substitute for factual information is a disgrace.
I wondered yesterday if there wasn’t some campaign finance issues involved in distributing a six hour blatantly partisan mini-series in prime time just weeks before an election. I looks like I’m tnot the only one thinking along those lines. (The FCC might just have a few concerns as well.)
ABC had better hope their plan to keep the GOP in power works because they appear to have started a serious fight with what might very well be the majority party come November.
For those of us who haven’t been given the opportunity to see the “Path to 9/11,” Al Franken at Air America has and he will be running extended excerpts on tomorrow’s show.
He said they would be paying particular attention to the scene where Bill Clinton and Osama bin laden do lines of coke on Madeline Albright’s chest.
So Disney/ABC is whining that it’s unfair to criticize the movie when nobody’s seen the final version. Yet they sent out hundreds of DVD’s to Republicans all over the country to review — and pointedly didn’t send any to Democtrats, even the former president and secretary of State whose reputations were being assassinated in the film.
There’s a reason for that. I will simply refer you to what our friend Hugh Hewitt wrote last week-end:
I, and I am sure many others, have been sent the entire six hour program to preview and review, which I will be doing over the weekend. Edits post-distribution of the review DVDs would invite scrutiny of the very portions sent down the black hole, underscoring the episodes the censors hoped to hide.
Disney/ABC got the propaganda into the hands of the people who needed it — the right wing. No matter what happens now, their job is done.
“The Path to 9/11” is a faithful and compelling recreation within the limits of the craft of the fatal nonchalance of the ’90s, combined with a salute to the hard-working men and women who struggled against the bureaucratic insanities of that era, represented chiefly in the person of FBI Agent John O’Neill, played by Harvey Keitel, and a supporting cast of brave and never-discouraged lower level Bureau and CIA operatives who understood the risks. In trying to deep-six the series, the Clinton forces are trying to silence their story.
The Clinton operatives are also bringing a useful attention to the program and especially any last minute edits ABC might make. The network risks outrage from center and right if it airbrushes the narrative, and even from those in Hollywood who stand by the idea that a good faith piece of work should be unmolested by the PC police.
You can bet that ABC is hearing from their side too. I can hear the snarling and growling all the way to Santa Monica.
The following is a guest post by Correntewire’s the farmer.
Disney-ABC – Its Not About The “Overarching Moments”
It’s about a “charismatic Afghan leader” and the favor of Little Mermaids.
The actor playing Ahmed Shah Massoud (the heroic leader of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, and one of America’s strongest allies in that area) is also an inspired piece of casting. Actor Mido Hamada looks remarkably like Massoud, and is highly effective at playing the noble and charismatic leader. The producers informed me that Hamada, who is quite handsome, has been the particular favorite of ladies at the advance screenings. ~ Govindini Murty, Human Events, August 22, 2006.
I’ll bet he is. And maybe he’ll marry The Little Mermaid at the end of the story too. I hope so because the Little Mermaid is pretty and because I like pretty happy endings as much as the next history action movie fan. After the docu-thriller-movie-mini-series-event is over – whenever that is – me and Michael Ledeen and David Horowitz and Peggy Noonan are gonna hop in Peg’s Nassau County Seclusion-3D Urban Camo-Pattern Hummer with UTV Floor Mount Kalashnikov Assault Weapon Rack and heated Sheepskin Rumble Seat and thunder on down the parkway to the local All-American drive through fast food slop-shoot for some Happy History Meals and our free ABC-Disney United Front Supreme Council for the Defense of the Motherland moveable mujahidin freedom fighter action hero figure sets which come free with each patriotic ABC/Disney Happy History Meal purchase.
You can bet your liberal ass on it.
And since this all happens in the composite historical past characterized as the past-future I will recount for you now what happened next/then:
First: Me and my friends went to the fast food window where our friend Republican 9/11 commission chairman Tom Kean works like a regular guy at night when he isn’t pumping gas at the Hess station with his buddy Khalid bin Mahfouz who is – supposedly – “married to one of Osama bin Laden’s sisters”. Or at least thats what some guy from Fortune Magazine told me:
Five Degrees Of Osama By Nicholas Stein February 3, 2003 (FORTUNE Magazine) – In December, President Bush named Thomas Kean, the former Republican governor of New Jersey, chairman of an independent commission examining the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. But FORTUNE has learned that Kean appears to have a bizarre link to the very terror network he’s investigating–al Qaeda.
Here’s how the dots connect: Kean is a director of petroleum giant Amerada Hess, which in 1998 formed a joint venture–known as Delta Hess–with Delta Oil, a Saudi Arabian company, to develop oil fields in Azerbaijan. One of Delta’s backers is Khalid bin Mahfouz, a shadowy Saudi patriarch married to one of Osama bin Laden’s sisters. Mahfouz, who is suspected of funding charities linked to al Qaeda, is even named as a defendant in a lawsuit filed by families of Sept. 11 victims. True, Hess is hardly the only company to cross paths with Mahfouz: He has shown up in dealings with, among others, ultra-secretive investment firm Carlyle Group and BCCI, the lender toppled by fraud in 1992. Kean, who was unavailable for comment, may not have been aware of the Mahfouz connection.
But Hess spokesman Carl Tursi did reveal another interesting coincidence: Three weeks before Kean’s appointment, Hess severed its ties with Delta.
Whatever. I don’t know any of the bin Laden sisters and I mind my own business. And I didn’t drive all the way to Massapequa for a freakin’ seminar on character assasination and conspiracy theory from those socialist appeasers at Fortune Magazine. No, by God and creeping baby Jeziss I wanted my action heroes and my Freedom Fries and my All American Cheeseburger and my Corn Syrup Cola and I wanted it all in a nice neat cleanly folded bag with proper condiments and corporate endorsements packed approprietly therein with respect. All ready to go. And thanks to ABC-Disney and my regular buddy Tom working the drive through window at All american that is exactly what I got. Tom makes the fry machine run on time. That’s what I like about Tom.
Horowitz got the Junbish-i Milli-yi Islami-yi Afghanistan (National Islamic Movement of Afghanistan) former communist leader Abdul Rashid Dostum action hero figure with Uzbek militiaman bodyguard and a redeemable coupon for full control of the city of Mazar-i Sharif. Cool, comrade.
Michael Ledeen got his hands on the Shia Party Hizb-i Wahdat-i Islami-yi Afghanistan (Islamic Unity Party of Afghanistan) commander Muhammad Muhaqqiq action hero figure with Hazara ethnic trader routes and considerable military and financial backing from Iran (which I think is what Ledeen was really looking for in the first place.)
I got the Ittihad-i Islami Bara-yi Azadi Afghanistan (Islamic Union for the Liberation of Afghanistan) Abdul Rasul Sayyaf Muslim Brotherhood Arab foreign freedom fighter action figure with wealthy Saudi investor assistance set. Also comes with a Masters degree from Al-Azhar University and two suspicious looking, supposedly Moroccan, assassins.
As you might expect, Peggy would get the handsome Jamiat-i Islami-yi Afghanistan (Islamic Party of Afghanistan) Sunni Moslem Ahmad Shah Massoud “Lion of Panjshir” action hero figure. Comes with a gilded handmade Ronald Reagan Legacy Project Islamic prayer mat signed by Oliver North and a valuable mail-order Stinger missile recovery options package. And some assorted guns and money and tanks from Iran and Russia too. And a signed 8×10 glossy of Charlie Wilson’s girlfriend Snowflake relaxing in a fishnet hammock.
I figured Peggy would score the Lion of Panjshir action hero figure set. Afterall, she already has the Little Mermaid figure – she keeps it in an aquarium at home with her talking dolphin – so i guess that will work out pretty good in the end for all parties concerned.
Anyway, if you want to get the whole Northern Alliance (United Front) moveable mujahidin action hero set you can just visit your local participating fast food All-american franchise each night following the ABC TV mini-series and get more action figures and then just keep coming back until you have all the action figures you want for your very own. Collect them all! The complete set!
Ledeen even went back and bought a second happy meal for his Airedale after the first night just so he could keep the Harakat-i Islami-yi Afghanistan (Islamic Movement of Afghanistan) Ayatollah Muhammad Asif Muhsini Shia party action hero clerical figure with the General Anwari commander and Jamiat allies accessories. Comes with redeemable coupons for future Iranian weapons caches too. Excellent!
I think Ledeen just went back for seconds so he could have two action hero jihadi figures with additional backing from Iran so that when he went over to play at Bill Kristols house he’d have more Iranian backed guys in the bag than Kristol. He’s pretty obsessed with that Iran stuff ya know. I don’t even think he really even cares if the Lion of Panjshir gets to marry the Little Mermaid in the end.
Bet you didn’t know that did you? Small world ain’t it?
He called his own action figure the “Benito 12 Avenger Freedom on the March Commando Unit” set. Complete with appropriatly fabricated perception managed intelligence reports, CIA burn orders, a stylish Italian secret decoder spy ring, and a Manucher Ghorbanifar Iranian arms dealer back-channel TOW missle slush fund which any entrepereuer can use to purchase a bed & breakfast in Costa Rica. Plus you get a free six month subscription to the National Review poitical science fiction magazine (for a limited time only).
At least that’s what I think he told me. Probably not exactly like that but genuinly something of like that. Afterall, this report is sort of a drama-docu historical timeline of actual docu-dramatic events that I myself have dramatically reported because I wrote them down so they must have happened in some real or theoretical or important context or another.
I think I’ll give away my supposedly Moroccan assassins that I got with my Rasul Sayyaf Muslim Brotherhood Arab foreign freedom fighter action figure set to Kristol so he can make them fight his Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad moveable action villian anti-hero figure that he won at the AIPAC Gefilte Fish Passover Brunch – whenever that was – and keeps to this very day in a cage on his desk at work as a constant reminder of things to do.
That should make Ledeen jealous too since he doesn’t have any supposedly Moroccan assassins as yet. As far as I know.
I don’t like Horowitz too much. He’s kind of a weird whiny little nerd who hangs around the college campus trying to screw anything that moves. And that ain’t right. So I usually don’t talk to him much and he used to be a communist Leninist race baiter too. As I recall he was the lead guitarist for Andy Warhol’s Underground Weather Factory for may critical years in the 60’s.
So you understand.
I like Peggy though. Sometimes Peg comes over to my house and we play kickass all-American suburban garage band biker band records and play with my Southern Baptist Convention blow-mold Jesus action hero figure and Nativity scene which I leave laying around until about the middle of March becuae I just can’t let go sometimes of that Christmas warrior spirit. And then sometimes she roots through the bottom of my closet for my chocolate brown Nubucks which she likes to cuddle and fall asleep with on my Kevlar upholstered anti-terror sofa.
I’m not really sure what’s up with the shoe thing but I find charming in a kind of manly heterosexual heaving chest of conquest manner and – let me tell you my friend – if you haven’t been strirred by the sight of lovely Peggy N. curled up on a sofa in a short little tartan skirt clutching a pair of brown Nubuck shoes to her pearly bossom while some garage band roars like a wild suburban beast from the rafters well then you ain’t really lived in America as a real vital American.
Would I just make something like that up? I don’t think so.
So where was I. Oh yeah, the ABC-Disney heroic action thriller docudrama mini-series event and the glowing review in Human Events magazine by Govindini Murty. And by the way, what the hell kind of name is Govindini Murty anyway? I don’t like the sounds of that to tell you the truth.
But that doesn’t matter because Human Events magazine is a non-partisan publication and I respect their right to publish the opinions of people with suspicious sounding names.
As I said earlier: my historical pre-emptive recollections of the people and events and “overarching moments” I describe above, which follow the ABC-Disney documentary “the Path to 911,” are completely true and accurate as I see them in a composite pre-emptive retrospective documatary dramatic info-tainment context. Obviously I can’t tell you that everything I have recounted above will occur because it hasn’t been completely vetted yet.
But when and if it is vetted, well, then, I feel that I will be completely vetted and vindicated despite what our countries enemies would like to have people believe.
—- the farmer
UPDATE: Some are requesting that I or someone else re-cut and edit this post. My previous premptive recollection involving Peggy Noonan’s visits to my home may be slightly exaggerated (they are not slander) and/or intentionally mischaracterized as it comes to my intentional attention at this pivitol moment. To clarify: I have never actually left my Nativity scene standing as late as of March of any given year and I am very sorry for any confusion or misconceptions or religious sensitivities that I may have offended with respect to this journalistic oversight. It was a joke and a poor one at that.
I don’t really know a lot about what is being said at this time by critics and partisans. I just know that what I have said is what I have said and if partisans are saying something different that doesn’t dissuade me from telling the truth because I am non-partisan.
My mind boggled when I read that. Why? Because it sure sounds to me like Newt Gingrich, former representative of Georgia, actually compared the Confederate Army to al Qaeda, the leaders of the Confederacy to Iran’s mullahs, and Jefferson Davis to Saddam Hussein.
I suppose I should take this as good news, that white folks in the South, like Newt Gingrich, are finally coming to terms with the truth of the Civil War, that it really was about slavery and not “state’s rights,” and that the racist Confederacy was, in fact, a 19th century Axis of Evil comprised of people who hated American values and wished to destroy us. But for some reason, I don’t think so: I think Newt never fully thought through the implications of his ridiculous analogy or is hoping no one notices he just insulted one of the most rock solid of the Republican bases.
And so, once again, we are left to ponder exactly what Newt is. I still believe “moron” most closely describes him. But I’m open to other opinions.
Major media outlets offered intense coverage of conservative complaints about a 2003 miniseries on Ronald and Nancy Reagan, ultimately leading CBS to pull the show from its broadcast network. The media have thus far not provided the same level of coverage to an ABC miniseries about the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that reportedly contains outright falsehoods and distortions.
[UPDATE] In comments, Anoymous Liberal writes that he posted the same point a day before Media Matters. Go here.
Americans who question evolution are testing a new tactic in Ohio, arguing that schools should be required to discuss all controversial issues from creation to stem cell research and global warming.
In what critics on Wednesday called a new attempt to bring religion into the classroom, the Ohio State Board of Education will consider a proposal next week that would oblige schools to teach critical thinking in all subjects.
The proposal, to be discussed on Monday by a school board subcommittee in Columbus, is the latest gambit by those who believe Darwin’s theory of evolution should be taught as only one disputed explanation for the origin of humankind.
School board President Sue Westendorf said the committee would debate but probably not vote on the proposal. It is designed to replace curriculum rescinded in February after a Pennsylvania court ruled that teaching the theory known as “intelligent design” in that state was unconstitutional.
The debate between those who accept the theory of evolution and those who believe in the Biblical account of creation has bubbled up periodically in U.S. schools since before the Scopes “monkey trial” in Tennessee 80 years ago.
The Pennsylvania decision handed down last December found that “intelligent design” — a theory that God must be behind evolution because life is too complex to be random — was a religious doctrine without any scientific merit.
Ohio teachers had been allowed to question evolution under a model lesson plan approved in 2004, but the school board canceled it in February after the Pennsylvania ruling.
The board, made up of religious conservatives and moderates, has been trying to replace the lesson plan ever since. Westendorf said the new proposal was aimed at broadening the disputed curriculum to require debate on topics beyond hot-button questions surrounding religion and science.
“This is about critical thinking in social studies, science, math — all of the entities, because there are controversial topics in all of those areas,” she said.
But critics said conservative Christians were simply trying to find a back-door way to teach that God created the earth.
“Ohio has always been the bellwether. Things are floated in Ohio to see if they work, and if they work, they’ll try to get them adopted elsewhere,” said Lawrence Krauss, a member of the Campaign to Defend the Constitution, which opposes the teaching of religion in public schools.
John West, senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, which promotes the teaching of intelligent design, said the proposed new policy was “good pedagogy and good for students” because it would teach them how to sift and analyze evidence.
“Students don’t like to be told that there are some questions they don’t have the right to raise.”
Eating The Elephant One Bite At A Time by poputonian People around the world are eating the elephant … one bite at a time. Sir James makes this observation today:
And Then There Was One… What’s unraveling within the Labour Party could prove fateful for the Bush administration as well. It carries far more import than any of the longwinded speeches Bush has been making this week and eating up the clock on cable news. For without Blair planted beside him on the summit stage, translating and amplifying his vision into mellifluous oratory to meet the world-historical moment (his hair crackling with an urgent air of crisis), Bush will look denuded, orphaned, like an Everly Brother out there alone. Who else is there? Berlusconi is gone, and good riddance. Putin, into whose soul Bush once peered, has turned aside. Australia’s John Howard is too many time zones away. He desperately needs Blair, no matter how shabbily he has treated his junior partner (as evidenced by the “open mike” episode in St. Petersburg, where, as Anatole Kaletsky put in the Times UK, “Mr Blair went beyond the wildest parody in his sycophantic fawing to President Bush”). With Blair badly weakened or dropped down the trap door by his fed-up party, Bush will be even more diminished in his last two lame-duck years. Here is a scenario guaranteed to make neocons unhappy, courtesy of the Times’ Kaletsky:
“Mr Brown’s most important decision when he takes over as Prime Minister will be over foreign policy: to continue with the Blair policy, or to withdraw from Iraq and publicly break with President Bush. If Mr Brown has any sense he will do the latter, not only because US foreign policies have proved so disastrous, but also because a clean break with President Bush will symbolise the end of the Blair era, will allow the Labour Party to return to its internationalist traditions and will reconnect the Government with both middle-class and left-wing voters.
“But this clean break in foreign policy is exactly what Mr Blair can prevent as long as he remains in power. And it is over foreign policy, rather than over public services or taxes, that he will try hardest to ‘lock in’ his successor. Even a few weeks ago, Mr Blair might have been able to get foreign policy commitments out of Mr Brown in exchange for a public timetable for his departure. But now such a chess-style exchange is worthless, since Mr Blair is already finished. ‘Checkmate,’ says Gordon Brown.”
