In New Letter, Clinton’s Lawyers Demand ABC Yank Film
Craptastic GOP-U-Drama Still Greenlighted By ABC/Disney
Clinton blasts 9/11 film, amid report of changes
Director Defends Accuracy of Path to 9/11: ‘We Have Our CIA Consultants and Clinton Has His’
Disney/ABC markets defamatory 9/11 show as “exactly what happened” in ads abroad
This is the ad for the show that Disney/ABC has running on channel 7 in Australia. My inner lawyer is just relishing the lawsuits that Disney/ABC and every TV network around the world are going to face come Monday morning. As the other stories now prove, Disney/ABC knew OVER ONE YEAR AGO that their show was riddled with inaccuracies, they refused to fix it, and then they ran ads claiming the show was “exactly what happened.” That is a prima facie case for libel, even against a public figure.
In case you’ve been living in a cave somewhere in Waziristan, ABC is about to turn the darkest day in American history into so much Right-wing propaganda…and not just in this country. Overseas, it’s being marketed as “exactly what happened”. Apparently, ABC has no problem with making stuff up out of whole cloth.
I’m not surprised that ABC is willing to air something so apparently thin on facts and so heavy on artistic license and ideological fabrications. Here’s the problem, though; in so doing, ABC is managing to tarnish the memory of those 3,000 innocent civilians who were murdered on 9.11. Instead of doing something to honor their memory on this, the fifith anniversary of 9.11, ABC is granting airtime to what can only be described as unabashed Right-wing propaganda. You can bet that if Liberals were guilty of this sort of thing (and let’s hope we’d have the decency not to be), the weeping and gnashing of teeth from the Right would be deafening. Conservatives would spare no expense or effort to quash a 9.11 “docudrama” that placed the blame on the shoulders of Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader. And yet it’s acceptable to air a “docusham” written by an avowed Conservative activist that pins the blame squarely on Bill Clinton and Sandy Berger?
WHAT LIBERAL MEDIA?
How bad is The Path to 9/11? How much of it has just been made up wholesale? Well, how about I let John Aravosis, who has seen this “docusham”, tell you:
We are 1 hour 54 minutes into the film, it is the culmination of the entire first two hours of the film. CIA agents on the ground with Commander Massoud have found bin Laden. They have him pin-pointed in a house. They are looking at the house with binoculars. They are on the phone with the CIA, that has patched in Clinton National Security Adviser Sandy Berger. Berger, like a bumbling ass, sits there, looking every which way, refusing to give them clearance to grab bin Laden who is in their literal grasp. The woman at the CIA has to lecture Berger about how intelligence works, like he’s some kind of moron. Berger literally looks like a deer caught in the headlights. He’s clueless, an idiot, a moron, unfit to serve in any public office - hell, I wouldn’t hire the guy to mow my lawn. After a very long pause, the agents are begging Berger to take some responsibility, stop being such a wuss, stop trying to cover his chicken-shit ass, you see Berger reach forward and the phone line goes dead. Clearly Berger has ended the call. Osama gets away. And Sandy Berger is personally responsible for killing 3,000 Americans and bringing down the World Trade Center twin towers.
Not only is this scene FAR MORE defamatory than any review I’ve seen to date, this is THE KEY SCENE of the entire first half of the movie. You can’t cut it, or a good portion of the movie just makes no sense. But Disney/ABC can’t leave the scene is because it simply did not happen. CIA agents weren’t on the ground, they weren’t with Massoud, nobody had bin Laden in their grasp, and Berger never refused to give the order to get the guy.
The entire culmination of the first half of the show is one big fat lie. This isn’t just a small scene with a small error. It’s THE scene and it NEVER HAPPENED AT ALL.
Clearly, this is not the benign historical drama that ABC and it’s apologists would have us believe. This is pure, unadulterated Right-wing propaganda. When those who created this “docusham” are allowed to simply make shit up to fit their predetermined story line, and when ABC is allowed to market The Path to 9/11 as “exactly what happened”, something is terribly, horribly wrong.
What’s so wrong with telling the truth? Why does the memory of 9.11, and those 3,000 Americans who were murdered on that terrible need to be mangled in such an insenstive and partisan manner? What purpose is served by twisting the truth so egregiously?
The Path to 9/11 has been roundly condemned, and not only by those of us on the Left. Fortunately, there are those on both sides of the political divide who recognize what an embarrassingly partisan farce is being forced upon viewers in the name of historical accuracy. At this point in time, the only decent thing for ABC to do is to pull this “docusham”. WE DESREVE BETTER, and so does the memory of those Americans who went to work that sunny Tuesday morning thinking that it was going to be like any other work day.
John Aravosis, among others, has already actively begun considering the possibilities of what action can be taken against ABC should they proceed with airing this “docusham”. If ABC refuses to do the right thing, then those of us who still believe in decency and truth need to be willing to register our anger and displeasure.
Stay tuned; this battle is only just beginning….
