September 9, 2006

Bill Clinton: Pull The Path to 9/11!

Hatched by Dafydd

So now it's come to this: former President Bill Clinton has formally demanded, through his attorneys, that ABC simply shelve its 5-hour, $40 million docudrama, the Path to 9/11.

Well... maybe; I'm a little suspicious, given that the source for this claim is a blog that was linked on Drudge. None of the elite media is carrying this story, though all of them carried many other stories about the Democrat protest against the flick... and many others have demanded that it be pulled and not aired.

While I have no reason to doubt the accuracy (or veracity) of Greg Sargent, the author, I'm still skeptical about this. Sargent appears to be a sincere liberal who has posted many similar letters on his TPMCafe blog (some of which were straight from his host, Joshua Michah Marshall of Talking Points Memo) as well as other anti-Bush, anti-GOP posts; and this letter would certainly be in keeping with Clinton's personal attack on the movie yesterday.

So it's probably true and accurate; but bear in mind that this letter is not yet well sourced.

But what the heck... let's run with it anyway!

No reason is given to pull the movie other than the lawyers' claim that the movie departs from the partisan Democratic version of recent history. (Oddly, I don't recall them having any particular problem with Erin Brockovich or All the President's Men.)

The idea that a Hollywood movie, even one touted as being a "true story," must be held to rigorous historical standards is flatly comical. The Amityville Horror was promoted as a "true, factual story;" and what about Schindler's List? The real Oskar Schindler gave his Jewish workers guns, telling them that if they were discovered, it would be better to die in combat than be sent back to the death camps. Did we see that in the Steven Spielberg movie?

More recently, we have the movie Munich. Several of the Mossad agents -- who are still alive -- stepped forward to say that the movie was totally wrong in many respects... the most important of which was portraying them as tortured souls who doubted the morality of what they were doing (executing, one by one, the architects of the 1972 massacre of eleven Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, committed by Black September -- a front group for the PLO). To a man, they said they never had any such qualms about their mission.

Where were these finicky Democrats back then? I'm straining my brain to the white meat, but I can't think of even one who stepped forward to chastise Spielberg for either of those two a-historical "historical" docudramas.

The question is never whether a movie must be a strictly factual account; that would be a "documentary." By definition, a docudrama makes some stuff up, rewrites events, and combines characters, all for dramatic purposes. The question should be, how close to reality is the movie?

And from everything I've read about the antiterrorism history of the past few decades -- which is probably considerably more than Bill Clinton or his lawyers have read -- the Path to 9/11 is about as close to reality as Hollywood is ever likely to get. Live with it.

I have to wonder: suppose, as a thought experiment, a movie were made that simply blamed everything on President Bush, instead of insisting that Bill "Party Time" Clinton shoulder his much larger fair share for eight years of malign neglect. Suppose a movie were made that falsely claimed that Clinton was a dynamo of antiterrorist fervor, a zealous GWOT warrior who went to bed every night angry at the terrorists and woke up even angrier.

Suppose this movie also portrayed Bush as a dunce, controlled by vast, shadowy puppeteers -- multinational corporations (Halliburton, the oil barons, Coors), the neocons (but only the Jewish ones), and the military industrial complex. Suppose the movie portrayed Bush as callous and uncaring, eager to send young Americans to die just to line his own pockets. Suppose it even hinted darkly that Bush was somehow complicit in, or at least had foreknowledge of the pending 9/11 attack, but let it go forward anyway because it furthered the Blofeldian schemes of this feeble-minded evil genius.

If such a version of the attacks were presented in movie form, would these Democratic voices, so solicitous today of the "historical record" and the 9/11 Commission report, be as quick to leap forward, insist upon changes, and finally demand that the movie be yanked from distribution and never shown?

Somehow, in this purely hypothetical example, I doubt it. I suspect instead that they would honor and fête the filmmaker, call him one of the most important political voices of the twenty-first century, and maybe even give him a box seat at the next Democratic National Convention.

Sitting right next to Jimmy Carter, perhaps. You think?

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, September 9, 2006, at the time of 4:00 PM

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Comments

The following hissed in response by: Terrye

Surely not, I mean not even the Democrats could be that crass.

If they really want the details just right, there could be a series.

That way instead of conflating a half dozen times when Bill Clinton and his administration let the bad guys get away into just a couple of scenes, a show could be devoted to each and every incident...in excruciating detail.

Plus a show about Arafat hanging out at the White House and Sandy Berger stuffing God knows what in his pants and Bill going on TV and talking about how we must deal with terrorists and rogue states etc. A little trip down memory lane.

I can't believe they are making such a big deal out of this.

The above hissed in response by: Terrye [TypeKey Profile Page] at September 9, 2006 5:32 PM

The following hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh

Terrye:

...and Sandy Berger stuffing God knows what in his pants.

This puts me in mind of the airport scene from Spinal Tap.

Dafydd

The above hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh [TypeKey Profile Page] at September 9, 2006 6:00 PM

The following hissed in response by: Terrye

There goes dinner.

The above hissed in response by: Terrye [TypeKey Profile Page] at September 9, 2006 6:43 PM

The following hissed in response by: Bill M

If it is pulled (50/50 chance with a lame excuse for the reasoning), then I hope one of the 900 screeners will somehow allow a "bootleg" copy to hit the internet.

Want to bet that if it is pulled, only the first night's show will disappear? Any takers?

The above hissed in response by: Bill M [TypeKey Profile Page] at September 9, 2006 6:51 PM

The following hissed in response by: IanM

Redstate has the first in the series...
http://www.redstate.com/911clips

In any case, this is a great action flick. What the the Clinton gang are most worried about is ratings!
The download takes some time... but it is well worth the wait.

The above hissed in response by: IanM [TypeKey Profile Page] at September 9, 2006 11:48 PM

The following hissed in response by: Bill Faith

Excellent, Dafydd. Excerpted and linked at Old War Dogs >> Bill's Bites.

The above hissed in response by: Bill Faith [TypeKey Profile Page] at September 10, 2006 12:38 AM

The following hissed in response by: tblubrd

Good post Dafydd.

I suspect instead that they would honor and fête the filmmaker, call him one of the most important political voices of the twenty-first century, and maybe even give him a box seat at the next Democratic National Convention.

Haven't they done that already? aka Michael Moore? Who tried to sell Frikinheight9/11 as a "documentary"?

If this wasn't so funny it might be confused as something serious.

The above hissed in response by: tblubrd [TypeKey Profile Page] at September 10, 2006 11:56 AM

The following hissed in response by: Infidel

According to this site, Clinton was a truly competent hero, and Bush was an incompetent putz, despite Clintons best efforts over eight years, it was all undone by Bush.

-----------------------------
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a0101airlinesdontknow
Also:
The Terror Timeline by Thompson.


In similar circumstances, prior to jan 1, 2000, Clinton has all department heads in a daily meeting and word was sent out to all all the border personnel. This made a border guard on the Canadian border
aware enough to spot a brown-skinned person that was acting nervous and pull him over and explosives were found.

Clinton was competant, Bush wasn't.

Read the book, It indexes the media reports related to 9-11 starting in the Nixon era.

The above hissed in response by: Infidel [TypeKey Profile Page] at September 13, 2006 9:42 AM

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