ABC: Always Blame Clinton

I'm sitting about a half a mile from ABC's corporate offices, and if I can fake an injury or somehow duck out of work for an hour I'm going over there. Because this "Path to 9-11" mockumentary that they're about to foist on the nation this weekend is such a travesty, so riddled with errors, and so insulting to the memories of those who died that day, that it's driving me to distraction.

ABC is spinning furiously, claiming that nobody's seen the final version and it's unfair to criticize the film. But 900 screeners were already sent to conservative activists and right-wing bloggers, while none were made available for the members of the Clinton Administration it slanders. For his part, the Big Dog is very pissed:

September 1, 2006

Dear Bob,

As you know, ABC intends to air a two part miniseries, “The Path to 9/11,” which purports to document the events leading up to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. ABC claims that the show is based on the 9/11 Commission Report and, as Steve McPherson, President of ABC Entertainment, has said: “When you take on the responsibility of telling the story behind such an important event, it is absolutely critical that you get it right.”

By ABC’s own standard, ABC has gotten it terribly wrong. The content of this drama is factually and incontrovertibly inaccurate and ABC has a duty to fully correct all errors or pull the drama entirely. It is unconscionable to mislead the American public about one of the most horrendous tragedies our country has ever known [...]

While ABC is promoting “The Path to 9/11” as a dramatization of historical fact, in truth it is a fictitious rewriting of history that will be misinterpreted by millions of Americans. Given your stated obligation to “get it right,” we urge you to do so by not airing this drama until the egregious factual errors are corrected, an endeavor we could easily assist you with given the opportunity to view the film.

In another development, it turns out an FBI agent working with the production "quit halfway through because he thought they were making things up. In fact, the writer of the movie admitted that a key scene regarding Sandy Berger slamming a phone on a CIA agent who's about to take out bin Laden is fictional, claiming that...

“Sandy Berger did not slam down the phone,” Mr. Nowrasteh said. “That is not in the report. That was not scripted. But you know when you’re making a movie, a lot of things happen on set that are unscripted. Accidents occur, spontaneous reactions of actors performing a role take place. It’s the job of the filmmaker to say, ‘You know, maybe we can use that.’"

Brent Fricking Bozell, as conservative a conservative as you're ever going to find, called on ABC to correct the scenes "that do not have any bearing in reality."

Despite all this, ABC is forging ahead with showing this absurdity, commercial-free, in prime time, making it available for free on iTunes, and partnering with Scholastic to distribute it to hundreds of thousands of high schoolers as a history lesson.

This is what you get in a society with media conglomeration, especially when one side of the political fence allies themselves with the corporatocracy. You may recall that when right-wingers had a shit fit over an unflattering portrayal of the Reagans in a CBS "docudrama," the network pulled it off the air and ran it on Showtime instead. Now the same people are defending ABC's right to lie to the nation and call it truth.

I'm a big supporter of free speech and wouldn't actually want to see this show tossed off the air. I'd rather exercise my same free speech right to criticize it, and decline to support ABC or any of its advertisers, and boycott everything they do from here on out. Same with Scholastic. Hitting companies in the pocketbook works. I'm under no obligation to support them after they use their megaphone to slander one President and absolve another of blame 60 days before an election. The best of all possible worlds at this point would be forcing ABC to acknowledge that this is a work of fiction, and allow a rebuttal and response in the same prime time slot. But ABC is digging in their heels.

Let them know on this site how you feel. Sell Disney stock. Don't go to Disney World. Stop watching ABC. Picket their corporate offices (I swear I'm going after work). These are the ways to get a corporation's attention.