A thoughtful analysis of the shameful Leftocrat lynch mob

Posted on September 9, 2006

Michael Medved, someone who has actually SEEN “The Path to 9/11″, nails it: Dem’s Disgrace on 9/11 Miniseries

As of this posting (Friday afternoon, 6.30 Pacific Time) the liberal campaign to censor the ABC miniseries “The Path to 9/11″ has reached new heights of demagogic hysteria. Tom McMahon, executive director of the Democratic National Committee sent out an e-mail to supporters that began: “This is it: crunch time for getting the slanderous ABC television docudrama ‘The Path to 9/11′ yanked off the air. The network schedule has this slanderous attack on Democrats slated to start on Sunday night, September 10, at 8 o’colck — and as long as it stays ont he schedule, we have work to do. Take a minute right now and tell Disney president Robert Iger to keep this right wing propaganda off the airwaves.”

Unlike Mr. McMahon and his hyperventilating Democratic colleagues, I’ve actually watched the miniseries in question– in its entirety — and there is no chance that any sane observer who bothers to sit through all five hours of this riveting presentation could ever describe it as “right wing propaganda.” As a matter of fact, the miniseries is particularly hard on the Bush administration and Condaleezza Rice, as well as highlighting the way that Clinton and his aides fell short in their dealing with the terrorist threat. In terms of running time of the presentation, at least ninety minutes of the mini series focuses on events during the Bush presidency– representing at least 30% of the total program. Meanwhile, Bush was president during the period covered by the miniseries (February, 1993, through September 11, 2001) for only eight months; Clinton was president for eight years (less a single month). In other words, Clinton occupied the White House for 93% of the actual historical period under consideration, but his shortcomings occupy less than 70% of the miniseries running time.
In other words, by one easily quantifiable measure, “The Path to 9/11″ doesn’t inapporpirately focus on Clinton and his failures; if anything, it concentrates disproportionately on the disappointing performance of President Bush at the very beginning of his term.

The most depressing aspect of the concentrated Democratic campaign to “yank” (their word) this 40 million dollar production from the ABC schedule would be the message such censorship would send to other networks and producers. If ABC does (God forbid) decide to cancel the much-hyped showing of the miniseries because of liberal pressure, then everyone in Hollywood would learn the lesson that you must avoid serious projects, at all costs; you can easily get away with “Wife Swap” or “Temptation Island” or “Fear Factor,” but if you attempt to broadcast a chilling, carefully crafted, deeply moving investigation of our national, bi-partisan failures in responding to terrorism, then some yahoo will squal and protest and attempt to shut you down. This is the text-book definition of censorship: prior restraint. That means cutting off speech before it even occurs, rather than protesting - or correcting the record- after you’ve actually heard what the other guy has to say.
Nor is the current Democratic effort to censor ABC in any substantive sense comparable to the conservative protests against the CBS miniseries about “The Reagans.” The objection to that show was that President Reagan, stricken with Alzheimer’s disease, had no possibility of responding to the sleazy, intimately personal attack on his reputation. By contrast, Bill Clinton can easily respond to any perceived cheap shot in the “The Path to 9/11″ — in fact he already has responded, while admitting he hasn’t even seen the thing. The network is already making adjustments to the final edit to register some of President Clinton’s objections. One can only hope that they stop there, rather than surrendering to the mob mentality, complete with pitchforks and torches, mobilized by Democratic Party demagogues who demand the cancellation of the miniseries.

That cancellation would represent a tragedy for the producers –who’ve already experienced the most vitriolic personal attacks, complete with publication of their home addresses, accompanied by death threats (one of them pronounced on my radio show, earlier today, by a troglodyte caller who talle writer-producer Cyrus Nowasteh “I hope you die”) and warnings that “the gloves are off.”
Please, put the gloves back on. Recognize that weeks ago ABC scheduled a one hour panel discussion after airing the miniseries so that people who objected to it in any way could make their opinions heard. As Justice Brandeis famously observed, the best remedy for bad ideas is good ones; the best response to bad speech is good speech. Free discourse — and the whole medium of television — will suffer if ABC buckles to pressure to stifle one of the most significant and substantive productions in TV history.

If the Left is so certain that a single TV SHOW can obliterate the narrative they’ve taken so much care to invent, particularly following the thrashing they took in 2004, you have to wonder, “Where’s the beef?” Or better yet, “Where’re the ideas?” If the philosophical and political unpinnings of the Left had any substance, a TV SHOW would not shake that confidence.

This entire affair is a microcosmic indictment of the illusion of the “Clinton Legacy.” Their full-scale freak-out over an assessment of the failures of what was, without a question, one of the most incompetent and ineffectual regimes ever to foul the White House, is a window into the collective soul of our Hollywood Presidency. Clinton has been so focused on concocting a “legacy,” always sounding like a teenage girl claiming to HATE, HATE, HATE gossip while everyone else knows that she is the cackling-crone queen of back-biters, that he has convinced himself of many things that just don’t reflect reality. This TV SHOW has shaken the Clintonistas awake to the harsh glow of history and is the first indicator of how posterity’s narrative will betray the Camelot II dream that Clinton has worked so hard to erect.

I take comfort in knowing that the Left has likely pulled a Munson in this insane censorship campaign, exposing themselves to America for what they really are — totalitarian, intolerant and mendacious.

The Stalinist website “Media Matters” is urging readers to flood ABC with calls for censorship. Why not contact ABC with your support of “Path to 9/11.” Go here.

» Filed Under Border Control/Homeland Security, News, War On Terror

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One Response to “A thoughtful analysis of the shameful Leftocrat lynch mob”

bbsnews on September 10th, 2006 12:19 am

“If the Left is so certain that a single TV SHOW can obliterate the narrative they’ve taken so much care to invent, particularly following the thrashing they took in 2004, you have to wonder, “Where’s the beef?””

All that has to happen is that the movie, being portrayed as factual, actually be factual. That means not making things up that never happened.

The right wing cannot have it both ways. The scene where it claims that Clinton was “too distracted” by the Lewinski affair is a case in point. Republicans accused Clinton of staging various responses at that time and they accused him of trying to deflect attention away from the Monica affair. If that was the case, surely the man would have jumped on any pretense to focus world attention on a military intervention to get Bin Laden.

And of course there are several other examples where the film is reportedly going to simply make things up. Simply fix the factual errors and then run the film.

Republicans would certainly not like that about their president Bush. I wrote an article today about that pesky Senate report that shows for once and for all that Bush and Cheney have been playing fast and lose with facts so much so that they lied the US into a war and dropped the ball and Bin Laden.

The sad part is that Republicans are playing directly into Bin Laden’s hands. They are getting moral support from Bin Laden because of their blind support for a fake War on Terror (A real solution would be quiet investigative police work with no publicity until AFTER the terrorist plot is thwarted; not Middle East mlitary intervention that breeds resentment and more damn terrorists. Not the Bush doctrine of fear, Fear, FEAR all the time just in time to scare a win in an election), that is missing little things like that recently negotiated Pakistan border deal where former terrorists can live in peace all safe like.

It’s a shame that the Republican party has been taken over by charlatans and religious fanatics who will defend lies against truth and risk national security just to stay in power to smack down Gay marriage and stem cell research…