Propaganda

Do you know about "live blogging"? That's when people watch a television show or press conference or presidential speech and post running comments about it in the comment section of a blog as it's happening so that others don't have to watch. Last night I followed the live blogging on AMERICAblog of that horribly inaccurate and deliberately misleading ABC movie, "The Path to 9/11". Not only did the creator of that movie just make stuff up that never happened and basically blame the Clinton administration for the attacks, the film served as blatant propaganda for torture and the decimation of the Bill of Rights.

On Saturday the Washington Post published an article entitled "Clinton, Other Democrats Assail ABC Docudrama 'Path to 9/11'". Here's part of what it says:

Former president Bill Clinton has urged ABC to "tell the truth" in its hotly disputed docudrama on the battle against Osama bin Laden as network executives scrambled to make last-minute changes to fictional scenes.

Clinton told reporters in Arkansas Thursday night that ABC executives should provide an honest accounting in "The Path to 9/11" -- "particularly if they're going to claim it's based on the 9/11 commission report, they shouldn't have scenes which are directly contradicted by the factual findings of the 9/11 commission. I just want people to tell the truth and not to pretend it's something it's not."

An ABC spokeswoman said yesterday that changes are being made to a number of scenes in the film, including one deletion involving The Washington Post. ABC plans to air the film tomorrow and Monday -- despite another letter from the Clinton camp yesterday asking that it be pulled -- although it is trying to figure out how to accommodate President Bush's prime-time speech Monday and a planned panel discussion after the movie.

Democrats -- joined yesterday by former vice president Al Gore -- have mounted a campaign against the film, which depicts Clinton administration officials as undermining attempts to capture or kill bin Laden. Actor Harvey Keitel, who plays an FBI agent in the film, has joined the critics, telling CNN's "Showbiz Tonight" that he has had arguments with the filmmakers over elements that were "wrong."

"You can't put these things together, compress them and then distort the reality. . . . You cannot cross the line from a conflation of events to a distortion of the event," Keitel said. "Where we have distorted something, we made a mistake, and it should be corrected."

In another salvo, nine prominent historians -- including Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Sean Wilentz and Michael Kazin -- released a letter urging the film's cancellation. Calling ABC's explanation that the movie will be identified as a dramatization "disingenuous and dangerous," they said: "A responsible broadcast network should have nothing to do with the falsification of history, except to expose it."

I'm really very dismayed about this broadcast, the second half of which airs tonight. I think it is the Bush administration's effort to rewrite history in order to secure the mid-term elections for Republicans. And I think, in general, the American people are so uninformed and easily manipulated that this Republican "dirty trick" strategy will probably work.