Disney's Dubious Path to 9/11

[Gn2Dlnd]

The Disney Company has used revisionist history in the past when telling it's own official story. The Disney Company is now using revisionist history in broadcasting a two night miniseries called, The Path to 9/11 which is "based on the report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (also known as the 9/11 Commission)." Apparently the blame for 9/11 is laid squarely at the feet of the Clinton administration. Please read this article before posting, if your first impulse is to attack me, liberals in general, cut-and-runners, etc.

I'm in no mood.

Conservative media hosts were given pre-broadcast screeners while liberal hosts were not. Former Bush counterterrorism official, Roger Cressey said, on Scarborough Country (!) "Joe - what’s amazing about this based on what I seen so far is how much they got wrong." The screenwriterwriter, Cyrus Nowrasteh, a year ago called Michael Moore an "out of control socialist weasel." Probably no agenda there.

At a National Press Club screening last month, Richard Ben-Veniste - one of the 10 members of the independent Sept. 11 commission took issue with many of the "facts" presented in the film. Jesus General has a great letter to Bob Iger. Crooks and Liars posts a great piece on this. Check out Truthdig's commentary here, while Democratic House members have drafted their own letter to Bob Iger.

Apparently Disney/Apple is making this available as a free download on iTunes, and distributing 100,000 copies to schoolrooms with with online study guides. Propaganda is alive and well. To quote this blog, "September 11 is a national tragedy, it should not be a subject for dishonest political propaganda." Please, if you feel as strongly about this as I do, I urge you to contact ABC or

Disney-Abc Television Group,
3800 W Alameda Ave # B,
Burbank, CA 91521-9722
(818) 569-7500,

and Disney at

Robert Iger, CEO
THE DISNEY COMPANY
500 S. Buena Vista St.
Burbank, CA 91521-9722
Phone: 818-560-1000
Fax: 818-560-1930.

[Tramspotter]

Originally Posted by Gn2Dlnd

Please read this article before posting, if your first impulse is to attack me, liberals in general, cut-and-runners, etc.

I'm in no mood.

Ok I followed the link...

and right away saw a dubious Picture

Can I stop now?
or do I need to click more links to embark on the path to full moon bat conversion?

[Gn2Dlnd]

Ha! Thanks for the Snopes link.

Boy, I'm glad you cleared up the last couple hours of research for me. That docudrammer shor does look good all sudden-like.

Bear in mind, it gives me no pleasure to find the Disney Company complicit in the gummints propaganda machine. If one faked picture is all it took to cause you to dismiss the entire issue, then the old canard is true, we truly do get the government we deserve.

[Alex]

In the (approximate) words of others on this message board earlier this year:

It is just a movie. Who cares if it misrepresents history? People who get their history from movies are teh dum and people who get all upset about how history is represented in movies are teh dummer.

Since most of the institutional history of Al Qaeda and build up to 9/11 took place during the Clinton years and only 8 months or so during the Bush years, any look at how American policy "allowed" 9/11 would, I think, have to spend a lot of time on the Clinton years.

Personally, I don't "blame" anybody for 9/11. People wanted to do bad things to us and, gratefully in my opinion, we live in a society where the truly determined will find it easy to do them. Looking back there are doubtless thousands of junctures at which an official could have done something or seen something or caused a butterfly to flap its wings causing the hurricane that grounded all the planes on the East Coast on that day.

I don't lay al Qaeda at the feet of either administration and both are stupidly eager to pretend that nothing they did had anything to do with it and therefore it is all the other administration's fault.

So, I'm going to stick to the blame I assigned a couple months ago in a similar discussion. I blame the Russians and when I make my version of "The Path to 9/11" it will be set entirely in the Jewish ghettos around Moscow, Kiev, and St. Petersburg in the last 50 years of the 19th century.

Pick who you want to blame and blame them. It doesn't really change anything about what happened.

[Gn2Dlnd]

Wow, a "moon bat" and "teh dummer" in the space of two posts. Anyone care to make it a trifecta?

Unfortunately, Alex, those who watch this film will now be able to say to their friends, "That a-hole Clinton called off an attack on Bin Laden when the marines were right outside his front door!" I know without a shred of doubt that I'll be having this conversation in the near future. Probably with people in my own family. It doesn't matter if it's true or not, they saw it on teevee. Does it matter that the Clinton administration was roundly ignored by the Bush White House on this topic? No. Because in a movie on tv it said something different.

I'm sure the last 50 years of history have had something to do with everything that followed. Your point is that it doesn't matter. My point is that it does. We have a responsibility to teach the truth to schoolchildren. What happened to the lessons learned back in 5th grade when we watched the Watergate hearings on tvs rolled into classrooms from the AV department?

Have we given up on all critical thinking because it "doesn't change anything"? I don't think so. It's just that the really loud percentage of Americans who have done so, make it seem like the rest of us have.

[Alex]

I didn't say it was my view that people who get upset about representations of history in movies is "teh dummer" just that this was pretty much the consensus view here earlier this summer (when I was the one arguing against it).

I make no point that it doesn't matter. Everything matters from a historical point of view. An ABC docudrama that will be watched by 12 million people (and discounted out of hand by half of them) doesn't matter a whole lot but of course it matters. And the historical errors should be corrected.

My point isn't that history isn't important but rather that "blame" is not a historical concept. "Blame" is a personal subjective concept. "Blame" whoever the hell you want because even if everybody agrees 100% on what physically transpired each individual will be able to assign "blame" differently and support it to their own satisfaction with the facts on hand.

[wendybeth]

I'm in the midst of a conversation about the Clinton administration and terrorism at another site right now, and am in no mood to rehash it all over again. That said, has anyone actually read the commission report? They make it very clear that the Clinton administration took terrorism extremely seriously and were repeatedly hamstrung by a Congress and Senate more concerned about domestic 'affairs' (and blue dresses) than terrorism. Clinton was a hell of a lot more proactive than given credit for, and it really pisses me off when people lay the blame at his door rather than do the research and stop trying to rewrite what actually happened. I doubt anyone in those towers or on those airplanes on 9/11 were too concerned with whatever political party their fellow victims were affiliated with- on that day they were all just human beings trying to survive.

[scaeagles]

Whenever there is a movie with subject matter that I am disinterested in or makes me mad, I don't see it.

Interestingly, many here argued that seeing Fahrenheit 911 was incredibly important. Many here would argue that seeing An Inconvenient Truth is vital, or that Bowling for Columbine was imbedded sloely in the truth. So much in any movie like this takes the bits and pieces of info it wishes to - often based on fact, sometimes not, sometimes taken ridiculously out of context - and spin them into a viewpoint that simply cannot be ignored.

My goal is not to debate any other movie (or even this movie) and facts or lack thereof in them. Simply to point out that this happens all the time, and it isn't limited to movies, but is often blatantly in the group that calls themselves the news media.. I feel your pain, Gn2Dlnd, because many others have angered me in a similar fashion.

Ironically, while I support any and all letter campaigns as the right of the consumer, efforts such as this are oft described as an attempt at censorship. I disagree with that sentiment.

Revisionist history is in the eye of the beholder.

[innerSpaceman]

Eh, it's on ABC. Who'll even see it???



And with no commercials? It's a dog.

[sleepyjeff]

Originally Posted by innerSpaceman

Eh, it's on ABC. Who'll even see it???

Exactly!