Linkmeister

I did a quick google site search, but didn't find anything; when it was Bill O'Reilly running this same campaign against the Reagan movie, did you think it was anything but a stunt?

The most irritating part of right-wing talk radio during my life time has been the constant griping about how the MSM is mean to them. Why can't (when they seem clearly to be looking for things to copy) the Democrats copy any of the non-irritating parts about conservatives?

All that said, if the Democrats really want to do something worth doing, while screwing ABC, they should promise to accelerate the digital TV crossover/spectrum reallocation. It's easy to sell as giving first responders the tools they need, etc., etc. It screws all of the networks equally, but, well, collateral damage, and all of that.

Just as I am disgusted at the right wing's attempted censorship that pops up now and then, I also feel the same about this issue.

This is even more egregious, however, for it seems to be a political party trying to coerce free expression, not just interest groups.

Such a slippery slope!!

And besides, Madeline Albright was indeed too soft on terrorism, and Sandy Burger almost got away with stealing documents from the National Archives in an attempt to cover his ineptitude and culpability. Their attempts now to re-shape history are pathetic.

I do not blame either Republican or Democratic administrations for 9-11. Rather, I see that the institutions were incable of adequately preparing for the threats ( and reality). Of course, there are numerous examples of officials who could have done things differently, institutiions such as the CIA and FBI should have had the wall between them modernized (remember Jamie Gorelick?), and do know how parties act with one ( or both) eyes on the polls.

I read the entire 9-11 Commision report - - and encourage others to do so as well. In doing so, they will see both good and bad . . and that the "truth" is often grayer than what the MSM and partisans care to admit.

Making up your own facts to suit your agenda is a standard trick of the right these days, but doing it with something as horrific as 9/11 is unconscionable. That scene of Berger slamming down the phone without approving a missile strike is damn near criminally libelous, and as to the scene with Albright informing Pakistan, it was the Vice Chair of the JCS who did that, not her.

Also, if the right gets away with this, we'll have the equivalent of "Who Lost China" around for another fifty years. I suspect the Democratic Party doesn't want that to happen. "Who Lost Osama?" should be clearly attached to Bush and Tora Bora, not to the Dems.

By the way, Pix, the WaPo's critic agrees with the Democrats.

Tom Shales does not say anything, in that article, which can be construed as approving of the movement to get the thing spiked, still less anything approving of the Democrats' dangling ABC's broadcast licenses before their faces. He agrees that it's a crummy and inaccurate movie. If Democrats had constrained themselves to just calling the movie garbage, nobody would care. This wasn't a story until the threats started flying. Just when was it that Harry Reid got put in charge of which crummy movies get to be on t.v.? And who thinks it's a good idea for him to be?

Also, It's not like the only acceptable time to capture or kill OBL was in Tora Bora. Every single minute of every day for the past ten years would have been a good time to kill him. Right?

Would have been, yes. But our best shot was Tora Bora, when we left it to the Northern Alliance and pulled the Special Forces and sent them off to Iraq.

I don't think the Democrats would follow through on the airwaves threat, but since when do only the Republicans get to play hardball?

In what way was Tora Bora a better shot than Clinton's cruise missile strike? It seems like getting him earlier would have been better, and I don't see why it was technically more difficult. Unless better means something different.

Regarding the second bit:

1. If it's an empty threat, it's not really hardball. And, that the threat is empty doesn't make it okay, c.f. sexual harassment law for further discussion of this point.

2. What makes you think I'd approve of Republicans pulling anything like this? I don't even approve of Bill O'Reilly's doing it, and he's just a moron talk show host. It's qualitatively different (i.e. honest to G-d censorship) when government officials play at being t.v. censors than when moron talk show hosts do.

A couple of months ago, there was a panel discussion of conservative book publishers with Adam Bellow, and some other people I've since forgotten, on CSPAN. Bellow was asked how he came to be a conservative. He talked about the (I don't know if you allow swearing here, so I'll resist the temptation) garbage-storm lefties kicked up over Allon Bloom's book The Closing of the American Mind. Clearly that book has more to commend it than some t.v. movie. But it's inherently tactically stupid to be the party of fruit forbidding. Without the hullabaloo over this movie, nobody would have watched it. Now people are going to. If ABC spikes it, it'll become a big time P2P hit. No matter what, the people trying to kill it are always going to be the ones taking it up the nose, because that's the way stuff like this works. One should think a party dedicated to the proposition that not all force is good force would have been able to suss this out.

Andrew, I'm not accusing you of approving of Republicans doing this. Here's a great list of Republicans doing the same thing with that Reagan movie a few years ago, though.

the people trying to kill it are always going to be the ones taking it up the nose

So if lies are allowed to be broadcast to a large audience, learn to live with it? Look, it could color people's perceptions of what really happened that day for the next 50 years; if a slanted version is allowed to run, is that a good thing for the country? Whatever happened to truth?

I'm constitutionally incapable of reading an entire Greenwald post, so please excuse me if I'm missing something, but he doesn't seem to be arguing that this sort of power play is legitimate. Only that Rethuglicans who did when it was The Reagans are bound by the rules of consistency to do so now, too. Is the inverse of that also true? Do you think it was perfectly fine for the listed Republicans to have mostly killed (it still aired, just on cable; I didn't remember that) the Reagan movie? I will note that none of the twits on Greenwald's list were elected government officials. Gillespie is getting close, so, well, whatever. And while I acknowledge this is a logical fallacy, it can never be too often said that which ever side agrees with Pat Buchanan at any given moment is always wrong.

Always.

What happened to truth?

I couldn't even begin to think about knowing how to answer that question. I do know, though, that the point of the first amendment isn't that all speech is good for the country. It's that even bad speech is not so bad for a country as the suppression of what Harry Reid thinks is bad speech.

Censorship is a red herring. Misrepresentation of fact on the part of one of the four major media conglomerates to fit a particular political agenda is the real issue here.

Good discussion!

Back to issue of "who lost Bin Laden", I think Link's allusion to China is spot on . . and that both parties are afraid of being smeared with that one.

As I mentioned above, I do not spend a lot of time is assessing such blame, for I think that it was understandable issues that allowed the 9-11 attack to slip through the institutional cracks.

There is no evidence that ABC/Disney purposely produced a hit piece on either party in this film, and I believe that the core issue is artistic freedom. Just as I held my nose at Farenheidt 911 or several of the Oliver Stone films, I still disapproved of those voices advocating pulling them from the theaters or airwaves.

The 1st amendment is clear, and the preemptive attacks on this docudrama by officials in the government are chilling.