Post a Comment On: Internal Monologue

If you've been anywhere in the progressive blogosphere in recent days, you know that there's a firestorm of outrage against ABC's fictionalized account around 9/11. Since ABC wasn't kind enough to send me an advance copy (it seems they only sent advance copies to right-wingers), I can't comment on the film itself. But if what I've read about it is true, it is a blatant Republican propaganda piece. And since it's being aired commercial-free, ABC is essentially giving right-wingers and Clinton bashers (the docu-drama apparently participates heavily in the "blame Bill" pathology still prevalent on the right) millions of dollars worth of free publicity.

One particularly odious aspect of this piece is that they claim it is based on the Report of the 9/11 Commission. Let's see what the commission members themselves have to say about that:
* Richard Ben-Veniste, speaking for himself and fellow 9/11 Commissioners who recently viewed the program, said, "As we were watching, we were trying to think how they could have misinterpreted the 9/11 Commission's findings the way that they had." ["9/11 Miniseries Is Criticized as Inaccurate and Biased," New York Times, September 6, 2006][link added] If you want to do some armchair activism on this issue, see this post on Kos. Already, outrage over this propaganda piece has caused Scholastic Corporation to drop their planned curriculum based on it (TPM Muckraker via Kos):
Educational media giant Scholastic, Inc. announced it's dropping its original classroom companion guides to a controversial new docudrama about the events preceding the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks -- and replacing them with materials stressing critical thinking and media literacy. “After a thorough review of the original guide that we offered online to about 25,000 high school teachers, we determined that the materials did not meet our high standards for dealing with controversial issues,” said Dick Robinson, Chairman, President and CEO of Scholastic, in a press release.The folks at Crooks and Liars make a good point, though:
What is interesting is that Scholastic chose to do this "thorough review" after they already published it. For a corporation that is so active in the education of our children, shouldn’t all their material demand a "through review" prior to release?