Dear Sir or Madam,
I am writing in regard to the upcoming ABC Television miniseries "The Path to 9/11." Having heard and read a great deal about the production, including the fact that it was written by an avowed right-wing screenwriter and previewed only to right-wing columnists and commentators; as well as the fact that several Clinton Administration officials who served as advisors to the producers, and President Clinton himself, have complained about inaccuracies and outright falsehoods in the production, I can conclude only that, in its current form. it is a blatant right-wing smear campaign, one which attempts to place the blame for 9/11 at the Democratic Party's doorstep while glossing over the Bush White House's missteps and fabrications.
It is my hope that KSFY is interested enough in fairness and honesty to pre-empt the local broadcast of this slanderous fiction-disguised-as-fact, in the event that ABC/Disney lack the integrity to either re-edit the movie to remove its partisan biases or cancel it outright.
Thank you.
William J Reynolds
Sioux Falls
Here is my official prediction: I will receive back a canned statement to the effect that this is an ABC production and not a locally created smear, KSFY believes that a variety of viewpoints should be heard, and blah blah blah. There might also be a line in there about waiting for the slander to be perpetrated before objecting to it, and blah blah blah again. There will under no circumstances be any display of genuine integrity or intestinal fortitude. You read it here first.
Of course I signed a couple of form-letter style petitions to Robert Iger, the president and CEO of the Walt Disney Company--one at Act for Change, one at the Democratic Party website--but I imagine those to be time-wasters as well. For one thing, I have no reason to expect that the kahunas at Disney/ABC give a rip what anyone thinks, and especially anyone who isn't a fatcat GOPer. For another, I have to think all these "gang petition" ventures fairly scream Ignore Me!! when they get to wherever they're going. But I sign 'em anyhow. Sometimes the lost causes are the only ones worth getting involved in.
There are a couple of ironies (as usual, for me) associated with the "Path to 9/11" brouhaha. File them under "Conservative Hypocrisy":
- Conservatives like to pretend there's a "liberal bias" to the mainstream media. It's been demonstrated repeatedly that this is a fiction, but conservatives like to think they're always being picked on. How, then, to explain this obvious smear against the Clinton Administration and the Democratic Party? How, then, to explain CBS's pulling of their proposed miniseries "The Reagans" a couple of years ago when the right wing objected to "distortions" of their icon's image? If the media were controlled by the left, I wouldn't be wasting time writing letters to uninterested TV shills.
- As an outgrowth of the above, conservatives like to pretend that they are all about achieving "balance" in the media. Why, Fox News even has the guts to call itself "Fair and Balanced," by which of course they mean unfair and slanted. Obviously, "balance" is the last thing they want; what they want is to lay the blame for 9/11, civil war in Iraq, the high price of gasoline, and the gum they stepped in on the way to work this morning on Democrats in general and Clinton (on whom they have this bizarre fixation) in particular. At the same time, they want to rewrite history and current events to make the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue appear blameless, infallible, and completely without fault.
- Conservatives like to pretend they're such fabulous Christians, but I'm pretty sure there's something against "bearing false witness" in the Ten Commandments (you know, the ones they want displayed in courtrooms). Obviously that doesn't apply to smearing people of different political parties and social opinions. One does find oneself wondering about all those rubber bracelets: What indeed would Jesus do?
- "Don't condemn before you see it" is another swell bit of hypocrisy. See above re "The Reagans." See also right-wingers' apoplectic reaction to "Death of a President": none of them seem willing to wait till its US release before passing condemnation.
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