Blogfire of the Vanities

Both Hugh Hewitt and Dean Barnett take on the issue of resistance to ABC's scheduling of "The Path to 9/11." Each addressed different aspects of the issue with keen insights.

Hugh brings to our attention something that I nearly wrote about but decided against when I first blogged the subject over the weekend, namely the Reagan comparison:

One false analogy is gaining currency among the airbrush brigade: CBS pulled a Ronald Reagan docudrama in November 2003 after conservative complaints about its accuracy.

...the Reagan biopic served no purpose and memorialized no important event in American history. "The Path to 9/11" does both. The attempt to bury the latter is the attempt to erect an official history on one of the most devastating days in our nation's history. Those demanding its ruin are demanding censorship of the very worst sort.

Finally and most importantly, just because people complain that a film is inaccurate doesn't make it so. The Reagan pic was by CBS's own account a deeply flawed bit of anti-Reagan advocacy.

The anonymous quote of a CBS executive familiar with the production said it all at the time: CBS believed it had ordered a love story about Ronald and Nancy Reagan with politics as a backdrop, but instead got a film that crossed the line into advocacy, said a network executive who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

What conservatives objected to was the seeming personal and gratuitous attack against Reagan, portrayed as the amiable dunce led blithely along by a scheming wife and puppet of nefarious Right-wing Masters. It wasn't true, and it wasn't a necessary part of a biographical film.

Later in the day, Dean Barnett had this to add about the debate raging over Cyrus Nowrasteh's film:

It came as no small matter of symbolism that while President Bush was giving a major address yesterday outlining concrete things his administration was doing and would do to safeguard the country, the Democratic caucus in the Senate was having a highly organized hissy-fit just to demonstrate how much they disliked Donald Rumsfeld. Again, it’s the same old tune. Bush is doing things and proposing other things to do; the Democrats just complain.

The Democrats talk much but appear to do little and the same was true in certain respects of Bill Clinton's 8 years on the issue of terrorism. As one of Hugh's commentors pointed out, no one likes the truth when it puts them in a bad light. Bill Clinton and members of his Administration share blame for 9/11, just as President Bush and members of his government do as well. It was group effort.

Meanwhile, folks on the left who can't bear the thought of an objective look at their time in office are pushing and pushing to eliminate any reference to their inaction or misguided policies:

Now arrives a major television event that exposes the specifics of Democrtaic-era "stewardship" of national security, and they are in a frenzy to do whatever it takes to keep that memory down the memory hole.

Despicable.