Still More Swill From ABC

Hondo, the answer is: Yes, of course, and only if you agree with what we say.

That said, I am against fictionalizing true stories. That goes for Reagan making anti-AIDS statements or Berger nixing an OBL capture.

But there is plenty of blame -- innocent blame, for the most part -- to go around in the runup to 9-11, and Clinton certainly deserves a fair share of it.

 

I must have missed all the accounts that liberals are pressuring ABC (and many conservatives have, too, but that's an inconvenient truth for some) to edit the parts of the film that make Clinton look bad. I was under the impression that ABC was being pressured to edit parts that simply didn't happen or belied the claim that is it "based on the 9/11 commission report."

Guess if I went ahead and made up shit about George Bush in my paper, I can chalk up any backlash to my free speech being stifled.

And I love the contention that conservative ideas are being oppressed in the media marketplace . . . on the same day that one of the big four networks -- run by the by the same company that told Michael Moore and Fahrenheit 9/11 to get lost -- is starting a two-night 9/11 miniseries containing unflattering portrayals of Democrats that are patently false.

 

There's a big difference in facts as they are required to be reported in the mainstream media and facts as they are embellished and toyed with in a dramatic sense as in a movie or TV show. You guys knows as well as I do that movie scripts have composite characters and altered scenes in fit a 1-hour tV show or 2-hour movie. That's why the circumstances in movies are much different. Screenwriters, producers and directors call it "dramatic" or "poetic" license. One thing that comes quickly to mind is the movie Remember the Titans. The accident that left the one star player crippled for life didn't happen between playoff games. It actually happened during the off-season. They also changed completely the winning play in the state championship game.

Almost any movie based on real circumstances or incidents contains situations such as this. That's why they say the movie is "based" on a true story. Those mediums have much less of a burden of being 100 percent factual than we do. But everyone seems to be stunned that it's happening in this case.

 

Oh, hondo, please.

We're talking about the events leading up to one of the most horrific days in the nation's history, not a high school football team. This is a miniseries being trumpted as the "OFFICIAL TRUE STORY" and "based on the findings of the 9/11 report."

Remember that if watch the Sandy Berger scene that closes out tonight's airing. It is not something that is "altered" or given "dramatic license." It never fucking happened. For accuracy's sake, that final scene might as well be devoted to a portrayal of me having sex with Eva Longoria on the same night I poured in 37 for the Spurs.

 

If you're gonna defend this movie and its fictional scenes, you should never, ever say anything when someone criticizes the media for sensationalizing or adding bias, because that's exactly what this movie does.

The scenes changed in this film aren't something as simple as the hotel rooms the terrorists stayed in or added words to a conversation to make the movie flow better. As Mr. Rossi pointed out, it's not as if they're changing an ending to a football game in order to add to the amazing comeback story. These are real people who, because of this movie, will be blamed for the deaths of thousands of Americans. And if you don't believe that, you're grossly underestimating the gullability of the American public.

For God's sakes, over 30 percent of the American public believe the war in Iraq is going OK. Why? Because some talking head on the radio or on TV told them so.

 

Fellas, every single movie ever made that is based on facts has taken license with those facts, whether it's a high school football season or historical event. I'll give another example, since Rossi thinks I trivialized the 9-11 movie by citing a football movie. My grandfather was a tank mechanic with Patton's Third Army when it swept through France after D-Day. He said 50 percent of Patton's depictions in the movie were either embellished or exaggerated. Why should people making a movie about 9-11 be any different. Did you guys see United 93? At the end they show the drink cart actually breaking through the door to the cockpit and the passengers making physical contact with the hijackers before the plane crashes. But the 9-11 commission said all evidence shows the cockpit door wasn't breached.

Get over this. As I said, CBS should have been allowed to run the Reagan movie a few years ago without any grief, and ABC should have been able to do the same thing. You people shouldn't be looking for 100 percent true facts in the movies, and shouldn't be shocked when movies aren't 100 percent factual.

 

There is a difference, hondo, in embellishing in order to portray a person or event in a more favorable light, particularly when that event doesn't involve the nationally broadcast deaths of thousands of Americans, than to embellish and make it seem as though certain people made catastrophic mistakes or acted against their country and had a hand in causing those deaths.

If you don't see the difference, something is truly wrong. No one is saying that the movie has to be 100 percent accurate. No one is saying that the Republicans should be blamed instead of the Democrats. No one is saying that these people didn't make mistakes.

But you cannot make this movie, embellish it the way they have, air on the date in which they're airing it and expect people not to a) be pissed that you've got it so terribly wrong, or b) be pissed at the people you've wrongly portrayed. Those are the only two options here, because there's only one reason to make a movie entitled "Path to 9-11," and that reason is to accurately provide a dramatic recount of what led us to 9-11.

Dammit. Thousands of people died right on all of our TVs. Three commercial airliners were flown into three of the most famous buildings in the country. The guys behind it had been a target of this country for years. All of that isn't enough for a movie?

 

What strikes me as overwhelmingly idiotic are the people who jump up and down and scream and shout about how Clinton "should have got him back when he had the chance."

I'm guessing that somewhere around 90-95 percent of these people are Bush supporters. And here's where the idiocy come in: Five years after the worst terrorist attack we've ever seen, the guy responsible -- the same one these people are screaming about Clinton not killing before he had 9-11 on his resume -- is still running around scott free, and according to the jackass in the White House, isn't really a concern.

Until we deal with that little fact, I don't know how anyone can start thinking back to what happened prior to 9-11.

 

OBL is running around scot-free?

Methinks he's cowering in a cave somewhere in Afghanistan or Pakistan.

You make it sound like he's in the high-roller lounge at Bellagio.

 

Well, despite 2,500+ more deaths we still haven't seen him dead or in a prison in the U.S., or for that matter even in a secret CIA prison somewhere. Sure he isn't having as me and you are in our respective U.S. cities, but he sure as hell hasn't been stopped. So I guess both administrations screwed up.

 

To me, the saddest and most ridiculous part of the whole thing is that they actually bothered to create some scenes based on events that apparently didn't happen. I don't care if they're presenting it as a "docu-drama" and not the true story. There certainly are enough true bad moments out there from both the Clinton and the Bush administration to make it all factual and still fill five hours. Heck, there are enough of those moments to make a five-hour mini series that makes Bush look bad and another one that makes Clinton look bad.

Then everyone would be happy, right?

That being said, lefties crying about this one when they wanted the Reagan miniseries to run unchanged on CBS in 2003 are hypocrites, and righties who wanted the Reagan thing pulled back in 2003 are hypocrites when they now push for this one to run unchanged.

Free speech should run both ways. Censorship (well, with the exception of decency standards when it comes to over-the-air network stuff) should run zero ways.

 

Yeah, cowering. Released more videos than Jessica Simpson since the attacks, but we've got him boxed in.

The guy's living right now the same way he was living a month before 9-11.

I guess you're saying you're OK with that?