September 8, 2006
ABC/Disney and Scholastic: Have You No Decency? [UPDATE]
Filed under: Education Labor by Leo Casey @ 7:43 am
First it gave air time — again, and again, and again — to the John Stossel “Stupid in America” jihad against public education and teacher unions, all in the name of news reporting.
Now, on the eve of the fifth anniversary of 9/11, ABC/DISNEY is turning over its airwaves to a pseudo-documentary, “The Path to 9/11,” written and produced by far right partisans [the main scriptwriter is Rush Limbaugh friend Cyrus Nowrasteh]. This latest ideological crusade blames the Clinton administration for 9/11, by treating history as if it were a Disney fairy tale that could be changed for any story line.
And to compound matters, Scholastic Inc, has sent “study guides” for “The Path to 9/11″ to over 100,000 teachers, urging them to have their students and students’ families watch the show, as if it were an accurate and objective historical account.
In an attempt to obliterate from the mind of American voters the fact that post-9/11 the Bush administration had Osama bin Laden cornered in Tora Bora and let him escape, this pseudo-documentary literally creates out of whole cloth a scene in which a CIA agent places a phone call to seek approval to kill Bin Laden, then in his sights, only to have a senior Clinton administration official refuse and hang up the phone.
Roger Cressey, a top Bush and Clinton counterterrorism official, denounced this account as “something straight out of Disney and fantasyland. It’s factually wrong. And that’s shameful.” Richard Clarke, a leading counterterrorism official under Clinton and Bush I, says that this scene is “180 degrees from what happened.” Sandy Berger, Clinton’s National Security Advisor, calls the story “a total fabrication. It did not happen.”
With the Bush administration working overtime to rescue the failing fortunes of the Republican Party in the upcoming mid-term elections by fanning the fears of terrorism, the airing of this documentary would be a craven surrender to historial revisionism for partisan ends.
After Stossel, can anyone be surprised?
But to so dishonor the memory of those who fell on 9/11, on the eve of its fifth anniversary.
ABC/DISNEY and SCHOLASTIC: Have you no decency?
UPDATE:
Either Scholastic has more decency than ABC/Disney, or it knows a public relations disaster when it sees one. It is pulling out: “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.
UPDATE II: By Kombiz.
New York Congresswoman Louise Slaughter as well as Education and Workforce ranking member George Miller have asked teachers not to use the film in classrooms because of widespread innacuracies in the docudrama.
UPDATE III: By Kombiz
Free Exchange on Campus, a project of several orginizations including the AFT have posted their thoughts on the subject at their blog.
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I know exactly how you feel. It’s terrible when spin masquerades as fact.
Comment by NYC Educator — September 9, 2006 @ 6:42 am
Oh come on. The left cried censorship when protests were organized for the prospective portrayal of Reagan in the CBS Biopic. They had Reagan saying things he never said because the writers and producers felt, given his policies, he probably could have said them. This is no different. Only now censorship is praised.
One clear difference is the Reagan protesters threatened boycott of sponsors while here Democratic congressmen threaten removal of FCC license. Which protest more clearly represents the fearful spectre of government censorship
.
If you want to prevent the program organize a boycott of sponsors. If you are strong enough ABC will capitualte. It’s a business. It’s in it for financial return. But don’t try government intimidation. That is supposed to be what the left claims to oppose.
Comment by xkaydet65 — September 9, 2006 @ 10:08 am
I saw that Reagan thing on Showtime. It was like an episode of the Brady Bunch, except excrutiatingly longer.
I may be incorrect, but I don’t believe Reagan was available for comment at the time that trashy biopic was made. You can’t say the same about Bill Clinton, who’s alive and kicking. It’s a curious choice to make a “docudrama” when all the principal parties are available for comment.
With Democrats poised to take over the House, it’s hard to attribute the timing of this ABC thing to chance.
Anyway, I don’t think it’s unprecedented for conservatives to involve government. Didn’t Disney, which owns ABC, refuse to distribute Fahrenheit 911 because it was concerned about tax breaks in Florida?
Disney came under heavy criticism from conservatives last May after the disclosure that Miramax had agreed to finance the film when Icon Productions, Mel Gibson’s company, backed out.
Mr. Moore’s agent, Ari Emanuel, said Michael D. Eisner, Disney’s chief executive, asked him last spring to pull out of the deal with Miramax. Mr. Emanuel said Mr. Eisner expressed particular concern that it would endanger tax breaks Disney receives for its theme park, hotels and other ventures in Florida, where Mr. Bush’s brother, Jeb, is governor.
Comment by NYC Educator — September 9, 2006 @ 3:29 pm
Sorry, that’s “excruciatingly.”
Comment by NYC Educator — September 9, 2006 @ 3:30 pm
A dead Reagan is as believable as a live Bill. Bill has to maintain his place in History. Speaking out against a film that damages that image can hardly be called objective proof.
As far as ole Mike Eisner is concerned, your quote says that Eisner was concerned.Where is the evidence that he was actually threatened? Disney Corp is probably the biggest producer of dollars in Florida, Jeb Bush may be a lot of things, but stupid he aint. You are not going to damage a beuatiful business relationship because of family pride. That’s more like Michael Moore type accusations. Methinks Eisner was trying to deflect criticism from his Hollywood peeps and did it in a way that made him look the victim. And Fahrenheit 911 has gotten more air time than repeats of Law and Order so much for evil GOP influence.
But I return to my original point. If the Mouse bugs you get on board with a boycott. The Mouse responds to a lack of cheese. We have had elected federal lawmakers threaten the use of Federal power to prevent the release of a movie that offers real criticism of both administrations. Would you join with the Bush administration if it too protested the inaccuracies of the film as regards them?
My conservative brthren receive just criticism for seeing leftwing conspiracies where none exist. I suggest the left is now more guilty of such flights of imagination. Karl Rove is the evil genius behind it all. Evil big business plots to deprive us all of our freedoms.. It is truly nutty. I’ll leave you with one thought. The recent highly praised film V for Vendetta brought a new phrase to our consciousness. People shouldn’t fear their government. Government should fear the people. Highly charged words when they were penned in the UK 22 years ago. But that wasn’t the first time they appeared in a popular but disturbing piece of writing. No the first time they were used was in 1976. The book? The Turner Diaries.When the Left goes too far it meets its image in the far right.
Comment by xkaydet65 — September 9, 2006 @ 4:10 pm
Let’s see–you call the left “nutty,” speak of “Michael Moore type accusations,” suggested Karl Rove’s manipulations were fantasy, and offer no evidence whatsoever.
However, you have no problem demanding evidence from me beyond a thus-far undisputed account in the NY Times.
The fact remains that Eisner refused to distribute the film, and you haven’t given a viable motive.
You think maybe Eisner lied about being concerned? You think he was being paranoid? Or that Moore’s agent simply slandered Eisner to a Times reporter hoping he wouldn’t sue?
Do you suppose Jeb Bush is too principled to threaten political enemies of his brother? That he got where he is by being a soft touch?
The thing about unsubstantiated phrases like “Michael Moore accusations” is that Mr. Moore has thus far proven far more credible than Mr. Bush and company.
What did Rumsfeld say–6 days, maybe 6 weeks? Was it Cheney who said they’ll welcome us with flowers? And that the opposition was winding down?
Wasn’t it GW who stood in front of a “Mission Accomplished” banner and told us major operations were over?
Everything they’ve told us has been a lie, and frankly, I’d rather have a President who has a sex life, and lies about it. Better yet, I’d rather not hear about it at all.
Just the other day, GW told Katie Couric, “One of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror.”
That’s no surprise, as a Senate Intelligence committee, like the 9/11 commission three years ago, found no connectinon between Sadaam and Al Queda.
Now I may indeed be nutty. In the wake of spending 9/11 in a city school, I actually believed GW when he said all that stuff about WMDs and Al Queda connections and smoking guns becoming mushroom clouds. I supported him when he started what turned out to be this abomination in Iraq.
I know better now. I’ll take “Michael Moore accusations” any day. I only wish I’d beleived him when he gave his Oscar speech. I’ll grant you that George, Condi, and Dick all deserved the Oscar more than Mike.
But you’ll have to pardon me if I find highly public unchallenged quotes from the NY Times more reliable than your offhand suppositions.
Comment by NYC Educator — September 9, 2006 @ 5:08 pm
I’m still waiting for the Afghan pipeline to be built. I never said Jeb was principled.i said he wasn’t stupid enough to piss off the biggest bucks producer in the state of Florida. I never mentioned anything about al Queda and Saddam so your ad hominem attack is just that. But if you want to defend Saddam feel free. I withstood a lot of crap from former SDS types in my school in 90/91 when I said Kuwait wasn’t worth the bones of a single U.S. Marine. Same thing happened in 99 during Kosovo. My colleagues thought it great someone else’s kid was flying F18s over Pristina. I don’t have the time nor the inclination to put up with leftwing HYPOCRISY
.
Nowhere in my posr was there a defense of Iraq, but that’s all you choose to comment on. Nowhere do you respond to a single point. Did I offer conjecture? Of course I did. I just didn’t justify it with quotes from aggrieved parties and pass it off as objective evidence.
Michael Moore’s accusations unsustantiated?? We went into Iraq for Halliburton and Afgahanistan for a pipeline. That’s like the idiots who said we spent 40 billion bucks in Nam to protect 20 Billion in investment. One thing you should know, the oil and industrial peeps don’t bribe Republicans. They can’t! There’s no other place for them to go and the GOP knows it.
As for the Dems. hey look at Wall Street. Buffet, Soros, oh yeah he’s only destabilized the currencies of three nations to make a buck, Spitzer, Rohatyn. Bill Clinton made his alliance with the money changers as early as 1990. Look where his Secs of Commerce came from, not from the productive class, but from the monied interests.
And as far as Bill goes, were I a Dem Id think before spending time defending the guy that ended the New Deal, killed welfare, against the wishes of a great American like Pat Moynihan, kowtowed to Newt Gingrich and did it all so Dick Morris could reelect him/
I, on the other hand am angered at Clinton because in 1993 Ramzi Yousef tried to bring down the WTC and kill 100,000 people and instead of calling the US Marines Bill called the US Attorney. In !996 al Queda killed 50 Americans and 300 people who worked for us in Kenya and Tanzania and Bill sent the FBI when he should have sent F18s. I’m angry at Bill because 18 US Rangers were killed in Somalia after he sent them there and put his tail between his legs and ran for home when they died in the battle of Mogadishu. I’m angry that he never had a clue about what makes the US military tick and took with him to the White House his “loathing’ (his words) of all things military when he became CiC. I’m angry at Bill Clinton because whatever the issue, the event, the crisis, he approached it as if it were all about him.
I am someone who cast his first ever presidential vote for Hubert Humphrey and has never regretted that for one day, but it will be a cold day in hell when the Democratic Party, as presently constituted, ever receives my vote again. There was a time, and I regret its passing, when Democrats could be counted on to be patriots to country and not to party. I long for those days.
Comment by xkaydet65 — September 9, 2006 @ 6:57 pm
An ad hominem attack is an attack on a person. It was you who made an ad hominem attack on Michael Moore. This was particularly true since you offered no evidence whatsoever to support it.
Frankly, it’s you indulging in name-calling.
I contrasted Moore with various Republicans, pointed to their lack of veracity, and you’ve not contradicted a word I wrote. Didn’t they also say the war would pay for itself?
I believe MM more than I do you, frankly. Calling him an idiot, I’m afraid, does not prove him wrong. Call me one too, if you like.
Your opinions are certainly interesting, but despite the things you’ve pointed out, I liked Clinton much better than Bush. Had he not been attacked by the GOP and deserted by spineless democrats we might have had a national health care system.
Had he not been pursued relentlessly by partisan zealots, over nothing that affected this country, he might have achieved a great deal more.
I despised Moynihan for a long time, not seeing him as a democrat. I believe he called for a special prosecutor for Clinton, and declared there was no health crisis in this country. He also told a young student acquaintance of mine, doing a report on homelessness in Long Island, that there was no such thing, and hung up on her.
He was wrong there, too. And he was not frequently quoted by prominent Republicans because he was such a great democrat.
I also can’t help but recall that Republicans, so often horrified at anyone who doesn’t support a wartime President, did nothing but vilify Clinton when he did anything with the military.
And nothing he did was remotely as disasterous as Iraq.
Though GW wouldn’t have turned Clinton’s surplus into the largest deficit we’ve ever had if his single overriding priority were not lowering Steve Forbes’ tax bill.
When Clinton was president, I worked fewer hours and made more real money.
I support unions and I support working people. I’m afraid GW Bush and the GOP support neither.
Comment by NYC Educator — September 9, 2006 @ 9:30 pm
John McCain and the republicans fully supported the Kosovo incident. Bob Dole pushe through the end of the arms embargo that saved oh maybe 50,000 lives in Bosnia. Michael Moore said we went into Afghanistan to build an oil pipeline. Where is it. Moore said Arabs met with Bush about the pipeline when he was governor of Texas. They never did.Michael Moore showed Iraq as a children’s. paradise. Kite flying was a prominent Iraqi sport I guess. I never said Moynihan was a great Democrat but a great American. You work harder now because of Clinton’s pal Joel Klein.
Saying you like Clinton more than Bush is a meaningless statement. The disaster that Iraq has become is quietly applauded by liberals all over this nation. Anything less would have upset the partisan applecart and you can look to Donna Brazile’s interview on MSNBC after the successful Iraqi elections when she admitted, at the time, that things looked better in Iraq, but that there was still Iran and North Korea so there was still hope. Oh and Katie Couric’s response when told that Saddam may have escaped to Syria, her response “let’s hope so”
There are plenty of principled opponents of the war I respect, like the guys at American Conservative magazine, but for the Dems it’s a hammer they can use to regain power. They hope for defeat, and never desired victory. It’s people for whom the defining moment of the ir lives was not only their opposition to Vietnam, but their support for the NLF. Anything other than a defeat makes their lives have less meaning. I left five friends on the Wall. They died abandoned by their nation. If you want to know where I’m coming from, that’s where.
Comment by xkaydet65 — September 9, 2006 @ 10:03 pm
Just a note about the above mentioned right wing writer Cyrus Nowrasteh. He was writer director for TVs The Day Reagan Was Shot. The executive producer who hired him and approved of his work was that well known right winger Oliver Stone.
I guess we must believe that no one who is not a John Bircher could possibly be friends with Rush Limbaugh. Sarcasm off
But for those who do actually believe that conservatives and liberals cannot share friendship I suggest you read the eulogies spoken by the same man thirty years apart. William F. Buckley’s eulogy of Allard Lowenstein and most recently his eulogy of John Kenneth Galbraith. As a conservative, I do heartily believe that had Bill Buckley preceded either gentleman in death he would have been eulogized by them in an equally caring manner. I cannot imagine this generation following that path.
Comment by xkaydet65 — September 9, 2006 @ 10:59 pm
You may leave your sarcasm on. It doesn’t much bother me.
As for Kosovo, McCain may have supported it, but the GOP? I don’t think so:
“No goal, no objective, not until we have those things and a compelling case is made, then I say, back out of it, because innocent people are going to die for nothing. That’s why I’m against it.”
-Sean Hannity, Fox News, 4/5/99
“American foreign policy is now one huge big mystery. Simply put, the administration is trying to lead the world with a feel-good foreign policy.”
-Representative Tom Delay (R-TX)
“If we are going to commit American troops, we must be certain they have a clear mission, an achievable goal and an exit strategy.”
-Karen Hughes, speaking on behalf of presidential candidate George W. Bush
“President Clinton is once again releasing American military might on a foreign country with an ill-defined objective and no exit strategy. He has yet to tell the Congress how much this operation will cost. And he has not informed our nation’s armed forces about how long they will be away from home. These strikes do not make for a sound foreign policy.”
-Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA)
“I had doubts about the bombing campaign from the beginning…I didn’t think we had done enough in the diplomatic area.”
-Senator Trent Lott (R-MS)
“You think Vietnam was bad? Vietnam is nothing next to Kosovo.”
-Tony Snow, Fox News 3/24/99
“Victory means exit strategy, and it’s important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is.”
-Governor George W. Bush (R-TX)
Ironic, ain’t it? I can provide you with others. Love George and Tony’s trenchant analysis.
If Moore said they wanted to construct a pipeline, it does not, in fact, mean they completed one.
Perhaps Moore read this:
A senior delegation from the Taleban movement in Afghanistan is in the United States for talks with an international energy company that wants to construct a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan to Pakistan. A spokesman for the company, Unocal, said the Taleban were expected to spend several days at the company’s headquarters in Sugarland, Texas.” “Taleban in Texas for talks on Gas Pipeline,” BBC News, December 4, 1997 (Sugarland is 22 miles outside Houston.)
As a very young kid, I worked for Allard Lowenstein in his successful campaign to Congress, before they gerrymandered it into the district that now chooses Peter King, now on a mission to shut up the NY Times.
I’ve no doubt he’d be disgusted by the GOP’s current agenda.
Just as I am.
Comment by NYC Educator — September 10, 2006 @ 7:20 am
Al Lowenstein won the primary against John Murphy of Williamsburg,a well known graduate of Saint Francis Prep. In 1972 that district was entirely in Brooklyn, some 27 miles from the district that became Pete King’s. Part of Lowenstein’s district now is the gerrymandered district that features Ninfa Segarra. How do i know this? I voted for Lowenstein in that primary.
Comment by xkaydet65 — September 10, 2006 @ 9:04 am
There’s a clear difference between the Reagan Biopic, F9/11 and the Path to 9/11. I think we can all agree that the path to 9/11 is an innacurate dramatization of an important event in our history. You can follow some of the links in the post to read about some of the innacuracies or read the news that two FBI advisors resigned because of innacuricies early on in the production process.
No one was marketing either the Reagan Biopic, or F9/11 with study guides for students.
If there’s any doubt that the film is being marketed as the “official story” behind 9/11, you can see the European marketing of the film.
The film was marketed directly to conservative commentators, and fringe right wing sights like frontpage magazine. A screener DVD was sent to hundreds of right-wing bloggers and commentators yet when President Bill Clinton and other former Clinton officials asked for screeners they were denied copies as were progressive bloggers.
Even some conservative writers are saying that running the show is a bad idea.
Comment by Kombiz — September 10, 2006 @ 9:46 am
XK,
Apparently what you don’t know is Al Lowenstein was a Congressman in Nassau County’s 5th District from 69-71.
How do I know this? I lived there then and I live there now.
Look it up:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allard_K._Lowenstein
Comment by NYC Educator — September 10, 2006 @ 4:53 pm