Left In Lowell

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September 9, 2006

For People Who Think Opposing ABC Is Censorship

by Lynne at 5:10 pm.

I’ve explained here and other places why such an idea is absurd on its face. But DK’s Georgia10 does it so much more eloquently than I:

I despise censorship. Ordinarily, I subscribe to the sentiment of John Stuart Mill, who advocated the free expression of even the most foul and erroneous ideas:

The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. ~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859

When it comes to The Path to 9-11, the sad truth is that there will be no opportunity to create Mill’s “livelier impression of truth.”  ABC certainly won’t allocate another five hours to present a factual rebuttal.  And I have little faith that the press will provide a proper balance to the film (after all, this is the same press that still refers to the film’s lies as “alleged inaccuracies,” as if they are unable to open up a copy of the 9/11 Commission Report and validate the truth for themselves).  

No, once broadcast in today’s climate, the lies of this movie will hang in the air, and they’ll be eventually absorbed by the body politic as historical fact.  In the words of professor and cultural historian, Leo Braudy, “Narrative creates closure.” Joe Conason strikes a similar note as he explains that because this fabricated narrative will reach “millions of viewers who don’t read books, let along government reports,” this false version will likely be accepted as truth by the American people.

And that is why we who are the most vocal opponents of censorship now demand that ABC and Disney exercise discretion and self-censorship and edit or reconsider airing the series.


This week’s protest is about more than ABC, Disney, and its current love affair with the Republican agenda, for   The Path to 9/11 is merely a symptom of a greater social disease.  

Those chosen few who have seen and accepted the movie say that sure, some scenes may contradict the 9/11 Commission report, but those are details; what viewers will take away from the film, they promise, is the big picture of government failure.  Details. Details. Fabrication of details.

But that is precisely why we fight today. Because in a nation governed by generalities, we need to remind America that specific facts matter.  Republicans are masters of creating fairy tales, of penciling in whatever reality fits that big picture (fixing the facts to fit the policy, that is).  In their fantasy land, there were WMD in Iraq, Plame was never a covert agent, Saddam and Osama were bunk buddies, and the economy is doing great because you can go out and buy yourself a $3 refrigerator. Details. Irrelevant Details.

We’re in the Age of Generalities, my friends.  Good vs. evil, with us or against us, victory or defeat.  It’s an era where a nebulous “War on Terror” provides a blank canvas upon which any “facts” can be scribbled, scratched out, rewritten, and shaded in a way that no matter how imagined they may be, they pop out of the page as truth.  
And when those details are exposed as being wrong–no, not just wrong, but dead wrong, blood on your hands wrong–we poo poo the mistake and tilt our heads up towards that flickering big picture again, mesmerized by it.  Look at us.  A sea of Americans now reduced to a captive audience hypnotized by a hollow narrative, drawn in time and time again by a shell of story devoid of factual basis but so damn riveting we accept it as truth.  

4 Responses to “For People Who Think Opposing ABC Is Censorship”

  1. Renee Says:
    September 9th, 2006 at 10:13 pm

    Come’ on Lynne see the positive side. I know you were in that targeted key demographic back in the late 80’s when ‘New Kids on the Block’ were big; it is a great opportunity to see Donnie Walhberg play a CIA agent in Afghanistan.

    Other then that seriously, I’m sensitive to censorship. Even a disclaimer on the docudrama isn’t enough when you look at the whole picture in context. This is being played during the five year anniversary and is seen as a historical/tribute of sorts to the events of September 11, 2001 and the days leadings up to it. Rather then editing, I would much rather have it placed in a less sensitive time frame and better off on a sister cable station due to any possible embellishing or over dramatizing of the day.

    I believe CBS had a Reagan miniseries that was protested, in which rather then editing they moved it to cable. I’m not sure if that miniseries was planned to be aired during a sensitive time frame though. I really have not been following the details of this particular miniseries, but I do see lines blurred with using historical/modern day persons and events to tell a fictional plotline.

    I had a personal experience with the DaVinci Code, in which someone attempted to discuss with me my religious beliefs through that book. I politely informed then that it was a book of fiction using historical figures, but they rebuttal specific parts as fact. If Dan Brown wanted to write a non-fictional book about his research, he may do so as a companion and cite references.

    In the end you just make the best of it, and use it as a teaching experience to educate your understanding and beliefs. Opus Dei the real life group fictionalized in Brown’s book and film to conspire secrets has pretty much made lemonade with lemons and informs the public who they are through the enormous amount of inquiries made regarding its organization and mission.

  2. Paul@01852 Says:
    September 10th, 2006 at 5:08 am

    This is really scary:

    The ABC Miniseries

    The forthcoming ABC documentary on 9/11 represents a turning point in American political life and a touchstone which should help resolve some long-standing controversies about media bias. It also challenges working journalists to uncover some new relationships which are reducing the idea of an independent press to a joke. Its impact upon the forthcoming elections will say a great deal about where we are as a nation, but it might also even have some beneficial legal consequences, even if those will take a great deal of time to develop.

    What we have learned about the documentary makes clear that ABC has produced a piece of GOP agitprop that takes breathtaking, scandalous liberties with the facts. These extend even to the staging of incidents that never occurred, most notably, a supposed teleconference between a heroic CIA agent in Afghanistan and the leaders of the Clinton National Security team, who refuse to authorize the capture of a trapped Osama Bin Laden.

    [http://historyunfolding.blogspot.com/2006/09/abc-miniseries.html]

    Historian David Kaiser goes on to propose that this is not just an accident that ABC/Disney produces a movie so helpful to the Bushies and proves “that a corporate media can be as effectively manipulated as an actually controlled one—more so, in fact, since an explicitly state-controlled media inevitably loses more of its credibility than a free one.” He also proposes that it proves “that right-wing pressure on the media is far, far more influential than left-wing pressure, and that the mainstream media, if it ever had a genuine liberal bias, no longer has any at all.” What liberal media, indeed!

  3. Mr. Lynne Says:
    September 10th, 2006 at 8:56 am

    Rene… as for the CBS miniseries… it was scheduled at a sensitive time and the righty blogs made a lot of hay about it.

    On the film’s timing with mention of the Regan piece:
    http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/09/nsa-story-v-911-film-liberal-msm.html

    On right-wing hypocracy regarding their treatment of the Regan piece as compared to this 9/11 piece. Note the last update… there are conservatives who recognize the the problem:
    http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/09/bush-supporters-condemn-fictionalized.html

  4. hypnotize Says:
    October 9th, 2006 at 2:24 pm

    I guess free speech is still alive.. and ya’ gotta love Wordpress for it.
    Keep bloggin’… cuz I luv readin’ yer posts. : )
    - Anjie in Little Rock, AK

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