9/11 needs to be dramatized?
Maybe you’ve heard all the talk about “The Path to 9/11″ and all the outraged reactions to it before it even airs. It’s a $40 million docu-drama mini-series that ABC and Disney will foist on the public Sunday and Monday. Apparently 9/11 wasn’t a good enough story, so they’ve made up a bunch of scenes that never happened, to add some color to the drab predictable tale of some cave-dwellers taking down the World Trade Center towers and getting away with it, still snickering in their caves five years later.
I say “apparently” because, of course, most of us haven’t seen the movie yet. But a few folks have.
One person who has seen “The Path to 9/11″ is Ray Richmond. His column in the Hollywood Reporter entitled “Five Years Later, 9/11 Is Reduced To Just Another Edition of ‘Artistic License Theater’” is a classic. Here’s a quote, thanks to DailyKos:
On Thursday, ABC actually released a statement that read in part, “No one has seen the final version of the film because the editing process is not yet complete, so criticism of film specifics are premature and irresponsible.”
Huh? Now that’s kind of interesting. If this is the case, then I wonder what the network expected me to do with that “Path to 9/11″ review copy it supplied me with a few weeks back. Was I not supposed to review it? Nothing on the DVD said it was incomplete or something less than critique quality. Yet somehow, if I level criticism based on viewing said screener, I’m doing something that’s “irresponsible”? I’ve been a TV critic for the better part of 22 years, and that’s a new one on me.
Big companies like ABC and Disney love to talk about transparency. Hey ABC execs, here comes some transparency the next few days. Enjoy!
This entry was posted on Saturday, September 9th, 2006 at 9:32 pm. You can subscribe to comments on this post through its RSS feed.
on September 10, 2006 at 7:49 am Dave Fourputt wrote:
Neal Boortz has an interesting take on this:
http://boortz.com/nuze/200609/09082006.html#abc
Also,
Clinton is upset about this miniseries because it shows that he was more occupied with White House interns than he was with Osama bin Laden. One of Clinton’s own closest advisors, Dick Morris, has authenticated the situation as it was presented in this miniseries.
Yeah I’m a bit caustic today. My putter and I are not speaking to each other anymore sice I three-putted way too many times yesterday.
on September 10, 2006 at 9:17 am Tom wrote:
The problem with ALL of this is politics. It goes back to before the impeachment. The Boortz piece speaks of the unhealthy hatred the Democrats have for Bush (as it pertains to the wiretap issue, the next piece after the miniseries bit). That may be, but there are a lot of Republicans who seem to be backing away from him, too. And the tone of out-and-out political war at any cost was set by the Rebulicans’ witch hunt for the Clintons, resulting in our entire system grinding to a halt to deal with an impeachment. During that process, even Judiciary Chairturtle Henry Hyde recommended that the House pass along the articles of impeachment without concern of further destruction of the country because it was generally understood that the Senate would not convict. If that’s not political stinkwind, I don’t know what is.
Now we’re looking at the reverse, and the Republicans are crying foul. Great. Maybe if each side gets a chance to pin the other for a while, we’ll calm down and stop doing it. Yeah, right.
I’m not saying that tit-for-tat is right, nor am I simply saying, “but they started it!” But cultures (like the culture inside the beltway) change based on stuff like this. And we can go back and forth about whose fault it was in this country, but the fact is that it was Osama bin Laden’s fault. And our intelligence missed it. The CIA probably has a lot of Republicans and a lot of Democrats working for it (probably not a lot of Green Partiers, but you my point) — political affiliation did not make anyone allow 4000 people to die. A misunderstanding of the situation, on both sides of the political line, did.
And Dave Fourputt, I hate to take a poke, but Dick Morris isn’t exactly the voice of authority on anything for EITHER side. If Sandy Berger confirmed it, I’d believe it. But Dick Morris has always been happy to grind an axe here and there, so to speak.
Feeling a bit caustic myself, too. Just did a 36-hour all-nighter for a client, and was out golfing right before it. I entered my marathon work session having just played nine with NO short game at all. Even my sand wedge was dead, and I can always count on it. Imagine, 36 hours awake with THAT to think about!
on September 10, 2006 at 9:41 am Dave Fourputt wrote:
Your points are well-taken Tom. Thank you and I hope your sand wedge treats you better next time.
We all can’t be short game wizards like Doug.
on September 10, 2006 at 9:58 am Doug wrote:
One thing I think we can all agree on: golf causes more problems than it solves. Hence its broad appeal!
Thanks for the link, Dave, I read the Boortz piece. It seems to me that the way anyone looks at the situation comes down to a single question: are our current policies a net improvement in how our country handles the threat of terrorism? And, specifically, terrorism coming from Muslim groups in the Middle East. (Osama has as much to do with Afghanistan as I have to do with Spokane — we both lived there a few years, although I managed to get out and he didn’t.)
If you think that we’re handling terrorism better today, as I understand it the argument goes something like this: there have been no major terrorism attacks against Americans inside the US since 9/11, so that’s a sign of progress. If you think that we’re handling terrorism worse now than in the past, the arguments goes something like this: there have been more terrorist attacks against Americans the last three years than ever before (mostly in Iraq), and those attacks are coming mostly from groups that had never attacked us before (Shiites, etc.).
I’m expectating that the debate will change in nature after the next time a bunch of Americans fall victim to an attack inside the US, or at least outside Iraq and Afghanistan. One camp thinks that the actions of the last three years have made that less likely, the other camp thinks those actions have made it more likely. Time will tell. And when that attack comes, I’m sure Tom is right that the Henry Hydes of the world will use it as a way to make a political point.
Regarding “The Path to 9/11,” I’ve read a bit more. I guess if they want to portray Clinton as distracted by Monicagate, I have no problem with that, but when they start making up things that never happened (like Sandy Berger personally preventing the capture of Bin Laden), that’s crossing a line. Anyone is entitled to an opinion, but facts are facts. And after the 9/11 commission was the only decent example of bipartisan cooperation to come out of the whole 9/11 mess, it’s sure a shame that members of the commission are selling their services as “independent experts on 9/11″ without maintaining the bipartisan cooperation that made the commission effective in the first place. I’d feel that way if ABC had hired exclusively Democrats as experts, too: my contempt for both parties is roughly equal.
Now let’s all play golf!
on September 10, 2006 at 9:59 am Doug wrote:
Hey, don’t call me a short-game wizard, now you’ve ruined it!
on September 10, 2006 at 11:47 am Dave Fourputt wrote:
Anybody that carries a 2-iron has my respect!
What really grieves me is the way both major political parties are playing political football with our national security.
In any case perhaps we can someday solve all of the world’s problems during a round of golf while enjoying a few cold ones.
on September 10, 2006 at 12:42 pm Tom wrote:
Sounds good to me. Golf is so much more frustrating than any of the world’s worst problems that if offers the best perspective you could possibly ask for!
Or perhaps I’m letting my bias control me …
Anyhow, I worry less about national security and more about our system of government, which will be affected long after Bush, bin Laden, you, or I die. Terrorism has been proven to be the best weapon against freedom (better than Communism, Socialism, Totalitarianism, Fascism, anything). Inject fear into our culture and we collapse on ourselves, stretch ourselves too thin, frantically chase false leads, and so on. That seems like less of an international problem and more of an internal problem — we need to start trusting each other more and (accordingly) acting more trustworthy. On both sides. (Cue “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing.”)
And not to brag, but I used to carry a 2-iron. Okay, it was mostly because I didn’t have a ball retriever. I was able to scrape a ball off the bottom of a water hazard pretty reliably with that thing.
And at Indian Valley*, you only got one shot at a ball in the hazard — after the first poke, the nuclear sludge started to glow and you couldn’t see it anymore.
* Doug can tell you more about IV, Dave — we used to play there all the time. It’s the only place I’ve ever played where the mud burned if you got it on you. It’s now a luxurious gated community with wealthy families living in it.
on September 10, 2006 at 2:23 pm Doug wrote:
Hey Tom, regarding your nostalgic recollection of Indian Valley’s burning mud, you’re going to love Tyee, where we’ll be playing two weeks from tomorrow. Dave, we only have a threesome scheduled so far, hint hint.
And regarding Indian Valley, I have some notes I started years ago to write about that place. Seriously, I think it had a culture that deserves to be preserved somehow. I’ve often described it as the only course I’ve ever played where the group behind us once yelled “hey, you dudes got any papers?” but that doesn’t begin to do it justice. It wasn’t just a run-down course where a variety of shady characters played, although that was certainly a big part of its charm.
Speaking of Indian Valley, er, golf, er, 9/11 … whatever …
I’ve alluded in the past to my extremely up-and-down golf game. (Gee, I’m the only person who feels that way, right?) Anyway, here are two rounds at Indian Valley that I’ve thought about many times, especially after a really bad round:
On a Monday evening (6/22/98), I played Indian Valley with Pete. I birdied the first hole (the only time I had ever done so), then fell into a terrible case of the shanks and soon I could barely hit a shot. I limped in with a 98, thanks to a few putts dropping or it would have been much worse.
The next morning, Tom and I (and my ex-wife Gail) played Indian Valley at dawn, as we often did in those days. Humbled (no, devastated) by my experience of the night before, I hit nothing longer than a 5-wood off the tee and swung easy, just trying to keep the ball in play and not make a total fool of myself. The result was a 75, my best score ever.
No matter how bad you suck at golf on a given day, the next day could be entirely different. As the cliche goes, that’s what keeps us coming back.
on September 10, 2006 at 6:39 pm Tom wrote:
Eric and I watched some guy with his kid in the cart eagle the first hole at IV — he drove the green, believe it or not. He hit the ball and I thought for sure he was off his nut. But it hit the front fringe, and he hit that tough uphill put for the birdie.
Personally, I’ve only ever had one eagle putt, and that was the dogleg par-5 18 at IV. I think I was with you, Doug - and I think I bogeyed the hole.
Eric (Dave: he was my best man, and my oldest friend) found it to be disgusting and run-down. But he’s kind of snooty about conditions, particularly after he hit a drive there that would have rolled up for an easy eagle putt except for the big piece of metal debris in the fairway that caused a spectacular (and delightfully musical) deflection off into the left-hand out-of-bounds on number 7 (a short par-4). After that he thought the place was a dive. And he was right. But it was cool anyway.
And Dave FP — do join us at Tyee. Sounds like a blast. A bit of politics, a lot of golf, and so on. I can’t wait to meet this Contamina Ted from the sign. I bet he’s a character!