We previously gave you links and quotes from two reviews for The Road To 911 — one from the Chicago Sun Times which didn’t like it, the other from the New York Times which didn’t find it as bad or polarizing as some advance reports do.
But the LA Times, in a television review by Samantha Bonar, suggests it is every bit as politically loaded as the controversy that swirls around it suggests. Read it IN FULL but here are some excerpts:
ABC’s miniseries “The Path to 9/11” has assigned itself the daunting and dangerous task of explaining how America ended up one bright fall morning with planes crashing into the World Trade Center and Pentagon, causing the deaths of about 3,000 people. Daunting because unraveling that knot is an enormously complex undertaking, a huge challenge to our best scholars and experts. Dangerous because with one false move, viewers could be left with partisan propaganda instead of historical dramatization
“The Path,” which leaves the explaining of these complicated world events to entertainers rather than historians, has many false moves. The two-part series airs Sunday and Monday.
So has it been an exaggeration to say that this series has basically turned out to be GOP propaganda seemingly aired less to mark 911 than to coincide with one of the Republican party’s 2006 election themes? Bonar:
The miniseries was a massive undertaking, with close to 250 speaking parts, more than 300 sets and a budget of $40 million. The production values and acting skills cannot be faulted, and of course the topic is compelling. But something strange starts happening around hour three of the miniseries, when the film none-too-subtly suggests that then-President Clinton was too busy dropping his trousers and later struggling not to lose his shirt in impeachment hearings to pay much attention to what was going on in the world, terrorism-wise. The film shows real news footage of Clinton’s denials of “sexual relations … with that woman, Monica Lewinsky” in 1998 while O’Neill and other CIA and FBI agents were desperately scrambling to find Bin Laden and thwart more attacks.
And then the partisan politics begin to emerge in the script — big time.
According to “The Path,” the Clinton administration was too concerned with such trifles as respecting international laws and treaties, protecting civil liberties, following diplomatic protocol, displaying cultural sensitivity and pursuing larger goals (like Mideast peace) to bring down the bad guys.
She also notes that the series portrays just about any woman (it doesn’t matter what party the woman belongs to) as an “arrogant witch” (a phrase that suggests the LA Times perhaps has more stringent editors than ABC Entertainment). AND:
But the main problem with “The Path” is that the interspersing of real news footage with dramatized scenes, a technique employed throughout, makes a hopeless muddle of the line between fact and “dramatization.”
Although it claims to be based in part on the 9/11 Commission Report, writer-producer Nowrasteh, a self-described conservative, said in an interview with frontpagemag.com that the report goes back only as far as 1998, and that he did his own research for the years 1993 to 1998.
Yet even if there are not outright lies in the film, as some are claiming — Albright, for one, has called a scene depicting her actions as “false and defamatory” — there are many omissions. Notably, one of the most famous images of Sept. 11, President Bush’s frozen response while visiting a Florida classroom when he was told of the attacks, is not depicted.
With a projected TV audience in the millions, “The Path” is an irresponsible film, with its factual distortions wrapped in a really terrific package that lulls viewers into complacency, setting them up for the propaganda that is to follow.
If there is one good thing that will come out of the controversy over ABC’s “The Path,” it is that it hopefully will make citizens read the 9/11 Commission Report for themselves. After all, a democracy is a terrible thing to waste.
This weblog unlike some others doesn’t get close to a million hits a
day and we don’t urge people to vote one way or take specific political actions. But we will say this:
If you want to see essentially an op-ed version of 911, a dramatization of 911 that will please listeners of Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and other popular conservative talk show hosts, then you need to watch the movie because it will confirm what you believe.
Parts of it will not confirm what the 911 Commission Report actually said.
And if you don’t want to help make this kind of film a success by being one of the vital numbers tuning in, watch something else on the nights this runs. Or go to You Tube and find raw footage of 911 to remember what happened. Or read a book. Or say a prayer.
But the bottom line will be when the numbers are counted for this series. If there are whopping ratings it will prove that a series can be pre-sold through a specific political viewpoint and even though there are charges that it has events, assertions and characterizations of people and events that did not occur, you’ll see more of these kinds of movies in the future. And some will be done by people on the left, depicting the lives of and events involving people on the right.
We’ll pass on this one. What’s most troubling is that it sets a precedent. So if it gets big ratings, you’ll be seeing a lot more of the same.
It also sounds like ABC and its parent company are on the verge of being hit by a political firestorm. Will it soon become a politically defining statement for parts of the country which side on which you opt on the issue of watching ABC or visiting Disneyland? Will polarization reach that point in America?
If that happens, this is one thing no one can blame on Bill Clinton: this crisis started with poor decisions, poor oversight or troubling intent and grew with a refusal to even let top Democrats get an advance look at what GOPer talk show hosts and writers were allowed to see. If there is increased polarization and some corporate fallout, it’s due to an unprecedented political provocation during a divisive (election) year during a divisive (21st century America) time in American history.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.