Amid talk that American Airlines is considering legal action or even pulling its ads from ABC due to the controversial two-part special “The Path To 911” it’s clear that not only ABC and Disney aren’t the only ones that walked away with black eyes due to the drama that didn’t draw record-breaking audiences.
Another casualty: former New Jersey Governor Tom Kean, co-chair of the 911 Commission who served as a consultant on a film that ignited a firestorm due to what former Clinton officials (and according to one report an FBI agent who served as consultant) considered inaccurate information.
Two pieces to read on this:
Tom Watson. A small taste 4 U:
So this is the hour of Tom Kean’s disgrace and humiliation. For four years, he portrayed the bi-partisan centrist, the big man who became half of the chairmanship of the 9/11 Commission, the real American who did good work on behalf of our people, who held government to task for its failings. What was the motivation for crawling into bed with the right-wing nutball bloggers, the little green goofball types, the pajamas media dorks, the spit-spewing haters, the fear-mongers? Was it the fee he collected for serving as a consultant to ABC’s reputation-destroying “docudrama,” the one that has anybody center or slightly left enraged by its lies, its silly portrayal of the Clinton Administration, its blatant campaigning? Was it the temptation to attack the Democrats and help his son’s campaign in New Jersey?
And even the New York Times, in an editorial. The relevant section:
It was especially disturbing that Tom Kean, co-chairman of the 9/11 commission and a former Republican governor of New Jersey, was willing to lend his prestige to this ill-considered project. Mr. Kean served as a senior consultant to the miniseries and has repeatedly defended it in public, even as several Democratic members of the commission criticized its distortions. Mr. Kean has said he will give his payment to charity, but that does not undo the damage done to the aura of bipartisanship that has surrounded the commission’s work. And it has not defused concerns that Mr. Kean did it in part to help his son, who is the Republican candidate for Senate in a close race in New Jersey.
Maybe Mr. Kean wasn’t entirely kidding when he quipped that he had not apologized to President Bill Clinton for any inaccuracies because “he was out campaigning against my son yesterday, so I didn’t reach out to him at all.� Whatever his motives, he has tarnished his carefully nurtured image of a statesman above the political fray.
Read both in full.
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.