It’s Not Always About You…

Glenn Reynolds has a great post on the tempest in a teapot over the ABC 9/11 miniseries. Former members of the Clinton Administration are getting their knickers in a twist as the miniseries dramatizes events surrounding failures to assassinate Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.

For one, Democrats lapped out Michael Moore’s cheap propaganda and twisting of facts in Fahrenheit 9/11 — they hardly have moral authority to criticize a miniseries that’s far more balanced: it even plays into their narrative that the Republican Congress was more interested in prosecuting Clinton for the Lewinsky scandal than fighting terrorism. I haven’t yet seen the miniseries, but all the reviews I’ve seen of it indicate it’s hardly fawning over Bush’s actions prior to 9/11 either.

Reynolds is right: Clinton’s harping on this issue is politically stupid, as it only invites more investigation into how the Clinton Administration tried to fight terrorism — and that’s not a record to be proud of. Bush had eight months to deal with terrorism, and much of his foreign policy focus was on the possible threat of Chinese supremacy — remember the spy plane incident? That doesn’t excuse his actions, but it does make the Clintonistas charges that everything lays on Bush’s feet seem as silly as they are.

This whole thing is a continued indication of how petty and narcissistic the Clinton Administration was. Even years after leaving office, they still haven’t left the war room mentality. Sandy Berger went so far as to commit a federal crime and destroy valuable evidence to whitewash the Clinton Administration’s record on terrorism. The reflexive way in which the Clinton spin machine has been putting pressure on ABC doesn’t even serve their own interests — but apparently the insecurities of a man who never quite grew up don’t go away even when one is ostensibly supposed to be an elder statesman.

10 thoughts on “It’s Not Always About You…

  1. Spare me. The Republicans were banging their spoons against their high chairs for weeks until CBS pulled “The Reagans” miniseries a couple years ago…..and that film hardly rose to the level of bestowing partisan (and erroneous) blame on an administration for mass murder on its own soil. The Democrats are right to have the backbone to call you guys on your bully tactics.

  2. Mark says: “bestowing partisan (and erroneous) blame ”

    Reding says: “they hardly have moral authority to criticize a miniseries that’s far more balanced: it even plays into their narrative that the Republican Congress was more interested in prosecuting Clinton for the Lewinsky scandal than fighting terrorism.”

    Partisan? You can quibble over whether it’s erroneous, but based on descriptions I’ve heard here, I hardly think it’s “partisan.”

  3. Anybody has the moral authority to criticize any series, no problem with that at all.

    But to act like the Mafia and threaten a broadcast license for failing to present the Mafia viewpoint is way over the line. Even the Republicans didn’t do that when CBS proposed the series on The Reagans.

    So if the Democrats take over the Congress, may we expect a continuation of this sort of thuggery to enforce the broadcasting of their party line?

  4. Mark is right. CBS pulled the Reagan miniseries (they didn’t just edit it) in November 2003, after righties went ape over the bias of it. I don’t see any recollection of that event on the part of people now knashing their teeth over the media caving to the Dems.

    But I don’t recall any Republicans in Congress threatening to pull licenses and send producers to sleep with the fishes if CBS had broadcast the thing, as Insufficiently Sensitive points out. See any difference there, folks? The spectacle of Democrats horrified by an unbalanced presentation of political events by a major network on a single show they think for once gores their own precious ox is…well it’s completely typical of Democrats these days, so far given to narcissistic fixation that they can’t even see any irony in bleating their protestations over the injustice of it all, while their book shelves are lined with Michael Moore’s books, and the rest of the stuff ABC and the other networks churn out hourly reinforces their worldview.

  5. 1.) I think we can all agree that a movie people have to pay to go see is a little different than something being broadcast on prime-time public airwaves during. From what I’ve heard about this, ABC should be considering this thing an in-kind contribution to the RNC. It’s not a whole lot different than an RNC commerical that lasts a couple hours. Maybe we should classify ABC as a 527?

    2.) I can’t help but think the timing of this is just a little suspect. The Republicans have to play the terrorist card again to keep from getting wiped off the map in November, but they can’t play it right now because polling shows the Republicans and Democrats to be polling fairly even on who does the best job on terrorism. Solution? Take the Democrats down a few points and let the Republicans hammer away.

    3.) If this were a prime-time show that would critique the Bush Administration over Iraq as opposed to the Clinton Administration over terrorism, or even if it were going to point out the memos that Bush got about a threat in the month leading up to the attack (while Bush was on vacation in Texas), you know full well the Republicans would be squawking twice as loud. Spare me.

  6. Seth,

    The series is reportedly harsh on both Dems and Repubs; only your side is whining.

    And, WOW, Bush got a memo saying something might or might not happen on some indeterminate date!!!!

    Perhaps he should have started some domestic/international surveillance to uncover the plot; no, can’t do THAT. I know, he shold have started monitoring international terrorist money flows; whoops, can’t do that either.

    Yes. Spare me.

  7. Mockmook–
    The guy who wrote this once said, “Listen. I’m probably more of a libertarian than a strict conservative. In my writing and directing, I don’t want to just be a conservative version of Michael Moore.”
    Rush Limbaugh has spent time glowing about this dude.
    I’m sure it’s just a straight-shooting non-partisan look at terrorism with no political motivation whatsoever. Quit drinking the Kool-Aid

  8. Mockmook, Rush Limbaugh would not be praising this movie if there wasn’t an outsized portion of blame directed towards Clinton rather than Republicans.

    All that said, the Dems may be overstepping their bounds with alleged accusations of revoking ABC’s broadcasting license. They’re perfectly within their rights to pressure ABC into dumping the mini-series, but threatening censorship on the network for non-compliance is a far greater sin than airing a propaganda film. I hope the Dems don’t get stupid about this….because threating license revokation would be getting stupid.

  9. Did Seth just say he thought “… the timing of this is just a little suspect”.

    Hmmm, an event that happened on 9/11/2001 and movie to be aired on the weekend before the five year anniversary. Nope, can’t think of any logical reason for picking that date. Yep, sure sounds like a conspiracy.

    Rick

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