Maureen Dowd weighs in on the ABC/Disney scandal. She asks the right question -- because both Bush and Disney are making things up about 9/11:
Why do presidents and filmmakers dealing with the most stunning events in recent American history feel the need to go beyond facts?Dowd also provides some insights and answers her own question:
The ABC movie promoted itself as a serious work based on the 9/11 commission report and featuring Tom Kean, the commission’s co-chairman, as a co-executive producer. (It’s impossible to imagine Earl Warren producing a movie about the events in Dallas.) But if it’s making a claim upon people’s attention as a trustworthy and accurate description of events that bear on all our lives, you’ve got to stick with the truth. You can’t pick and choose when you want it to be history and when you want it to be art. (Quel art.)This week, President Bush will continue to undermine the moral power of "September the 11th" for partisan political purposes. ABC and Disney are doing the same thing.
Sandy Berger yelped about a scene that depicted him refusing to authorize a military strike to kill Osama and slamming down the phone on a C.I.A. officer at a key moment. Cyrus Nowrasteh, the Republican and Limbaugh pal who served as the writer and a producer, told KRLA-AM in Los Angeles that the scene was improvised.
They distorted history to throw in a standard cliché of melodrama? (The 9/11 Commission Report as Douglas Sirk would have filmed it.) Why compromise your movie by adding tacky things that don’t increase its aesthetic power and detract from its moral power?
The American people can handle the truth about 9/11...for most of us, it's not history, it's part of our lives.
