Is this mini-series a 5 hour political campaign commercial for the Republican Party? I would say it is. The screenwriter for this mini-series, Cyrus Nowrasteh, is an avowed conservative. ABC assured conservative blogger Hugh Hewitt that "The message of the Clinton Admin failures remains fully intact." And now reports are coming out that Path to 9/11's director, David Cunningham, is the son of Loren Cunningham, who founded a right-wing Christian evangelical group Youth With A Mission YWAM. In fact, David Cunningham was involved in creating an auxiliary of YWAM called The Film Institute as a means to transform Hollywood's film-making to a more conservative view. The Path to 9/11 may have been The Film Institute's first project to transform Hollywood. In fact, The Path to 9/11 may be just the start of a major conservative and religious right campaign to shift the blame of 9/11 from President Bush to former president Clinton. A lot of these complex, sorid details are just now starting to come to light.
But I believe that ABC may have shot themselves in the foot for pushing this boon-doggle of a propaganda film. First, ABC continues to stand behind its mini-series, even as criticisms against the series grows within the Democratic Party, and as inaccuracies are continually revealed. ABC is going to show the series, no matter how much criticism is heaped upon the network, or how many petitions are sent to ABC, its affiliate stations, or even its parent company Walt Disney. The problem for ABC is that this series is not going to be remembered for the blaming of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the Clinton administration, although the right wing-nuts will preach this series as God's truth, but rather this series will be remembered for the controversy it created and for ABC's caving into the conservative's demands for producing and showing this political commercial. If the Democrats do come to power in Congress this November, you can bet that ABC will have to answer for this series in congressional hearings. That is ABC's first shot in the foot. They have aligned themselves so far into the conservative camp, that they will be completely exposed to the Democratic Party's anger over this series, if the Democrats do take control of Congress.
The second of ABC's shot in the foot actually revolves around the timing of this series. Now I'm not talking about how ABC is showing this series on September 11th--two months away from the midterm elections, but instead about ABC showing this series in both a polarized political environment with the Republican Party sitting in hot, political water. The country is souring on six years of Republican and Bush administration foreign and domestic failures--Iraq, Katrina, the economy, high energy prices, lousy job market, illegal NSA spying program, secret CIA prisons. The country is not gripped by the fear of terrorism as it was back in 2004--although I will not discount another DHS terror threat or warning being raised just before the midterm elections. Too many scandals and lies have been tainted on both the Bush administration and Republican Party. The old election-year social issues are not working for the Republicans. The disaster in Iraq is dragging down the Republican Party's strong-on-defense, and Great-War-on-Terror arguments. In fact, The Washington Post is reporting that the GOP is reverting back to the old personal campaign smear tactics as a way to attack Democratic candidates. The Republican Party has no issues or legislative accomplishments to run on. They can only run on a platform of fear and hatred. The question now is how long will the American public start to grow tired of all this fear-mongering by the Republican Party, as their own lives steadily get worst? Will the American public succumb to this latest batch of fear-mongering and more insidious Republican blame of the Clinton administration for the 9/11 attacks? I'm not sure myself, but I'm certainly getting tired of the Republican Party's excuses.
Finally, there is the mini-series itself. From what I've read, the television critics are shredding this mini-series. According to Doug Elfman of the Chicago Sun-Times, the Path to 9/11 is:
[T]he most anticlimactic, tension-free movie in the history of terrorist TV.
It's hard to fathom a brouhaha brewed over such a bore.
Controversy could boost viewership, except "Path" is the dullest, worst-shot TV movie since ABC's disastrous "Ten Commandments" remake. It substitutes shaky handheld cameras and dumb dialogue for craftsmanship. It could not be more amateurish or poorly constructed unless someone had forgotten to light the sets.
Robert Bianco of USA Today says:
[I]n the end, the movie is defeated by its subject and by its willingness to twist that subject to score political points. Too confused for a documentary, insufficiently dramatized for a movie, Path simply doesn't have the skill needed to support its intentions.
Yet for some viewers, politics will be Path's stumbling block. In its tone, images, assumptions and factual liberties (led by an invented failed attempt to capture bin Laden), the movie misses no chance to slam the Clinton administration and no opportunity to support a very expansive reading of police powers, here and abroad. ("How do you win a law and orderly war?" "You don't.")
Path has enough trouble just following history. Rewriting history is an ambition it should have left at the door.
Finally, Matthew Gilbert of the Boston Globe says this:
[T]he five-hour miniseries was probably doomed to fail creatively, not for lack of ambition but for having too much ambition. The story in ``The Path to 9/11," which premieres Sunday and Monday at 8 p.m. on Channel 5, is just too massive and unwieldy to fit neatly into two sittings.
Dramatizing the roots of 9/11 in a two-parter is like trying to fit the origin and politics of the entire AIDS crisis into one movie. Oh wait, that was ``And the Band Played On," and it failed, too. ``The Path to 9/11" would have fared better as an eight-or-so episode miniseries like HBO's ``Band of Brothers," so it could devote more focus to each of its many fragments. With the kind of time that series TV offers but movies don't, director David L. Cunningham could have made each of the pieces of his puzzle richer and more engaging.
So whether you accept the Path's claims that the Clinton administration was responsible for the 9/11 attacks, or are convinced that this is another Republican smear campaign against Clinton and the Democrats just before the midterm elections, the Path to 9/11 is just a terrible film. There will be plenty of documentaries about the 9/11 attacks and the World Trade Center on Discovery, History Channel, and perhaps even on the cable news programs to choose from. How many Americans are so willing to watch something this jittery and convoluted? They may, at first, be curious to see what the controversy was all about regarding this series, but are they going to stay and watch the entire series? I can't say.
I personally will not be watching the series. And it is not because of the inaccuracies, or because The Path is a Republican campaign commercial, or even because it is just a bad series. I do not feel it is time yet to start fictionalizing the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The events are still too closely etched into America's pysche--there is still too much raw emotion regarding the event. We are just now starting to review the history of these attacks, and the political and historical consequences that have stemmed from the events of 9/11. And right at this time, we get this badly written and produced revisionist history of the events with this right-wing mini-series? Of course, it doesn't matter what side of the political spectrum these fictionalized accounts of the 9/11 attacks fall into--I will not watch either Flight 93, or even Oliver Stone's World Trade Center. I believe it is still too early to watch any fictionalized account of this event. Of course, that is not going to stop those film-makers from trying to capitalize on 9/11.
They are just not going to get my dollars for their efforts.
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