Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Under Fire
Heard a guy call in to a radio show about a month or two ago. I don’t remember what the topic was, but he managed to neatly encapsulate something I’ve been thinking for a long time about people who argue. It’s nothing original, by any stretch; mystery shows have been making note of this throughout all of the twentieth century. Super-sleuth will inform the husband that he’s a widower now, his wife was found dead a few hours ago and could he explain his whereabouts? And the husband will reply “I’m telling you, I didn’t shoot her!” Super-sleuth says to the husband, or to his sidekick after husband leaves…ya know, I never said anything about her being shot.
Moral of the story is, sometimes when we say stuff, the wise listener will pay only a little bit of attention to what we’re actually saying, and a great deal more attention to the necessity that appears to have arisen for us to get it said. And what that might mean.
Or as the caller to the radio program said, “My dad always told me when you throw a rock into a pack of wild dogs, the one that yelps is the one you hit.”
Well, there’s a whole lot of yelping dogs right about now because of this new movie out, “The Path to 9/11” starring Harvey Keitel. The film purports to be an unbiased, non-partisan look at all the things that went on in the world of intelligence, subterfuge, politics, military operations, etc. before the September 11 attacks came about. Non-partisan it may be, but apparently it’s pretty tough on the Clinton administration and this has created some bad feeling in people because…well, I’ll let this commentator speak for himself, since he’s seen it and I haven’t.
Regardless of ones political leanings, I think it is despicable for 9/11 to be fictionalized and history rewritten simply for political gain. Does ABC have no shame? Are the nearly 3000 lost souls of that horrific day just political tools, now?
I have no problem with a FACTUAL documentary on the events leading up to 9/11. There is plenty of blame to go around, to both democratic and republican administrations. Telling the truth is always a great way to go. But to completely falsify information, and then LIE about falsifying it, especially about an event still so painful to many people, is just way below acceptable.
I seem to recall when CBS tried to “fictionalize” a Reagan “docudrama”, the conservatives and republicans were so incensed that the program was finally pulled. Are those same people going to be equally incensed about this “swiftboating” debacle?
Yeah, it’s fictionalized. And the one piece of fictionalizing that is causing angst more than any other piece, has to do with this…
In one scene, CIA operatives working with Ahmed Shah Masud, the charismatic Afghan mujahedin leader who fought al-Qaida and their Taliban sponsors, are assembled on a hillside above bin Laden’s residence at Tarnak Farms. “It’s perfect for us,” says “Kirk,” a composite character representing several of the CIA operatives and analysts involved in the hunt for the terrorist leader.
But the team is forced to abort the mission when Berger hangs up on them in the middle of a conference call, after telling them he cannot give the go ahead for the action. “I don’t have that authority,” he says.
“Are there any men in Washington,” Masud asks Kirk afterwards in the film, “or are they all cowards?”
See, it’s “fiction” in the sense that there’s no such thing as “Kirk”…there’s no such thing as Mel Gibson’s character in The Patriot, he was a composite of Francis Marion and Daniel Morgan. This leads to a lot of lines in the script that “didn’t happen.” Or, to take another Gibson movie as an example, Braveheart didn’t knock up Queen Isabella, nor could he have.
It’s stylization. Limited meddling with the factual events, for the sake of a better presentation. Whether the meddling goes over the top is a matter of opinion, but some meddling is necessary for the format.
That’s what Thomas Kean, Co-Chairman of the 9/11 Commission himself, said in the film’s defense.
Former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean, the co-chair of the Sept. 11 commission and an adviser to the miniseries, said in its defense that “for dramatic and narrative purposes, there are scenes that are fictionalized in some ways because they’re composites of what took place. You have to do that in a miniseries.”
And yet the “big” events are still consistent with the truth. And there’s no better evidence of that, than the sense of urgency in all the yelping.
But this yelp impressed me more than any other. It’s from Sandy Berger himself.
A statement from Samuel “Sandy” Berger, who was national security adviser to President Bill Clinton at the time, calls the scenes involving him “complete fabrications.”
:
“The incidents depicted did not happen,” said Berger in the statement. “They are not contained in the Sept. 11 Commission report, which is the most authoritative review of the events before and after the attack.”
Get a load of that. The man who smuggled confidential documents out of the archives in his pants…took them home, illegally…shredded who-knows-what. They can’t even find out what he shredded. He’s intoning to us we should believe only what’s in the 9/11 Commission report, and disbelieve anything that’s not in it. When, thanks to his own actions, it’s impossible to tell what couldn’t have made it in…because nobody was able to find it. It was shredded, BY HIM.
Anyway, there’s more yelping going on over here and here, and I’m also admiring the fisking job that was done over here.
It will be discussed much in the days ahead, I think. And it’s interesting how many of the headlines contain those two words “under fire.” The film is under fire. Isn’t it great to be a liberal? Liberals, it seems, get to decide what’s “under fire.” When’s the last time a hit piece on a conservative was “under fire”? Was that silly Reagan film ever “under fire”?
Update: Blogger friend Buck Pennington found, thanks to the New York Post, the biggest yelp of them all.
Update: Threat! h/t Hot Air, via Jawa.
Update: This is a must-read too.
Update: Neal Boortz has a few points to add to this. Points well worth reading.
Update 9/10/06: Thanks to the left-wing website Think Progress, I managed to trip across a copy of Sandy Berger’s letter over here.
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