make some popcorn, sit back, and relax

‘Cause it’s only a movie—not, you know, the gospel truth. But some people are taking the upcoming ABC TV extravaganza The Path to 9/11 waaaay too seriously:

the Clinton administration’s lethargic and chronically dilatory efforts to deal with bin Laden are an irrefutable part of the historical record.

The preceding leaves us with two possible explanations regarding the [scene that is causing all the controversy]. One is that the filmmakers have unearthed a previously unknown jewel that they can fully document; that Berger really did slam down the phone on a field agent looking for guidance. If that’s the case, then this entire conversation is irrelevant and you should cease reading this essay.

The other explanation is that, being a docudrama, the filmmakers included a fabricated scene (which was a composite of many real factors) to dramatize the ineptitude and fecklessness that so characterized the Clinton administration. One can (if one so chooses) give the filmmakers artistic license to do such a thing. But if that is what they have done, conservative analysts who back this movie as a historical document will mortgage their credibility doing so.

YOU MIGHT NOTE THAT the defense of the scene offers a rationale that Dan Rather would probably be comfortable with – fake but accurate. I’m uncomfortable embracing such a rationale, and I suspect most other bloggers who have rushed to tout the film will feel the same way once they think it through.

It’s all fake, fer chrissake. Who’s claiming it’s accurate, and what meds are they on? Are conservative bloggers (or liberal bloggers, for that matter) really investing their “credibility” when they voice an opinion about a movie about 9/11?

Television offers dramas designed to grab and hold our attention for as long as possible. The dramatizations on television take liberties with the “truth” (which in real life takes a long time to unfold, if it ever does, and is often confusing and nonlinear) in order to tell a story. A docudrama is an entertainment based (loosely) on true events and factual tidbits. It is infotainment. Infotainment about 9/11 is no more truthful or sacred or important than any other television programming. Nor is it more likely to stick in the mind of the average viewer (or voter) than any other piece of entertainment.

My previous thoughts on this apparently important cultural moment are here, here, and here. I do seem to have underestimated the amount of attention this “controversy” would receive prior to the airing of the miniseries (this coming Sunday and Monday evenings).

Today, for example, the New York Times weighed in.

Days before its scheduled debut, the first major television miniseries about the Sept. 11 attacks was being criticized on Tuesday as biased and inaccurate by bloggers, terrorism experts and a member of the Sept. 11 commission, whose report makes up much of the film’s source material. …

In particular, some critics—including Richard A. Clarke, the former counterterrorism czar—questioned a scene that depicts several American military officers on the ground in Afghanistan.

It is quite amusing to see serious people taking this so seriously—as if the court of public opinion and the politics of the day are all that matters, and as if their legacy were being determined by dramatists. And it’s always the serious people who talk about the “dumbing down” of America.

On the other hand, after I followed the Power Within link that Jeff Jarvis pointed to today, I decided that I have to revise my personal definition of “serious person.” Sadly, Bill Clinton has jumped the shark.