TELEVISION: The Road Already Taken: “The Path to 9/11”:

It took a few days for the news to spread that ABC was planning to air a “docu-drama” called The Path to 9/11 and that the version they were about to unleash on an international level was going to directly blame the 9/11 attacks on Bill Clinton’s sex life. Well, not exactly, but close enough.  The film aired during a wealth of moving memorials and tributes to the victims of 9/11 and offered up a counter for the nagging question: why?  The Path to 9/11 showed the fundamentalist Muslims as vicious, fanatic savages who hate our ways and thus want to end our freedom-lovin’ lifestyle.  In fact, anyone who’s looked beyond the propaganda will see that the path stretches beyond those early days of the first WTC bombing.     Shown commercial-free on the anniversary of 9/11, The Path to 9/11 aired in two parts.  Long, dull and embarrassingly simple-minded, it’s clear that some people need a jolt of wartime propaganda to get America in a fighting mood rather than a frightened, mournful one. While the film makes everybody look bad – not just the right or the left, but everyone involved – it is particularly hard on Clinton, intercutting near misses with Bin Laden with the Lewinsky scandal.  It’s horrifying to imagine that at the time our country most needed its president, he was hamstrung by an over-zealous prosecutor and a busybody gossip that had nothing better to do than trap our president in a lie.  Okay, so he shouldn’t have lied.  But surely there were more important issues at stake.  One far-from-reality scene shows that we had a clear shot to take out Bin Laden, but that Sandy Berger couldn’t give the order because Clinton was afraid of the legal implications.  This idea was debunked long ago by the 9/11 commission.  But, to be fair, the film also shows how the Bush Administration all but brushed aside the serious threats of Bin Laden.  Literally put it on the back burner.  He had plans to invade Iraq BEFORE 9/11.  This we now know. In fact, if I didn’t know better, the hoopla surrounding The Path to 9/11 has the ripe smell of Bush administration architect Karl Rove, who could be throwing off attention being placed on Bush and Co. for being the ones who really fumbled the ball.  What has become clearer than ever is how things have changed.  The accusation can’t be made that the media is dominated by a liberal agenda.  Quite the contrary.  The Path to 9/11 proves that the left doesn’t have the same clout as those on the right to successfully have the “docudrama” yanked.  The right were easily able to take down the Reagan bio without incident.  But all the left got were a few token edits. Perhaps Matt Drudge, of the Drudge Report, said it best on his Sunday night broadcast on KFI: “There are issues beyond the content, folks.”  He was referring to the bad acting and the “cheaply made” production that was filmed mostly in Canada.  That is probably the worst thing about it.  With all the pomp and circumstance surrounding the broadcast, one would have expected something riveting, at the very least.  But it was dull.  For that reason, it needed the publicity or else viewers will have turned off ABC after the first fifteen minutes.