Football yes, Lies no

Archie Manning and his sons, Peyton
and Eli, who will be playing each other
for the first time on Sunday. September
10 on NBC

New ABC Docudrama Blames Clinton For 9/11, Praises Bush

On September 10 and 11, ABC will air a “docudrama” called “The Path to 9/11.” It was written by Cyrus Nowrasteh, who describes himself as “more of a libertarian than a strict conservative,” and is giving interviews to hard-right sites like FrontPageMag to promote the film.

What will it say about President Clinton? Here’s Rush Limbaugh with a preview:

A friend of mine [Cyrus Nowrasteh] out in California has produced and filmed — I think it’s a two-part mini-series on 9/11 that ABC is going to run in prime-time over two nights, close to or on 9/11. It’s sort of surprising that ABC’s picked it up, to me. I’ve had a lot of people tell me about it, my friends told me about it…And from what I have been told, the film really zeros in on the shortcomings of the Clinton administration in doing anything about militant Islamofascism or terrorism during its administration. It cites failures of Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright and Sandy Burglar.

How does it deal with President Bush? Salon has a review:

Condoleezza Rice gets that fated memo about planes flying into buildings, and makes it very clear to anyone who’ll listen just how concerned President Bush is about these terrorist threats — despite the fact that we’re given little concrete evidence of the president’s concern or interest in taking action. Maybe my memory fails me, but the only person I remember talking about Osama bin Laden back in 1998 was President Clinton, while the current anti-terrorist stalwarts worked the country into a frenzy over what? Blow jobs. In the end, “The Path to 9/11″ feels like an excruciatingly long, winding and deceptive path, indeed.

The director of the film, David Cunningham, is already backtracking about its accuracy, saying “this is not a documentary.” OK, fair enough. But the movie is being billed as “based on The 9/11 Commission Report.”

You can write ABC here to protest.

You can also write the sponsors of this nonsense, as well as your Congressman.

And that's fine.

But you can do something else.

Watch football.

Sunday

Indianapolis at N.Y. Giants 8:15 p.m. on NBC

Monday

Minnesota at Washington 7:00 p.m.
San Diego at Oakland 10:15 p.m. both on ESPN

You really want to hurt ABC? Protests are fine. Screaming, like they want you to do on Kos, is fine. But so is watching football.

I'm deadly serious. This show is going to be a ratings flop in New York for obvious reasons. People avoid 9/11 shows here, as well as movies. Want nothing to do with them. But the Giants are playing, the Skins are playing (boo skins) and the Raiders are playing. Those are good reasons to watch football, even if you hate it like Jen does. It wouldn't hurt to spread that to the major markets

My point is that ABC is running this show to appease Congress before they have to ask them for anything. But they don't plan on losing money doing it.

But they will if football gets high ratings. We need to do more than protest this and it will be fisked as well as protested, we need to make it clear to ABC that the best way to drive away an audience and lose money is to piss them off.

No boycott, no long letters, just watch football.

Now, some of you are saying "won't watching HGTV have the same effect?"

NO.

ABC walked away from Monday night football and shifted it to ESPN to clear up their schedule after years of declining ratings.

Two nights of higher than average evenings for football would send a real shockwave into the ABC executive suites.

See, they know they've lost most of the 18-49 male audience those nights, know it well. This is a feeble attempt at counter programming. They want to get women and other viewers to sit through this crap.

If you watch football, not anything else, the message will be clear and a dagger to what matters most, their profitability.

See, the wingnuts aren't gonna miss the Manning Brothers for this. They want women, urban women to watch this.

Football yes, lies no would be the kind of campaign that ABC might take to heart.

Not only call them on their bullshit, let them know what you'll be watching that night. See if they like that.