The path to football, day four

For services rendered to the Republican Party

Mickey joins Team Rove
by kos
Wed Sep 06, 2006 at 10:36:39 PM PDT

So what's the latest in Team Rove/Disney's efforts to present their mockumentary as serious drama? Well, for one, Disney (which owns ABC, of course), is a big fan of elephant party. Digby documents the atrocities:

Disney/ABC cancelled the reality show featuring a gay couple, "Welcome To The Neighborhood," ten days before it was to air when James Dobson and the religious right threatened to withdraw their support for the conservative classic "Narnia."

Disney refused to allow its subsidiary Miramax, which specialized in controversial fare, to distribute "Fahrenheit 9/11" allegedly because they felt it was too political.

They made a deal with Mel Gibson, beloved on the religious right for his film "The Passion," to produce a film about the Holocaust even though they knew at the time he held extremely controversial views about the Holocaust and Judaism. They only cancelled the project when he was caught by the police drunkenly saying "all the wars in the world are caused by the Jews."

Now they have produced a blatantly rightwing work of fiction which they are saying is based on the official 9/11 Commission report and they are giving it away without any advertising. They sent out hundreds of screening copies but failed to send any to the Clinton administration officials who are trashed in the film or to liberal columnists and bloggers.

There's a pattern here folks and it isn't a pattern that shows ABC knuckling under to liberals. There is a huge amount of money at stake in all these decisions, but for some reason Disney seems to be more than willing to throw it away when it benefits the right wing: already produced films and TV shows are either cancelled or allowed to be distributed by others, while hugely expensive, controversial rightwing mini-series' are broadcast with no advertising and allowed to be downloaded for free by I-tunes.

Meanwhile, there is evidence that Scholastic may be rethinking its decision to promote ABC's mockumentary. And 9-11 commission member Richard Ben-Veniste rips the movie to shreds.

And why should we care? Digby again:

The reason this matters so much, and why Democrats are so apoplectic at the way ABC has handled this material, is that popular culture has a way of inculcating certain concepts into people's minds, especially young minds, far more effectively than talking head programs or earnest debates among political bloggers and columnists. This is the kind of thing that could taint the debate for generations if it takes hold.

Kickoff time 8:10 PM Giants Colts.

Update:Oh yeah another point of pressure

My cousin who is a senior sales rep for Scholastic says...
by takeback
Thu Sep 07, 2006 at 05:36:25 AM PDT

My cousin who is a senior sales rep for Scholastic says that the pressure we have been putting on his company for the past couple of days is starting to work.

But it's clear to me that we need to keep it up.

My cousin says that the best way to force Scholastic to withdraw from the ABC partnership is to contact school districts, especially big public districts in major cities, promising to oppose all Scholastic textbook purchases for years if the company does not agree to pull out of the ABC deal immediately, and to tell Scholastic what we are doing during this process.

Here are the details.

My cousin is a senior sales rep at Scholastic in a major state in the northeast. He's been with the company for about 10 years, and like all Scholastic sales reps he makes a big part of his income in the form of bonuses for selling (and re-selling) text books and related materials to school districts for use in particular subjects in particular grade levels. A typical sale is of all reading materials for all eighth graders for three years to a school district in some particular town. These sales are big--often in the millions of dollars--and making just a few of them per year is what provides my relative an income. But the sales can be hard to earn, in part because--in the view of my cousin--it isn't just consideration of the textbooks themselves that determines what a school district will buy. Personality comes into play a lot of the time and, yes, even politics, and so sales reps must do everything in their power to make sure that sales go through.

My cousin indicated that a few sales people already have started to get a whiff that their incomes may be in jeopardy because people like us are contacting school districts (many of which are dominated by Democratic-voting teachers) telling them not to buy Scholastic books--and they are VERY concerned.

But my cousin says that the arrangement with ABC to distribute 9/11 materials also probably was expected to produce money for the company one way or another, so company higher-ups may be hestitant to drop it completely without a fight.

My cousin says that the best way to force Scholastic to withdraw from the ABC partnership is to contact school districts, especially big public districts in major cities, promising to oppose all Scholastic purchases for years if the company does not agree to pull out of the ABC deal, and to tell Scholastic what we are doing.

For the record, my cousin himself is not doing this--he is a Republican and is very upset by all of this controversy.