Why history matters

Mickey, the Nazi official at the
1936 Olympics


More Disney/ABC Updates
by Hunter
Fri Sep 08, 2006 at 12:34:44 PM PDT

Bill Bennett says the movie needs to be corrected, saying "there's no reason to falsify the record."

Pulitzer Prize winner Arthur Schlesinger and other prominent American historians have written a public letter to ABC's Bob Iger asking him to pull the plug on the movie due to "numerous flagrant falsehoods":

Dear Robert Iger:

We write as professional historians, who are deeply concerned by the continuing reports about ABC's scheduled broadcast of "The Path to 9/11." These reports document that this drama contains numerous flagrant falsehoods about critical events in recent American history. The key participants and eyewitnesses to these events state that the script distorts and even fabricates evidence into order to mislead viewers about the responsibility of numerous American officials for allegedly ignoring the terrorist threat before 2000.

The claim by the show's producers, broadcaster, and defenders, that these falsehoods are permissible because the show is merely a dramatization, is disingenuous and dangerous given their assertions that the show is also based on authoritative historical evidence. Whatever ABC's motivations might be, broadcasting these falsehoods, connected to the most traumatic historical event of our times, would be a gross disservice to the public. A responsible broadcast network should have nothing to do with the falsification of history, except to expose it. We strongly urge you to halt the show's broadcast and prevent misinforming Americans about their history.

Sincerely,
Arthur Schlesinger
Sean Wilentz, Princeton University
Michael Kazin, Georgetown University
Lizbeth Cohen, Harvard University,
Nicholas Salvatore, Cornell University;
Ted Widmer, Washington College;
Rick Perlstein, Independent Scholar;
David Blight, Yale University;
Eric Alterman, City University of New York.

This is becoming a corporate bloodbath. Disney/ABC really, really blew it on this one. It's time for them to blame the producers that misled them about the show's content, and pull the plug.

Now, there is no evidence that Mickey was a Nazi official at the 1936 Olympics, but in the interest of drama, we can say he was. After all, what better way to show the corruption of the Nazi empire than to have a cartoon mouse participate in its worst abuses.