The conservative columnist Hugh Hewitt on the criticisms about the soon-to-be-aired docudrama:
The Disney execs met all through the weekend - unheard of in this business - debating what changes would be made and what concessions should be given. Here is what looks to be the conclusion:
- There will be a handful of tweaks made to a few scenes.
- They are minor, and nuance in most cases - a line lift here, a tweak to the edit there.
- There are 900 screeners out there. When this airs this weekend, there will be a number of people who will spend their free evenings looking for these changes and will be hard pressed to identify them. They are that minor.
- The average viewer would not be able to tell the difference between the two versions.
- The message of the Clinton Admin failures remains fully intact.
And the message of the Bush Admin failures?
Hewitt continues:
The scramble caused by this backlash was so all consuming that the execs spent their holiday weekend behind closed door meetings and revamped their ad campaign. But at the end of their mad scramble, they found only a handful of changes they could make and still be true to the events. The changes are done only to appease the Clinton team - to be able to say they made changes. But the blame on the Clinton team is in the DNA of the project and could not be eradicated without pulling the entire show. A $40 million investment on the part of ABC is enough to stem even Bill Clinton's influence.
Is the blame on the Clinton team in the DNA of the history or only in the DNA of this project? Nobody argues that the earlier administrations made no mistakes, but to argue that Bush wasn't mostly responsible for the events that took place on his watch is inane.
For example, I sure hope the docudrama includes that little bit about Condi Rice being interviewed for the 9/11 Commission. You know, where she said, with a quivering voice, that the report they ignored in the summer of 2001 was titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in America".
Look, I don't know what is going to be actually shown in this docudrama. But that it's been shown to conservative pundits, yet unavailable to members of the Clinton administration and liberal critics, well, that smells. And not good.