The Paul Revere of “Reactionary Protester Syndrome”

by Kanrei
So this is my lot in life. I am cursed to be the Paul Revere of “Reactionary Protester Syndrome”. I feel like Al Pacino in Godfather Part III: “Every time I think I’m out they pull me back in.” My life is a circle and I must resign myself to it so off I ride again to warn the nation that “the drama seekers are coming! The drama seekers are coming!”

It was just last week I was lecturing the right wingers out there about jumping to conclusions about movies before seeing them. The British movie The Death of a President centers around the 2007 assassination of President Bush. Many on the right lost their minds about this subject and wrote the movie off as left wing propaganda at best and liberal porn at worst. No one had seen one second of the film at that time.

Now I find I must give the same lecture to the left wingers out there. Not as easy. The right wingers are used to being told what to think, liberals ask too many questions. That was a joke, sorry. Everyone is so quick to get mad.

The current fiasco is over an ABC miniseries to be aired on Sunday and Monday called The Path to 9/11. It is a quasi-fictional story based loosely on the “9/11 Commission Report”. It is probably more accurately a conspiracy theorist’s view of how 9/11 is actually Clinton’s fault. It boasts 250 speaking roles and has filmed over 550 hours of footage that will be cut into a five hour saga, so no one really knows what exactly will be in it, but that never stopped “Reactionary Protester Syndrome” before so why should it now?

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is pissed because she heard there is a scene that shows her doing things she never did. "The scene as explained to me is false and defamatory” was how she said it in her letter to ABC. The scene as explained to her means she did not see the scene. I really want to know who explained it to her and where they saw this scene. Her opinion is not informed therefore and not valid.

Charles Schumer, Senator of New York opposes the movie as well. He claimed at a news conference that "I haven't seen it, but from everything I've heard it's not down the middle. It's not fair at all.” Once again we have the uninformed opinion of someone who is basing their opinion on something they heard. These are world leaders basing their opinions and making decisions based on rumor. It is disgusting.

ABC released a statement today saying "No one has seen the final version of the film, because the editing process is not yet complete, so criticisms of film specifics are premature and irresponsible."

That further calls into question where these people heard about their scenes in this movie. I am starting to think it might have been ABC letting them know about this to hype the movie. Nothing like free press and you can always count on RPS to bring it to you.

When was the last time ABC had viewers on a Sunday? Broadcast television is pretty much dead in general . They would certainly need a massive viewer influx to save them on a day that everyone watches football. Controversy sells. It sold too well this time and they must backtrack now from the tidal wave they created.

"For dramatic and narrative purposes, the movie contains fictionalized scenes, composite and representative characters and dialogue, and time compression." The statement continued “We hope viewers will watch the entire broadcast of the finished film before forming an opinion about it."

They just busted themselves on their self promotion tactics. It worked for Mel Gibson and Michael Moore. It backfired on The Book of Daniel and The Reagans. Still up in the air for how it turns out for this one. Once you get a Senator trashing your movie, you are pretty much guaranteed success.

As for me, I had no plans to watch it before all this and have no plans to watch it now. I still have very crisp and clear memories of 9/11 and do not need a movie to tell me what happened. Same goes for Flight 93 and WTC and any other future projects coming out.

The best to hope for is that all of this debate over how accurate this movie was will encourage people to learn the actual facts.