“The Path to 9/11,” ABC’s five-hour miniseries from earlier this year, is still not out on DVD and now the film’s screenwriter is claiming that ABC is blocking the release of the DVD to save Hillary and Bill Clinton the embarrassment they suffered when the show originally aired on TV. Why would ABC do this? Because we are at the beginning of Hillary Clinton’s run for president and ABC wants to keep the Clinton’s failures against radical Islam from coming to the fore says series writer Cyrus Nowrasteh.
With no date for the release, questions are being raised about whether political pressure is behind its current status as a stalled or discarded DVD project. The reasons are murky, but the miniseries’ writer, Cyrus Nowrasteh, believes it’s crystal clear: Powerful forces are out to protect Bill Clinton’s presidential legacy and shield Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) from any potential collateral damage in her bid for the White House.
It’s all about the money. Isn’t what they always say about Hollywood? Doesn’t the trope go that they will do anything for the cash? Let’s take a quick look at sales for 2006…
According to the MPAA, ticket sales for 2006 in North America reached $9.49 billion and with $9 Billion in DVD and cable sales on top of that. Apparently, DVD sales account for nearly as much money as box-office sales. So, while employing the old trope that Hollywood cares more about the money than anything else, their footdragging on the DVD release of “The Path to 9/11″ just doesn’t seem to fit their standard mode of operation, does it?
It certainly isn’t because they don’t think it will sell. It was an award winning and highly rated show, after all. As the L.A. Times article says,the miniseries made $40-million and it “recently received seven Emmy nominations and drew a combined two-night audience of more than 25 million viewers.” So, the show ranked as an extremely popular broadcast and DVD sales could only make that popularity grow. Yet, Nowrasteh is still waiting for info on the release.
Initially, Nowrasteh was told by executives at ABC Studios that the miniseries would have a DVD release in January. Then, April. Then, this summer. Currently, Nowrasteh has not been notified of a specific release date for the DVD.
Curious behavior, no?
But, maybe not. You’ll remember how the Clintonistas howled with rage and even got ABC to run disclaimers during the original broadcast of “The Path to 9/11.”
Even before “The Path to 9/11″ aired on ABC late last summer, the docudrama ignited a political firestorm, almost entirely from high-profile Democratic leaders who viewed its account of events leading up to the terrorist attacks as a right-wing hatchet job on the Clinton administration and its efforts to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. Attempts to pressure ABC to cancel the miniseries at the time were unsuccessful, but last-minute network edits were imposed to quell the critical outcry.
So, if it isn’t all for the money, why is the DVD release being squelched?
Nowrasteh, also one of the miniseries’ many producers, said he was told by a top executive at ABC Studios that “if Hillary weren’t running for president, this wouldn’t be a problem.”
It looks like a certain political candidate’s future is more important than either the truth or artistic integrity to the execs at ABC.
“Whatever anyone may think about me or this movie, this is a bad precedent, a dangerous precedent, to allow a movie to be buried,” added Nowrasteh, who received death threats even before the miniseries was broadcast last September. “Because the next time they’ll go after another movie. The Bush administration may go after a movie. The next administration may go after a movie. No matter who it is, they may go after a movie. I think this town needs to stand up.”
Indeed.
It sure seems like just another Clinton dirty trick to which a compliant media is happy to lend an assist.
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barkingdog said,
September 5, 2007 at 10:16 am
Jim Peterson said,
Eduardo Porter of the New York Times called me on August 5th, 2006 to do a story on IMBRA, the law that forces American men to have background checks before being allowed to say hello to foreign women online. In mid-October he released a big story…but his editors had completely rewritten it to portray the opposite of what he wanted to get across (he had wanted to show how unconstitutional the law was). This is all discussed at http://www.online-dating-rights.com.
On April 10th, 2007, Dimitri Vassilaros, Columnist for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review at dvassilaros@tribweb.com and 412-380-5637 phone, asked me to call him about IMBRA and spent 5 weeks preparing a big story from his libertarian angle. But on Friday the 18th of May 2007 he told me that he could not publish his completed story.
I asked him “Who pressured you” and he answered “You know I would not be able to tell you who would have pressured me or whether I was pressured”.
I then said “If there was a funded men’s rights organization or news outlet that would gladly pay you a higher salary than you are getting now, you would probably be able to do something about your having been compromised like this”.
He answered gruffly along the lines of “if that ever happens”…meaning Dimitri doesn’t believe that the feminists will ever be countered in the media, much less defeated.
And Dimitri would have good reason to think this:
His boss, Richard Mellon Scaife, funds the Heritage Foundation which practically runs the Republican Party. The Heritage Foundation is very much infiltrated with supposedly conservative women who hate men (Erica Little and Karen Czarnecki who has since moved to the Department of Labor to do men damage there). Scaife seems to have found what he thought was a winning formula when Republican males supposedly hated Bill Clinton for having sex with a 22 year old intern in the 1990s. Scaife believes that the Republican Party can be fueled off the hatred of older American women for men who have sex with younger women.
So with this billionaire off the deep end, our only hope is that Steve Forbes or Rupert Murdoch will come around or we find a Saudi billionaire to save us.
September 5, 2007 at 11:55 am
Warner Todd Huston said,
September 6, 2007 at 6:34 am
Jim Peterson said,
If you feel American women are superior to foreign women, then why are no other country’s males even thinking of an MRM? Men run other societies. In our society, we are second class citizens. Men in other countries are not background checked before they are allowed to talk with American women.
Please read http://www.online-dating-rights.com. The issue is supported by Glenn Sacks and Marc Rudov and this issue is integral to fighting feminism in the US, not least because it should be the easiest law to overthrow in the courts and hopefully bring a bunch of other laws down with it.
The use of the word “troll” instead of “look” was highly offensive.
Only 8% of the women on, for instance, http://www.aforeignaffair.com, are dishonest.
Normally, if a gorgeous 19 year Russian woman is not attracted to a middle aged American male, she will politely reject him.
Now, Neither Eduardo Porter nor Dimitri Vassilaros held that “macho” point of view that its better to date in a narrow small pond than in a wide ocean. But somebody above them probably did have the personal point of view that he was somehow macho because he dated or married an American woman.
September 6, 2007 at 8:17 am
Artfldgr said,
here is an article that is trying to make an issue about something that is a free choice of the policy of a company. they own that media, and they have decided to act upong that ownership in the way they want. technically, they owe no one any reason, and even less a good one.
now, we may not agree with this. we may imagine nefarious ends that may be true, but still, it is their right to do what they want with their property. people can protest, i wouldnt say they cant, that too is their right. Ultimately though, its nothing more than tryting to control something by some external force because someone wants them to do something else with what they own.
or am i missing something?
September 6, 2007 at 9:57 pm