Cassandra at Villainous Company does a spectacular job of proving the Dems hypocrisy over this "Path to 9-11" thing by quoting the Democrats themselves on the very issue they keep bringing up on this, the Reagan bio-pic: (emphasis mine)
"Once again, the party of diversity and openness is all for freedom of expression and equal time on the airwaves... so long as all of the freedom and equal time is theirs and people are allowed to express only approved viewpoints. Let's take a trip in the old Wayback Machine:
The difference is the Republican party stepped in. Ed Gillespie of the RNC
stepped in. A political party stepped in to weigh in on this. And that is
when...
ZOLLER: But they weigh in on things every day and so does Terri McAuliffe.
SKINNER: Teri McAuliffe does not write the executives of the network demanding that they have access to the scripts and that kind of access. It just doesn't happen in America. Why don't you just let the information flow? Democracy is so important. Let the ideas out there. Let the American public decide if they want to watch a movie about Reagan or not. We don't really need the right wing telling us what we can and cannot watch on television.
ZOLLER: Well, then you can watch it on Showtime.
Frankly we'd say there's a bit of difference in overall "scariness" between an unelected party official (who after all is not even a public servant in the pay of the federal government, but merely a private citizen) and having Democrat members of Congress lobby to change the contents of a "docudrama" with a disclaimer before it airs:
Read the whole thing. It's great.
Newsbusters has some quotes from the left back when the Reagan bio-pic was not aired:
Brian Williams: “Do you believe what has happened here with this mini-series on CBS amounts to extortion?”
Media critic Michael Wolff: “Certainly capitulation....”
Williams: “So is it hyperbolic to say, you know, when we give all these speeches about freedom in the United States, you can go ahead and stretch your artistic freedom, make a movie about whatever you wish as long as it doesn't cross a certain political or societal group?”
Wolff: “Absolutely. If the group is well-organized and there is no group as well-organized as the right wing in America at this point in time, you're going to be in big trouble.”– CNBC’s The News with Brian Williams, November 4.
His [Ronald Reagan’s] supporters credit him with forcing down the Iron Curtain, so it is odd that some of them have helped create the Soviet-style chill embedded in the idea that we, as a nation, will not allow critical portrayals of one of our own recent leaders.”– Editorial in the November 5 New York Times.
Michael, your dad comes, came from the Hollywood community, and he knows what the issues of artistic freedom are. How do you think he’d react?” – ABC’s Charles Gibson to Michael Reagan on Good Morning America, November 4.
The best quote OF ALL. (emphasis mine):
“Hallelujah! The Gipper is safe and the hated liberal media humbled. It’s a big victory for the ‘Elephant Echo Chamber,’ the unholy trinity of conservative talk radio, conservative Internet sites and the Republican National Committee....It’s good to know that network docu-dramas are, forthwith, supposed to be ‘true,’ unless, of course, the truth is somehow ‘offensive’ to the myth, then we’ll take the myth, as long as the myth corresponds to the reigning politics of the moment. -Senior Editor Jonathan Alter in a column posted on Newsweek’s section of MSNBC’s Web site, November 4.
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