Hypocrisy of the highest order

[marrael]

Edit: This miniseries is fucking 5 hours long???

May 7, 2004: On the television network that his company owns, Disney CEO Michael Eisner dismissed the idea that forbidding Disney subsidiary Miramax to distribute a controversial new documentary by Michael Moore was a form of censorship. "We informed both the agency that represented the film and all

Comments

[cpxbrex]

Actually, I did know all of that. But what I don't know are the various agendas of the 911 Committee members or those FBI agents -- Washington is an extremely politicized environment.

I mean, straight off, I suspect that Path to 911 is very likely full of lies and distortions. The news is, why not this? The lies are likely to be of a right-wing nature -- again, you're right, when Rush Limbaugh praises something it's almost certainly for it's ideological content and not its historical accuracy.

Nevertheless, it seems to me if we actually believe in freedom of speech, rather than a world where interest groups put all manner of social and political pressure on each other to suppress information, then we must let things like this pass. I just don't want to live in a world where people shouting each other down replaces discussion and debate (I know I already live in this world, hehe). I don't believe that any attempt to suppress media is for anyone's good, at least not for ideological concerns, because it creates an atmosphere where dissent is suppressed politically and economically instead of through reason and mediation.

I know that Scholastic has educational tie-ins, but that's a separate issue from showing the docu-drama on network TV. I mean, were it up to me every history book taught in schools would be thrown out as so much useless garbage, full of little more than gross distortions and lies. As a historian, American primary education textbooks disgust me in a deeply personal way. But there's a difference between the so-called educational aspects of this and the network broadcast aspects; I think it is possible (and obviously even preferable) to allow the one and oppose the other. But I also think that before we reject this project for education we ought to, y'know, see it.

The only reason I brought up the connection to Farenheit 911 is because you did, by the way.