Stop telling lies about us and we’ll stop telling the truth about you.

As we careen into the weekend before the 9-11 wallow ABC has found itself in the middle of a media storm.

It seems that ABC is going broadcast a 2 night mini series called “The Path to 9/11”. That parts okay – WTC just came out, it’s 5 years time to look. The trouble is that the film was driven by some partisan right wing hacks – who seek to place the blame for 9/11 at Clinton’s feet and since they weren’t able to find enough real things went and made shit up.

Fair enough – the truth as a well know liberal bias so being right wing hacks they did that.

Then they went and managed to totally screw themselves.

In order to get the right kind of buzz about the film, someone sent 900 copies to right wing blogs, Rush Limbaugh and other folks sympatric to the cause of blaming Clinton. They began to crow about the piece and that’s when the left blogs picked the story up.

Again this should not be a surprise, there are dozens of sites out there dedicated to highlighting the right’s latest whopper (for example, the other day it turns out the much praised decline in civilian deaths in Baghdad actually didn’t happen – the reporting was wrong – I’ve seen several posts about it pointing this out) so this was to be expected.

Up till now, ABC had been dumb but not stupid. Passing out all those promo copies wasn’t the brightest idea but not fatal.

Then Madeline Albright asked to see a preview copy.

ABC said no.

Bill Clinton asked to see a preview copy.

ABC said no.

And that’s when it became a complete disaster for ABC.

Bill’s monster lawyer sends one hell of a nasty letter to ABC. And the shit well and truly hit the fan.

The press is now all over this and people are showing up saying “this is fake, that isn’t true, and we made that up on the set.” Etc etc.

ABC is slowly backing away – at first they said the people complaining haven’t seen the whole show – which got the question why not send it to us like you did with all those friendly geeks? They wouldn’t for obvious reasons (it stands to reason that people are going to find even more problems if they get to look it) that ABC don’t need. So at first they were talking about making cuts now the rumor is they are thinking of pulling it entirely.

And the blogsphere has dredged up the comments made by the right wing hacks about the Reagan miniseries that ended up getting pulled. If my not so good memory serves my response when I found out what the deal was, was, Christ there was enough bad shit about Reagan that was true? Why go and make shit up? They were just being stupid and lazy is why and they got smacked for it.

In this case not only are they stupid and lazy, they are trying to bolster the rapidly shrinking rep of one George W Bush who, when told that a second airplane had hit the World Trade center sat on his ass and did nothing for about 5-7 minutes and then spent the rest of the day in the air coming back to Washington only that evening. It was a preview of the out of touch non-response he would perfect when New Orleans flooded.

To try and create an action figure out of this lump of clay is pretty tough going. So in addition to not showing the My Pete Goat scene, they have decided to lie about Clinton.

Now Clinton wasn’t perfect about Osama. But at least he, unlike W and his circle jerk of advisors didn’t ignore his existence until the towers came down and then when they wanted to attack Iraq, they ignored his existence again, and now with Iraq a complete Clusterfuck (albeit a cluster fuck with nicely painted schools) they have hauled him out again. It makes you dizzy to think about it.

And I noticed that a lot of folks seem to think that W and his boys had something to do with 9/11 happening in the first place. I’m not that much of a tinfoil hat type – these clowns have shown the only thing they really know is how to screw things up so I have trouble buying into they made it happen. At worst I think they thought maybe if a plane or two was high jacked (“highjackings in the conventional sense” to us Ms. Rice’s unlovely phrase.) they could use that to their advantage. It’s how they think. It’s all power not governance – Katrina proved that.

However I can understand the feeling. W and his boys have milked 9/11 until it has mooed with pain and are still using it right now. It’s proven so useful to them, it’s human nature not to speculate that maybe they had something to do with it.

One last ABC note: some twit suggested that democrats upset with this miniseries should wait for the one about the buildup to the Iraq war – which will show W in a bad light.

Right – like ABC is going to make that. And since people won’t have to make stuff up to show W and crew in a bad light before the Iraq war just how does that make things balanced? Let us tell lies about Clinton we’ll let you tell the truth about W? Huh?

Meantime W is going to be here in NYC for 9/11. Jesus haven’t we suffered enough?
Very last thing. Lieberman’s little trolls have been trumpeting a poll that has Lieberman way ahead of Lamont. Trouble is the poll comes from a company whose president just pleaded guilty to making shit up to please their customers. Snark!

I keepy saying: what a putz.