We just never learn....do we?
I've been watching the brouhaha over "The Path to 9/11" and, on the one hand, I've been very gratified by the overwhelming and noisy reaction by liberals to this transparent piece of tripe. The grass roots have done what grass roots do best...sign petitions, send emails and make phone calls.
But this is an excellent example of when the Powers-That-Be should put their heads together and come up with a framing stategy. This is a screaming occasion for a concerted effort to steal the Right Wing's thunder and rub their noses in it by framing it as Right Wing Propaganda.
And now with Bush popping up in the middle of the broadcast, it's going to have the presidential seal of approval, at least in the minds of the masses.
The time before the program airs is the right time for framing this issue as we need it framed, because, whatever else anyone thinks, to a clueless, mindless, disengaged viewership who have been trained throughout their lives to swallow and digest TV gruel without a second thought, this version of history will become their reality, their version of history starting Sunday and Monday nights.
I did something yesterday that I rarely do. I visited RedState, Powerline and some other Right Wing blogs just to see what the boys are saying about all of this. I read one article and two comments and it was already obvious that the boys have their talking points down pat. Democrats are "engaging in shamless censorship," Rush and others were quoted accusing the Democrats of "censorship." And that is their tag line. Their own move against "The Reagans" was different because "no one threatened CBS's licenses." One commenter even mentioned how the Democrats were unleashing their vast powers to intimidate ABC, to censor its programming.
I was curious to see how they would boil this brouhaha down to a bumper sticker, and now I know. It's all about "censorship." You can bet that you're going to be hearing it over and over again, Democrats, censorship. This will be shouted all over especially if ABC cancels the broadcast (very unlikely, from what I hear). But notice that the Right has its talking points formulated, distributed and now propagated.
Why can't Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Howard Dean and other Party leaders get together and coordinate their response to a clearly tactical move by the opposition like this? Why can't they settle upon a tag line, a bumper sticker phrase to pound, to circulate and to hit them with it ad nauseam?
The Republicans have been doing this since, well, Ronald Reagan and even more effectively since Lee Atwater. They come up with a frame, they get the Wurlitzer tuned and then they beat it to death.
And now back to the issue at hand, the Right Wing Propaganda film, "Path to 911" should AT ALL TIMES and BY ALL DEMOCRATS be prefaced with the phrase, Right Wing Propaganda Film. Every blog, every letter to the editor, every public utterance by any Democrat should refer to the Right Wing Propaganda Film "The Path to 9/11" as a Right Wing Propaganda Film. That should become it's new title: Right Wing Propaganda Film "The Path to 9/11."
Just as Republicans have learned to use language not only as a tool, but as a weapon and a deadly effective weapon at that, we too must shelve our poetic and literary sensibilities on occasion and join the fray. Otherwise we'll just keep taking it in the shorts during feeding frenzies like the present incident from Right Wing Advocacy Group ABC.
When Right Wing Advocacy Group ABC presents a Right Wing propaganda film like Right Wing Propaganda Film "The Path to 9/11" we should respond by calling it exactly that. And again, to the creative writing teachers among us, plug your ears. We have to do this.
If every Democratic spokesman used the title Right Wing Propaganda Film "Path to 9/11," on every talking head show, in every interview, in every blog...we might have a chance of making a dent in the public's perception. Otherwise, history is rewrote and we're going to have a damned tough time un-rewriting it. It's the same problem as 50% of Americans thinking that weapons of mass destruction were actually found in Iraq.