Yeah, you know this movie. Classic tale. Well, the neocon bloggers have set their sights on a new target: Artistic discretion. And it's kind of pissing me off.
Not content to drag down the Associated Press in Iraq and demonize any reporter who tells the truth, now the far-right blog goons are going after none other than PBS and WETA, the affiliate here in DC that produces a lot of great programming. The right has never liked PBS, or NPR, or any public use of the airwaves, but that's not what it's about this time.
This time it's personal. (More after the jump.)
One of their own, the certifiably insane untrustworthy alarmist windbag Frank Gaffney was one of the dozens invited to submit a documentary for an upcoming PBS series, but didn't make the cut. The series, "America at the Crossroads," hosted by Robert MacNeil,
explores the challenges confronting the post 9/11 world — including the war on terrorism; the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan; the experience of American troops serving abroad; the struggle for balance within the Muslim world; and global perspectives on America’s role overseas. The series features 11 independently produced documentaries.
It all started on Tuesday at 24-hour hate session Little Green Footballs (which has exhausted all slurs for Muslims they could think of and have had to think of more). "PBS Suppresses Documentary on Radical Islam" you see. Just another example of librul Dummocrat PBS sucking up to the terrorists.
Yeah pretty awful. Just outrageous! Um, until you actually start looking through the documentaries that DID make the cut, that is.
They claim it silences moderate Muslims... except there's Irshad Manji, the Canadian feminist whom the neocons at least say they respect.
Most dumbfounding of all, it's not like this series is 100% neocon-free. No, there's one from Karl Zinsmeister, who used to be at the American Enterprise Institute and now works for the preznit himself. But it gets better. Also in the series is none other than Richard Perle, the original prince of darkness. It features a segment from Isikoff and Hosenball from Newsweek, hardly left-wingers.
Not that any of this has stopped Glenn Beck and the his fellow haters on the Internets and in the right-wing press. The Washington Times has been running apologies for Gaffney, as has the Arizona Republic.
This could only be louder and more annoying if it was Daniel Piples.
Seriously though, we have to assume that there were other, non-controversial movies submitted and rejected too. We wonder why they haven't stood up and made loud, unsupported claims about being persecuted by the all-powerful PBS producers. And that's why this gets my goat. PBS is about the only broadcast TV I'll watch. Frontline is where 60 MInutes' Lowell Bergman went after the tobacco fiasco. The News Hour, which MacNeil used to co-host with Jim Lehrer, is what the alphabet channels SHOULD be producing. (And it's an hour!) This Old House was amazing. I can still see the WGBH Flash of Doom logo now.
There's a terrific post on this at The Moor Next Door, by a Muslim blogger who has some more on the actual Gaffney film:
That Gaffney included the NOI in his documentary should make his documentary on Islam in America suspect enough; the Nation of Islam does not adhere to even the most basic of Islamic principles. It is a racialist organization whose belief system is essentially one of black supremacy. That in itself makes Mr. Gaffney's documentary worthy of deletion; it was not about Islam vs. Islamists, or at least major portions of it were not. Islam vs. the Nation of Islam is a topic that should be placed in a separate venue. The film does not sound, even from Gaffney's own description to have fit the context of the series.
Whether or not its removal was political becomes more and more irrelevant after looking somewhat more deeply into the film itself. If the film was made in true Gaffney-style with sensation and unsourced claims coupled with groups that have little to nothing to do with Islam -- American or otherwise -- it does not deserve to be aired on a serious program such as "America at a Crossroads".
I don't know what to do about this except I guess watch the show this Sunday. The right-wing crazies aren't going to knock this series off the air or get their guy reinstated, I'm fairly sure. But Gaffney and his ilk are determined to make as big a stink about it as possible, and you know they'll use this again the next time they want to go after public broadcasting. I've tried arguing with them and it's pointless. Which I knew before I went in, but oh well. Watch the series. Pay attention. And when it comes up, don't let them get away with lying about it.