The Central Dupes

TheWorldIsNotAsFlatAsAPancake
SelfDelusionVille.

You know, one of the things that I have found most disturbing about ABC's schlockumentary 'The Path to 911' is not so much the fact that the people who made it just made stuff up, or that there was clearly a propagandist slant given to the stuff that they just made up, or that the makers, backers, movers and shakers all have connections to avowed propagandists for the Bush regime, or even the fact that the Bush regime itself has already been nailed for manipulating the media while playing its InfoDom games.

No.

What really bugs me is how the great majority of the mainstream media has chosen to ignore all of those things, not by explaining them away with logic and reason, but instead by delegitimizing those who raised these points in first place.

And for me, it all came to a head when I read the Alessandra Stanley's piece in Friday's New York Times.

ABC has been under assault by bloggers and former officials who claim the film paints an unfairly censorious portrait of the Clinton administration, with a lobbying campaign reminiscent of the one that drove CBS to cancel “The Reagans” biopic in 2003. (CBS’s parent company, Viacom, kicked it to the cable channel Showtime.) Some kind of reaction was inevitable this time.

Yup, under assault for sure. But, is there anything to all of this? Well, according to Ms. Stanley, not really, because:

All mini-series Photoshop the facts. “The Path to 9/11” is not a documentary, or even a docu-drama; it is a fictionalized account of what took place. It relies on the report of the Sept. 11 commission, the King James version of all Sept. 11 accounts, as well as other material and memoirs. Some scenes come straight from the writers’ imaginations. Yet any depiction of those times would have to focus on those who were in charge, and by their own accounts mistakes were made.

Leaving aside the fact that 'it relies upon the report of the Sept 11 commission' and 'some scenes come straight from the writer's imaginations' are not in anyway remotely equivalent, what, we ask, would it take for someone like Ms. Stanley to take umbrage at those scenes that came 'straight from the writers' imaginations' being used for propaganda purposes in the middle of an election campaign, the outcome of which hinges upon how the public comes to perceive the actions of the people in said imaginary scenes?

Would some truth telling from a fellow columnist at the Times like, say, Paul Krugman do it?

Of course not because, while he may not be a heinous blogger, he is a liberal so anything he says doesn't count. And the same goes double for Bob Herbert.

But what about that avowed centrist Thomas Friedman?

What if he became unhinged and started babbling things like:

"(W)e are in trouble in Iraq now not because of what the 'fringes' there, or here, believe, but because of what the center in both places has been willing to tolerate or unwilling to change.

We have a 'center problem.'

Let me explain: We are stalled in Iraq not because of something some fringe antiwar critics said, or did, but because of how the Bush team, the center of U.S. policy, approached Iraq from the start. While it told the public - correctly, in my view - that building one example of a tolerant, pluralistic, democratizing society in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world was really important in the broader war of ideas against violent radical Islam, the administration acted as though this would be easy and sacrifice-free.

Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld told us we are in the fight of our lives against a new Islamic fascism, and let's have an unprecedented wartime tax cut and shrink our armed forces. They told us we are in the fight of our lives against a new Islamic fascism, but let's send just enough troops to topple Saddam - and never control Iraq's borders, its ammo dumps or its looters. They told us we are in the fight of our lives against a new Islamic fascism, but rather than bring Democrats and Republicans together in a national unity war coalition, let's use the war as a wedge issue to embarrass Democrats, frighten voters and win elections. They told us we are in the fight of our lives against a new Islamic fascism - which is financed by our own oil purchases - but let's not do one serious thing about ending our oil addiction.

Donald Rumsfeld demonizes war critics as 'morally confused.' But it is the 'moral confusion' at the heart of the Bush policy - a confusion between its important ends and insufficient means - that has hobbled us from the start."

Which of course, he did, on Friday, in the very same edition that contained Ms. Stanley's piece in a column titled 'The Central Truth'.

The only problem is, that even when he takes off the pinhole glasses and lets his eyes see everything that is right in front of them, a guy like Friedman still can't go all the way:

"It truly, truly baffles me why a president who bet so much of his legacy on this project never gave it his best shot and tolerated so much incompetence."

Which of course gets right to the heart of the matter, because when people see the truth for what it really is and still won't allow themselves to understand what it really means, well, that means that they themselves are the 'Central Dupes'.

And, most importantly, it also means that the Duping is self-inflicted.

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And just as an aside, the little site that archived columns by the likes of Krugman and Herbert et al. has been order to cease and desist by the NYT.

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