Friday, February 03, 2006
Loons.
Here's Power Line today, writing about a wholly imaginary "boycott" of footage from September 11 on television networks.:
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The networks have boycotted footage of the September 11 attacks, because they fear--correctly, I think--that reminders of the destruction wrought by the terrorists' attacks will engender support for the Bush administration.When the New Republic called them on the, um, problems with this particular view of network programming, Hineraker responded, even more unbelievably:
As for the "paranoia," I'd love to believe that's true. But I'm hard pressed to see any other explanation for the networks' boycott of September 11 footage. They have lots of film; we all saw much of it live. It's obviously newsworthy and of great continuing interest. So why have the networks refused, to my knowledge, to show that footage for more than four years? Why don't we ever see the airplanes flying into the World Trade Center on television? Or the towers falling, or people jumping?Footage from September 11, 2001 is still newsworthy? Guess what--the networks have also "refused, to my knowledge" to continue to air footage of the postal service looking for anthrax, or Governor Bush talking about "nation building." And I haven't seen the Zapruder film on TV in years. Look: the right wing is famous for interpreting any move the entertainment industry makes as being a carefully plotted step in an evil plot to subvert American values. But a political theory based on the networks' ommission of news footage from nearly five years ago? This doesn't pass the laugh test. Note that he makes this point in a post about A&E's made-for-TV movie about flight 93, and that a studio film about flight 93 is coming out this summer (to me, both things seem too early, but Power Line thinks it's too late). Hinderaker says he'd like to air footage of the planes crashing into the buildings and people jumping to their deaths every single day. How would that work, exactly? Would it have to be prime time? What show would be pre-empted? He's not describing network programming, he's describing this.
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