Blue Crab Boulevard

Will The New McCarthyites Please Stand Up

The man who wrote The Path to 9/11, Cyrus Nowrasteh, tells his side of the story on the film today in the Opinion Journal. It is well worth reading. An object lesson in how things are twisted in the media for political advantage. A guide, in fact, to the tactics of the new McCarthyites.

It would have been good to be able to report due diligence on the part of those who judged the film, the ones who held forth on it before watching a moment of it. Instead, in the rush to judgment, and the effort to portray the series as the work of a right-wing zealot, much was made of my "friendship" with Rush Limbaugh (a connection limited to two social encounters), but nothing of any acquaintance with well-known names on the other side of the political spectrum. No reference to Abby Mann, for instance, with whom I worked on "10,000 Black Men Named George" (whose hero is an African-American communist) or Oliver Stone, producer of "The Day Reagan Was Shot," a film I wrote and directed. Clearly, those enraged that a film would criticize the Clinton administration's antiterrorism policies–though critical of its successor as well–were willing to embrace only one scenario: The writer was a conservative hatchetman.

In July a reporter asked if I had ever been ethnically profiled. I happily replied, "No." I can no longer say that. The L.A. Times, for one, characterized me by race, religion, ethnicity, country-of-origin and political leanings–wrongly on four of five counts. To them I was an Iranian-American politically conservative Muslim. It is perhaps irrelevant in our brave new world of journalism that I was born in Boulder, Colo. I am not a Muslim or practitioner of any religion, nor am I a political conservative. What am I? I am, most devoutly, an American. I asked the reporter if this kind of labeling was a new policy for the paper. He had no response.

The hysteria engendered by the series found more than one target. In addition to the death threats and hate mail directed at me, and my grotesque portrayal as a maddened right-winger, there developed an impassioned search for incriminating evidence on everyone else connected to the film. And in director David Cunningham, the searchers found paydirt! His father had founded a Christian youth outreach mission. The whiff of the younger Mr. Cunningham's possible connection to this enterprise was enough to set the hounds of suspicion baying. A religious mission! A New York Times reporter wrote, without irony or explanation, that an issue that raised questions about the director was his involvement in his father's outreach work. In the era of McCarthyism, the merest hint of a connection to communism sufficed to inspire dark accusations, the certainty that the accused was part of a malign conspiracy. Today, apparently, you can get something of that effect by charging a connection with a Christian mission.

These are some damning words, for these are precisely the tactics of McCarthy; distortion, innuendo and guilt by association. They are precisely the tactics that we used against Nowrasteh. The left is almost continuously charging that someone is smearing one of them. There appears to be no end of projection at work there. Nowrasteh also points out who the heroes of this whole situation are: ABC executives.

Despite intense political pressure to pull the film right up until airtime, Disney/ABC stood tall and refused to give in. For this–for not buckling to threats from Democratic senators threatening to revoke ABC station licenses–Disney CEO Rober Iger and ABC executives deserve every commendation. Hence the 28 million viewers over two nights, and the ratings victory Monday night (little reported by the media), are gratifying indeed.

There are still people trying to attack the central message of the film: the Clinton administration had eight years to do something about terrorism and bin Laden and did not do so. Bush was in office only eight months, was moving very carefully because of the contested 2000 election battle, was barely getting his arms wrapped around the job. Yet the left and the Democrats want all the blame to fall on him.

That was why the airing of the film was so bitterly fought, they did not want that truth presented, even if it had some details that were not 100% historically accurate.

Media, Politics | Gaius Monday, 18 September , 2006

By syn, Monday, 18 September , 2006 @ 6:00 am

Hollywood screenwriter and directer Cyrus Nowrasteh is stunned by the political hit he received for his part in The Path to 9/11?

Color me unimpressed but one does not work in the entertainment industry, either Hollywood or NY, and not see this type of treatment going on all the time. The hate-filled rhetoric to slime and discredit ‘those puritan, uptight Jesuslander Nazis’; rage predominately based on rage from gay marriage/abortion issues, is everything to those in this industry.

What upsets Nowrasteh was that it happened to him.
By IEView, Monday, 18 September , 2006 @ 6:06 am

Does anyone know if this is going to be available on DVD? It would be interesting to see what ABC ultimately did edit; maybe a before or after series?
By sarge, Monday, 18 September , 2006 @ 7:57 am

I can’t WAIT to see this movie. I’ve lived in a terrorist cesspool for 18 months now, and I’ve been waiting for someone to point the finger in the right direction for this mess we’re in right now (at least, as it applies to the major media). Also, I think you hit the nail right on the head with the McCarthy reference, and if ever there was a more despicable cautionary tale of activism run amok in America it’s that so-called “era.”
By Neo, Monday, 18 September , 2006 @ 8:20 am

I posted comments prior to the completion of “Path to 9/11″ about an appearance by some dude from “think Progress” in the MSNBC “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” whose remarks, I indicated, just screamed of McCarthyism. If you had replaced the word “Evangelical Christian” with the word “Communist,” any 5th grader could have identified it easily.

But Cyrus Nowrasteh is not the only to receive death threats after doing a movie.

This juicy tidbit from the new Gertz book:

How North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il was so upset by the 2004 puppet comedy film â€œTeam America: World Police,â€ that he ordered his intelligence agents to assassinate the producers.
By Robert, Monday, 18 September , 2006 @ 1:44 pm

distortion? innuendo? guilt by association?
Does this mean the Left has to pay Rove royalties?

BTW,
I assume you felt Rather got the shaft, because the gist of his story was accurate.
By Gaius, Monday, 18 September , 2006 @ 1:47 pm

No it wasn’t. It was presenting forged documents that told a lie.
By Robert, Monday, 18 September , 2006 @ 1:53 pm

No. The forged documents told the truth. The exploration of the truth was cancelled due to the documents perhaps being forged.

Forged or not, the truth was buried in the Rather witch hunt.
Also, because Rather is a fool, are we supposed to forget he’s a newsreader?
By Gaius, Monday, 18 September , 2006 @ 1:59 pm

No, it is a false charge:

http://www.hillnews.com/york/090904.aspx