Fox News is apparently launching a “conservative” satire show a la The Daily Show. I’m sure it’ll be hilarious.

What’s amazing to me is that Fox News and their Republican blinders still can’t see that the Daily Show made (more) fun of “the right” or Republicans because they ran all branches of government. I realize Fox News doesn’t feel any obligation to reality, but it might be hard to write a political satire show focusing on people who run nothing…

Dinesh D’Souza has a new book coming out called The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11. As Atrios points out, if that isn’t the definition of “Blame America First,” I don’t know what is.

Responsibility for 9/11 seems to be a common theme. Republicans, especially hard core conservatives in their base, want to blame Clinton, or the left, or gays. We never here about, oh, say, mistakes in American foreign policy. Supporting the Shah of Iran after helping overthrow a democratically elected government in D’Souza’s mind has nothing to do with why Iran is pissed at us, of course. Those Palestinians hate us for Madonna. Right.

From Wolcott:

Then the qualifiers begin multiplying. The term ‘cultural left’ doesn’t refer to the Democratic Party, nor to all liberals. (Peter Beinart presumably gets a pass.) Nor is he saying that cultural lefties actually brought the towers down. He isn’t so rash as to suggest Molly Ivins piloted one of the planes, parachuting to safety before impact. So what is he saying?

“I am saying that the cultural left and its allies in Congress, the media, Hollywood, the nonprofit sector [profiteers are always patriots, of course], and the universities are the primary cause of the volcano of anger toward America that is erupting from the Islamic world.”

Note well: the primary cause. Not the treatment of the Palestinians, the caging and starving of those on the Gaza Strip, the hundreds of thousands of clusterbomb droplets left behind in Lebanon, the U.S. military bases on Arab soil, Abu Ghraib, the Mideast tyrannies propped up by American money and influence–these are secondary. Muslims are angry, D’Souza concedes, but they are mostly angry because their anger has been fueled and fanned by the cultural left.

Folks like D’Souza deserve nothing but scorn for writing crap like this. This is nothing but bomb throwing at it’s best and an insult to not only Americans but to the Islamic world. It’s an oversimplification of an otherwise complicated subject. No wonder we’ve elected a President who asks people why he should care about North Korea.

Please for the love of everything that is right and true in this world, vote for anyone else but a Republican for Congress or the Senate. Please, please, please.

I know I said I would limit my posts about the Path to 9/11, but this is completely horrible. The movie contains a scene where a CIA agent supposedly calls the White House for authorization to kill bin Laden after supposedly having surrounded him Afghanistan. Sandy Berger is portrayed as not answering before the line gets cut.

One problem. The incident never actually happened. It’s a complete fabrication. From CQ:

Berger, reached by phone after the screening, seconded Ben-Veniste’s criticism. “It’s a total fabrication,” he said tersely. “It did not happen.”

That is not likely to prevent the film from being embraced far and wide among Bush supporters.

…

Neither Berger nor Ben-Veniste was consulted on the film. Kean, however, is an official adviser; he says the incident was a fictionalized composite. It was “representative of a series of events compacted into one,” he replied to Ben-Veniste at the time. In a phone interview a few days later, he added, “It’s reasonably accurate.” And he offered a prediction that the show will “get just as many howls from Republicans.”

It’s worth pointing out that Kean has something to gain by kissing up to the Republican establishment: his son is running for office in NJ.

Contrast this account to the comments by Richard Clarke, Larry Johnson, Rand Beers, Paul Pillar, all former NSC or CIA officials who worked in the Bush administration. Take a look at this account of Richard Clarke’s focus during his time in both administrations. Kean simply isn’t credible and this movie is nothing but a rehash of the “blame Clinton” line that Republicans have been peddling since 2000. It may be winning elections, but it’s flushing our country down the drain.

Early reports make the Path to 9/11 a sorry excuse for a docudrama. Mendacious might not be strong enough.

Here are some more blogs, newspapers, and magazines talking about this fictional bit of historical lovemaking to the Bush administration.

Blogs

• ABC Yanks the Movie’s Blog
• Firedoglake examines the marketing and early reviews of the movie. Hint: there’s a bias in the marketing.
• TPM Cafe talks about the movie

Other

• MediaMatters talks about the creators

I’ll keep this updated as I find more. It will probably be the last post on this subject.

(Standard disclaimer applies — see here.)