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People were making excellent use of the "Spotlight" project this morning to contact media outlets and express their concerns over the wingnut hit piece that ABC is about to relase, to quote Digby, without commercials as a "gift to the Repubican party" in an election year.

Mark Steckel, who runs the Spotlight Project, offers this advice for turning the heat up on your local ABC affiliate and asking them how they feel about airing this hogwash:

Re Spotlight – Some folks may want to contact local ABC affiliates. This can be done by.

1) Unchecking “Print”
2) checking “TV”
3) Check “Regional”
4) Enter a two-letter state code
5) press “Update”
6) select targets
7) press “Next”

And continue as normal.

If you want to see even more contacts you can all click “more>>” to see expanded options and then check “All”.

You can check out the Spotlight project by clicking here, or at the bottom of each post. Mark says that as of 12:30 pm PT there had been 476 original emails generated with it regarding this docuhoax.  That’s very excititing.

Digby offers some fodder for letters folks might write to the broadcasters in their own area:

There is obviously nothing wrong with these conservative activists making films. There have always been those with a conservative point of view in Hollywood; studio bosses and network executives tend to be conservative in all senses of the word. But it is more than a little bit odd that ABC chose this particular creative duo to develop and film a hugely expensive six hour mini-series about the political culpability for 9/11. You’d think they could have found some people who were less politically invested in a particular point of view than these two.

It’s even more odd that they have gone such great lengths to advertise it as being based upon the bipartisan 9/11 Commission Report when, in fact, they optioned two other books as sources for the film, one of which is widely touted on the right. Therefore, the series is quite obviously a compilation of several sources and the product of the worldview of its rightwing creative team. In other words it is a work of fiction. To advertise it as being "based" on the 9/11 Commission Report is a fraud on the public.

And now they have announced that they will not show advertising on this big 40 million dollar investment and will distribute it for free to 100,000 educators around the country and on i-tunes. It’s basically a gift to the Republican party and the conservative movement.

What is going on over at Disney/ABC? Are they selling out their shareholders to a small shadowy group of Hollywood rightwingers because they share their worldview? Or is it just a gambit for Disney to keep Focus on the Family on their side as they roll out the "Narnia" franchise? Has Disney been so successfully mau-maued by the religious right that they are now in the business of blatantly propping up the Republican Party on its behalf?

Whatever it is, it’s quite clear that they are determined to make the nation believe this work of fiction is a credible depiction of the events leading up to 9/11 when it is quite clearly a biased political drama written with the intention of making the Clinton administration culpable for the attacks in the minds of Americans. They chose people with a politiical and cultural agenda to make this film and have been dishonest in promoting it.

What is going on over at Disney?

Also worthy of note, Louise Slaughter is calling bullshit on this wingnut revisionism:

The anniversary of the attacks is an emotional time, and it is wrong for anyone to play on those emotions and use them to advance a political agenda.

"This is, regrettably, what many top Administration officials are doing with the rhetoric we have heard of late," Rep. Slaughter said. "We have been told we are in a fight against a new kind of fascism, and that individuals who question our current path in Iraq are morally equivalent to Nazi appeasers and those who would justify slavery."

"Such claims are more than just morally reprehensible and deeply irresponsible. They are also damaging to our country, making it difficult, if not impossible, to have a serious, non-partisan discussion about how best to protect our nation."

This stuff is not inocuous, it seeps into the culture and becomes taken as canon.  Pushing back against it is important, if for no other reason than to make them think twice about doing it again.

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