Five Years
(With apologies to David Bowie)

Pushing through the gaping hole, so many workers choking
Time enough to wipe the tears, and to even give up smoking
Anchors from Katrina (now soft hearted and soft spoken)
Offer up their platitudes, a paltry little token

We heard horror and glory, glamorized on TV
We heard lies and excuses and we watched ABC
Our cynicism stretched so taut, no sweet sentiment this season
No action, nor reaction, no rhyme and no reason
The consumption enablers selling anything that goes
As they milk fading tragedies to stuff up their nose
And rape our confusion to cover the blows.

Children left orphaned are fed political feces
Given greed masked as kindness, we humanitarian species
So soon they’ll be old enough to send off for the killing
Returning home in their coffins as the blood keeps on spilling

I found myself trapped in a mindless haze, lost in fantasy, fact and fiction
Wasted on promises, gorging lies by the package...my insatiable addictions.
There was fake all around and I groped for compassion
There was none, it was gone, like the towers once crashing
The taste, the waste, the inevitable so soon
The bitterest of products to the ugliest tune.

It’s been five years, nothing has changed
Five years, just more deranged
It’s been five years, so much damage has been done
Five years, and yet nobody’s won.

It’s been five years, so boldfaced we lied
Five years of reality denied
It’s been five years, now the world wants to trade
Five years, now there’s money to be made.

It’s been five years, destruction and terror
Five years our response a deadly error
It’s been five years, this will never end
Five years, there’s still money to spend.

Agenda
September 11, 2005

Rest in Pieces
September 11, 2004

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Phoenix Rising
September 11, 2003

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Things Go Better
September 11, 2002

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See whole Series Alongside each other.

If, as the documentary asserts in direct contradiction to the 911 Commission Report upon which the hit piece purports to be based, President Clinton was too distracted by the Monica Lewinsky scandal to pay attention to Osama Bin Laden, let’s remember who was doing the distracting (rather than focusing on protecting their constituents). President Clinton did not impeach himself. I made this point in a piece back in May, 2002, titled, Priority: Penis Confidential.” The piece depicts Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr telling Monica Lewinsky: “ Come in please…I’ve been authorized to spend $50 million to find out what you can tell us about terrorism, Osama Bin Laden and protecting the United States. Congress wants answers.”

Clinton Fein, Priority: Penis Confidential, May 24 2002

ABC has been aggressively advancing its inaccurate and politically slanted miniseries, “The Path to 9/11,” to the right wing. Big players like Rush Limbaugh have been provided copies, as have obscure right-wing bloggers like Patterico.

But ABC has refused to provide a copy to President Clinton’s office. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former National Security Adviser Samuel Berger have also requested copies of the film from ABC, and both have been denied. Both Berger and Albright are harshly criticized in the film in scenes that, according to former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, are “180 degrees from what happened.”

Judd Legum, ABC Refuses to Provide Copies of Path to 9/11 to Clinton, Albright, Berger, ThinkProgress, September 6, 2006

Less than 72 hours before ABC's "The Path to 9/11" is scheduled to air, the network is suddenly under siege. On Tuesday, ABC was forced to concede that "The Path to 9/11" is "a dramatization, not a documentary." The film deceptively invents scenes to depict former President Bill Clinton's handling of the Al Qaeda threat.

Now, ABC claims to be is editing those false sequences to satisfy critics so the show can go on -- even if it still remains a gross distortion of history. And as it does so, ABC advances the illusion that the deceptive nature of "The Path to 9/11" is an honest mistake committed by a hardworking but admittedly fumbling team of well-intentioned Hollywood professionals who wanted nothing less than to entertain America. But this is another Big Lie.

Max Blumenthal, Discover the Secret Right-Wing Network Behind ABC's 9/11 Deception, The Huffington Post, September 8, 2006

There is a window of time now for Mr. Iger to step up, an 'apologize for Tylenol tampering' moment. He needs to cancel this miniseries, and take personal responsibility for inadequate oversight. He should privately fire the people responsible for this total disaster of a project, and apologize. That's the only way to restore Disney's brand among a large group of very angry people. Be brave, be public, and be honorable. It'll work.

And what will happen if he doesn't? Well, it's not just boycotts. Those are probably going to happen, but that's not what Iger has to worry about, or his corporate brethren. You see, Disney has a number of political objectives, as is obvious from the donor patterns of their corporate executives and their lobbying behavior.

One of them is the egregiously awful broadcast flag. Disney is leading the effort to give Hollywood control over how your TV and TiVo are built and what you can do with programs you watch. This is in the Stevens bill before the Senate. Democrats didn't really have any reason to deny Disney its political candy, since Disney was thought to be responsible with its content, or at least not overtly insane. Their credibility on this front is going quickly, and donations to Chuck Schumer aren't the palliative they once were.

Another is copyright extensions, which Disney has used to keep its perpetual license on characters like Mickey Mouse, who should by now have fallen into the public domain. Democrats didn't really have any reason to think that this was anything but a dispute over intellectual property, with corporations like Disney having motives that are only as pure as Snow White, versus pirates bent on stealing songs and movies by hardworking artists. Now that Disney's credibility is going, lobbyists for Disney are going to find it tougher on Capitol Hill, and lobbyists for the Creative Commons movement are going to find a much easier reception. Iger knows there's a movement bent on routing around his unreasonable and political control of free speech through copyright extremism. He's got a choice on whether he gives that movement a whole lot of real political power.

Matt Stoller, Time to Take Away Disney's Political Candy, MyDD, September 8, 2006