The controversy over ABC's 9/11 mini-series fits into a theory about the role of television movies in American culture discussed in an article I published 18 years ago in the scholarly journal Studies in Popular Culture.( For those of our readers with access to a university library here's the reference:"It's Only a Movie: The Television Docu-Drama and Social Issue Movie as The American Marketplace of Ideas," Studies in Popular Culture (Spring, 1988). Unfortunately, it was before online publishing, and so I can't find an online copy at the website of the Popular Culture Association of the South.) Bottom line: protests from Clinton administration figures to ABC are nothing out of the ordinary in the history of TV movie controveries--the Reagan administration objected to The Day After, which led to ABC's follow-up broadcast of Amerika, in response to criticism.UPDATE: Here is a link to video clips of the scenes to which objections have been raised (ht LGF): http://www.redstate.com/blogs/krempasky/2006/sep/09/abcs_path_to_9_11_clip_synopsis.
