Will ABC air 'The Path to 9/11'?

Yes, we're told, despite Bill Clinton's last-minute rush to block.

Is there a judge anywhere willing to issue a temporary restraining order?

And--it goes without saying, though it's been said, again and again--what if this were a Republican ex-President

Two other things:

1. I saw most of the Ohio State-Texas game last night on ABC, and didn't see a single ad for "Path to 9/11." I have repeatedly checked ABC's website, and "Path" is still listed to air as scheduled. This would seem to indicate a middle road: ABC will probably air the show, but not push it. It will air and be forgotten two weeks from now.

2. The fulminations on HuffPost have been something to watch. At last count, nine bloggers at one time were featured on the front page--including Rob Reiner's, which interestingly enough did not allow for comments. For most of them, I posted the same thing: Farenheit, "Path," jump ball. My comment prompted this response:

The difference between progressives and neandrathals such as yourself is that we don't make stuff up to prove an ideological point or go to war. We base our opinions on real facts. That's right 'facts' like scientific 'facts.' I know, I know, you don't believe Darwin either. So go back to your trailer park, slap your wife around a little, pick up your guitar and play those Texas country tunes and contemplate all those WMDs that are in Iraq.

Update: Just finished watching the round-table on "This Week"--on ABC, of course. George Will said the two things I've been thinking all week: that first, docu-dramas are a suspect entity in the first place, but--but--Democrats who fawned all over Farenheit 9/11 sure have some nerve.

Katrina Vanden Heuvel went off into Neverland and discussed what movie should have been made, something that would include a film loop of Dick Cheney outlining the connections between Al Qaeda and Saddam. (I'd watch.) When George Will invited her to comment on Farenheit 9/11 she snorted, "Farenheit 9/11 was understood for what it was." Will then asked her, "What was it?" three times; Katrina ignored his question until Fareed Zakaria jumped in, and called it a "pounti-of-view polemic that I denounced, by the way."

To this, one could say, Oh. So this is the latest line of defense: Sure, Farenheit 9/11 is a pack of lies, but since everyone knew it was a pack of lies, that makes it okay. That would come as a surprise to people I spoke to two summers ago, including the woman at a teaching workshop in Olympia, Washington, the week it opened, who predicted that the Bush family would have the movie pulled, especially in my home town. When I returned to Houston and e-mailed her that the movie was not only playing, but playing five miles from the elder Bush' house, she responded, "How can he live with the shame?"

The lesson here is a corollary of the old, "Poetry changes nothing." Harriet Beecher Stowe aside, neither literature nor movies nor TV shows change much of anything. More often these enterprises are a case of preaching to the choir.