Finally, we’re getting an American version of “Triumph of the Will” (link from Atrios) :

Trapped on the other side of the country aboard Air Force One, the President has lost his cool: “If some tinhorn terrorist wants me, tell him to come and get me! I’ll be at home! Waiting for the bastard!”
. . .
Was this George W. Bush’s moment of resolve on Sept. 11, 2001? Well, not exactly. Actually, the scene took place this month, on a Toronto sound stage.

The histrionics, filmed for a two-hour television movie to be broadcast this September, are as close as you can get to an official White House account of its activities at the outset of the war on terrorism.

Written and produced by a White House insider with the close co-operation of Mr. Bush and his top officials, the movie The Big Dance represents an unusually close merger of Washington’s ambitions with the Hollywood entertainment machinery.

A copy of the script obtained by The Globe and Mail reveals a prime-time drama starring a nearly infallible, heroic president with little or no dissension in his ranks and a penchant for delivering articulate, stirring, off-the-cuff addresses to colleagues.
. . .
Lionel Chetwynd, the film’s creator, sees nothing untoward about his role as the semi-official White House apologist in Hollywood. For him, having a well-connected Republican create the movie was a way to get the official message around what he sees as an entertainment industry packed with liberals and Democratic party supporters.
. . .
Mr. Chetwynd’s script is based on lengthy interviews with Mr. Bush, Mr. Rove, top aide Andy Card, retiring White House press aide Ari Fleischer, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other Republican officials in the White House and the Pentagon. He says that every scene and line of dialogue was described to him by an insider or taken from credible reports.

Yet compared with other journalistic accounts of the period, the movie is clearly an effort to reconstruct Mr. Bush as a determined and principled military leader. The public image of Mr. Bush ?— who avoided military service in Vietnam and who has often been derided as a doe-eyed naif on satirical TV shows ?— is a key concern to White House communications officials, many of them friends of Mr. Chetwynd.

I guess the embedded reporters program was so successful that they’ve launched an embedded entertainer program as well. It’s amazing that conservatives effectively control all three branches of our government, but are still able to use the “liberal media” myth to portray themselves as some sort of oppressed minority that’s being treated unfairly. For a more honest account of Bush’s activities on 9/11, check out this site.