"some dumbed-down TV documentary"

[pynchonoid]

<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11104-2003Jun18.html>

'D.C. 9/11' Spins Tale of President on Tragic Day 
Showtime Docudrama Depicts a Defiant, Decisive Bush 

LOS ANGELES, June 18 -- In the hours after the
terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, a bold, forceful
President Bush orders Air Force One to return to
Washington over the objections of his Secret Service
detail, telling them: "If some tinhorn terrorist wants
me, tell him to come and get me! I'll be at home,
waiting for the bastard!"

Well, the president didn't actually speak those words.
But it's close enough for the Hollywood version of
events. In a forthcoming docudrama for the Showtime
cable network, an actor playing the president spits
out those lines to his fretful underlings in a key
scene. [...]

"There is always some agency like the Ministry of
Truth to deny the memories of others, to rewrite the
past. It has become a commonplace, circa 2003, for
government employees to be paid more than most of the
rest of us to debase history, trivialise truth and
annihilate the past on a daily basis. Those who don't
learn from history used to have to relive it, but only
until those in power could find a way to convince
everybody, including themselves, that history never
happened, or happened in a way best serving their own
purposes - or best of all that it doesn't matter
anyway, except as some dumbed-down TV documentary
cobbled together for an hour's entertainment."
--Thomas Pynchon, Foreword to _1984_


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