The popular culture is finally beginning to deal with Sept. 11 in earnest, but it’s doing so with the usual modern mix of internationalist pieties and timid, politically correct drivel. In World War II, the movies had a clear message: The fascists needed to be defeated, and we were right to fight. Today’s message: Jihadists are people, too, you know.

First, consider “The Interpreter.” It’s a big-budget suspense thriller, a movie that examines that august body of international concord, the United Nations, and how it deals with a terrorist threat. In real life, the answer would be “lunch.” But since the film contains large portions of Sean Penn, one of the more cringe-inducing intellectual exhibitionists of the thespian profession, you know you’re in for it.

The movie’s terrorists blow up a bus in New York City. Their origin? The fictional African nation of Matobo. The producers didn’t even have the nerve to use a faux Central Asian province, like Inventistan. No, they go to that hotbed of global insecurity, Matobo.

“We didn’t want to encumber the film in politics in any way,” Kevin Misher, the producer, told the Wall Street Journal.

Perhaps he means this: For some, the very act of mentioning Islamist terrorism is a political act, since it plays into the Bushitler/RoveCo Hate Axis scheme to shove McDonald’s hamburgers down everyone’s falafel hole. We can make movies about brave soldiers fighting Islamist extremists when Hillary’s in power – until then, ixnay on the Uslimsmay.

Hence this strange silence. It’s like making a movie at the height of the civil rights era about the horrible injustices suffered by redheads. Originally, the terrorists of “The Interpreter” were from the Middle East. Likewise the terrorists who set off a nuclear bomb in “The Sum of All Fears”; they were changed to neo-Nazis. It’s a miracle the 2001 film “Pearl Harbor” didn’t show Hawaii attacked by militia members outraged over Waco.

As for how “The Interpreter” treats the United Nations: Your correspondent has not seen it, but assumes that any movie that had Kofi Annan’s blessing to be the first filmed at U.N. headquarters may pull its punches somewhat. If “Oil for Food” is mentioned, it’s probably in the context of a dressing for the salad.

Then we have an upcoming NBC miniseries on Sept. 11. The producer said he hoped to do for Muslims what “Das Boot” did for Germans.

“Every approach prior to that was, the Germans were horrible,” Brian Glazer told the New York Times. Das Boot “humanized them, because they are human. That’s what I’m hoping we do, that we don’t demonize, that we humanize all the different sides, and so we see the seeds, and we get an understanding from each culture’s point of view as to how they got to such a horrible place.”

You want to know how they got to a horrible place? On a hijacked plane.

So what if Mohammad Atta liked to sing in the shower, enjoyed sitting in seedy Florida strip clubs staring jaggy hate-beams at the writhing hussies? Who cares if he liked his orange juice with lots of pulp? If anyone dehumanized themselves, it was the hijackers. It takes a dead rotten heart to board a plane, see a little girl, and know you’re going to kill her before the morning’s out – if all goes well, that is.

But no one has suggested that the evildoers, to use the president’s Old Testament locution, are inhuman. The ability to do evil is not exactly a trait with which humans are unacquainted.

This isn’t to suggest that the cineplexes should be stuffed with two-fisted jingoist anti-Muslim hatefests instead of sensitive necessary comedies about slackers who tour the wine country. But this disinclination to face hard facts is mystifying.

Another producer of another upcoming Sept. 11 drama says they won’t show planes hitting the towers because “We’re not ready for it yet.” We’re babies. Please take the scary pictures away. Tell me the fairy story about Maboto again, Daddy.

Just what you expect from the Grating Generation, perhaps. It makes you nostalgic for the ‘80s, when Michael J. Fox fled in terror from pursuing Libyans in “Back to the Future.” When that movie looks braver than modern post-Sept. 11 drama, you know something’s missing. Guts, for starters.