Thursday Hilarity
Dave Price
Via Ace, Dan Rather is suing CBS, claiming the obviously-forged-in-MS Word Bush National Guard memos were real.
Also real, according to this lawsuit: werewolves, Bigfoot, those gray aliens on X-Files, the Loch Ness monster, vampires, phrenology, the "real killers" OJ's been looking for on golf courses lo these past dozen years, and little Timmy O'Toole, the boy trapped in the well.
UPDATE: Thanks to Stace in the comments for pointing us to this Mary Mapes piece at HuffPo, which I'm not entirely convinced is real. Could a CBS producer really be this loony?
Instantly, the far right blogosphere bully boys pronounced themselves experts on document analysis, and began attacking the form and font in the memos. They screamed objections that ultimately proved to have no basis in fact. But they captured the argument. They dominated the discussion by churning out gigabytes of mind-numbing internet dissertations about the typeface in the memos, focusing on the curl at the end of the "a," the dip on the top of the "t," the spacing, the superscript, which typewriters were used in the military in 1972.Oh, the irony!
...
This is not a new fight. Journalism has always pissed people off. It is supposed to. It should be provocative. It should ask hard questions of everyone on every side. It shouldn't play favorites and it shouldn't fear honest criticism.
Humor aside, this is what people on the right are referring to when they talk about BDS and the incredibly pathological bias of the MSM. It's hard to imagine anyone at the Weekly Standard or even NewsMax going this crazy. And remember, these people are supposed to be objective.
Note too how supportive the HuffPo commentariat are of this lunacy. This is not a reality-based community.
And, again, just imagine if Bill Burkett had had the modicum of competence to obtain a 1971 typewriter on Ebay. Just imagine.
UPDATE: OK, I take back that part about NewsMax. They might be this crazy.
UPDATE: Via Glenn, more hilarity.
But not the X-Files themselves. The FBI does not now, or at any time in the past, have a series of open cases relating to events beyond scientific explanation. To suggest otherwise is... unwise.
Check the Washington Post. More at BeldarBlog, including a link to the complaint.
Yours,
Wince
That may be their belief, but that doesn't seem to be the basis for the lawsuit.
When being confronted about his past...
Marshal: “Never saw a rich man that didn't wind up with a guilty conscience.”
Wyatt: “I already got a guilty conscience. Might as well have the money too.”
Dan Rather may be a "Has-Been media shill" but he "...Might as well have the money too."
HankB
If this were some no-name Ted Baxter reading the news, I would accept that argument. In fact, if Mr. Rather himself had simply stayed above the fray and never commented, I would accept that argument. But he vehemently defended the news gathering, the fact checking, and the reporting from one end to the other. (From his court filing, he apparently still does so today.) In my opinion, that gives him a large measure of responsibility for the story. He moved from being a mere news reader and into the role of editor/producer/spokesperson.
I blogged the story, too, by the way, here. Just sayin'.
But when he went on the offensive to support the story, he clearly crossed the line and became an active participant. He put his reputation on the line then, not CBS.
I believe I understand that you are staying that authenticity of the documents is not the point of the lawsuit, but nevertheless they appear to believe and to maintain in their legal pleadings that the reputed TANG documents were authentic, and it comes up as the third point made in that complaint.
Check the complaint.
On page 2, point 3:
The Broadcast incorporated documents written by Mr. Bush's commanding officer, Lt. Colonel Jerry B. Killian ("Documents"), corroborating important aspects of the story.
Continue from there.
Yours,
Wince
They tried to make something of this story since 1994. And now they're back again. Is this some kind of terminal masochism, Chronic BDS, or what?
absolutely. Rather hasn't a leg to stand on.
Wince,
It's quite clear from the complaint that point 3 is simply part of several points outlining the timing of events leading up to Rather's dismissal. As I said, I don't question that Rather and his lawyers fully believe the TANG documents to be "fake but accurate," but that belief is not central to the complaint.
Ummm, Dave, have you read NewsMax lately? They're way over the edge, in my experience.
(You had to actively work to kill those old steel Royals and Smith-Coronas!)
It still burns me that they get to lable themselves the "netroots," as if they're the only ones doing grass roots activism on the 'net, or like they were the first.
1) The initial story, about President Bush's military service in the Texas Air National Guard, was tangential, at best, to the election and of questionable news value. Yet Rather ran the story.
2) Bringing accusations of malfeasance against a sitting president is a Serious Matter. Before you run with that kind of story, you have to make sure your sources are airtight, or nearly so. The story was based in part on documents of questionable provenance, of somewhat dubious authenticity, and written by somebody who was dead. Yet Rather ran the story.
3) It would have been at least somewhat understandable if the story's writers had held fast in the accusations brought by conservative bloggers. After all, many of those individuals had axes to grind with the media in general and with Rather in particular. But when those same bloggers started speaking to typographical experts about the documents and Rather's competitors -- including, for example, the Washington Post, people who had no axes to grind with the media in general or Rather in particular -- cast serious doubt on the story, its authors should have re-examined it. Yet Rather persisted in defending the story.
3) Two years later, after the entire affair has more or less died down, Rather has an opportunity to rebuild at least something of his tattered reputation. He could, for example, dedicate himself to high-minded journalism. He could produce in-depth documentaries. He could rebuild himself into a respected commentator or something after the public's memory of the scandal fades ... but, instead, he's brought this lawsuit.
Overall ... a rather appalling lack of judgment.
--|PW|--
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.