Posted on 09/13/2004 9:31:04 PM PDT by Remember_Salamis
Bush's Guard Service and the Right Wing's 60 Minutes Mythology by Salvador Peralta
published by The Progressive Trail
Bush's Guard Service and the Right Wing's 60 Minutes Mythology
On Wednesday of this week, CBS's 60 Minutes aired a segment which shed some light on President Bush's failure to fulfill his military obligations to the Texas Air National Guard. 60 Minutes Later, the Right Wing punditry started to respond...
The documentation that 60 Minutes used as the basis for their story included the following:
A memo ordering Bush to take a physical
A memo discussing "options of how Bush can get out of coming to drill from now through November." And that due to other commitments "he may not have time."
A document suspending Bush for "failure to perform to U.S. Air Force/Texas Air National Guard standards and for failure to take his annual physical as ordered."
A memo from Bush's squadron commander where "he is being pressured by higher-ups to give the young pilot a favorable yearly evaluation; to, in effect, sugarcoat his review. He refuses, saying, 'I'm having trouble running interference and doing my job.'"
Within hours of the airing of the 60 Minutes segment, a user named "Buckhead" posted to the FreeRepublic.com web site asserting that proportionally-spaced fonts were not common in 1972, and that the 60 Minutes story was a forgery.
This post was picked up on the blog LittleGreenFootballs.com, and went from there to the Cybercast News Service where it spread via the drudgereport into the right wing media outlets such as Fox news and the Weekly Standard where it was treated as gospel before it finally made it's wa into the mainstream media including the AP, LA Times, and Washington Post.
Holding aside the journalistic credibility of the original sources for this story, "littegreenfootballs.com" and "Buckhead", a cursory glance at the facts of the matter show that the entire right wing line is built on a foundation of decepton. The general line of the right wing attack machine is as follows:
Don't deny the story outright. Just raise the possibility that the documents *might* be faked. This gives partisans something to latch onto and a talking point to start regurgitating in the right wing press. Repeat the lie often enough and some people will regard it as the truth.
Of course, that only works if people don't take the time to debunk the lies. So with that in mind, let's deconstruct the four major planks of the right wing's attack on the 60 Minutes Story:
1. Times New Roman Fonts did not exist in 1972
The Times New Roman font was developed in 1931 by Stanley Morison, Typographical Advisor to the Monotype Corporation who adapted the font to the IBM selectric Typewriter in 1947.
2. Documents back then didn't have superscripted 'th' characters
Superscripted fonts appear on other documents in Bush's flight school record, and had been available on IBM electric typewriters since 1947.
3. The document used proportional spacing which was not available in 1972 Proportional spacing had been available on typewriters since 1941. Press advertisements dating back to 1952 and 1953 suggest that the feature was widely available, and was even used on Richard Nixon's resignation letter in 1974.
4. The document used curlycue apostrophes which did not exist on typewriters in 1972.
Print advertisements for the IBM Exectuive typewriter show that curlycue apostrophes were used as early as 1953.
Proof that the air force was using typewriters capable of producing documents as early as 1966 can be found here.
The story is a cautionary tale about the effectiveness of the right wing smear machine at obfuscating facts and using outright lies to manipulate the public and to punish those who attempt to hold President Bush accountable for his actions.
bump
The guy is basically a moron. Every single one of his "refutations" is about 30° behind yesterday's power curve.
Reminder to all:
Please wash your hands after reading. Otherwise you risk fecal matter contamination.
The Left is *really* PO'd that their stranglehold on the media is dead.
A few years ago and they would have gotten away with this kind of forgery and it wouldn't be until after the election, if ever, that anyone would have noticed.
I wonder how many other forgeries they have stored away that were to follow up these new "revelations" in the CBS documents.
He's got nothing right
but he's got obsessive hatred galore.
There's not a single assertion he makes that would stand up to expert examination and skillful cross.
Remember Salamis?
Nope.
But I remember the Alamo!
The whold 60 minute's piece was based on deception. Sorry, but the journalistic credibility of the original source is what is lacking.
Salamis was the first time liberty was saved from tyranny, all the way back in ancient Greece. I guess I'm old school.
Then the answer is simple. Recreate the documents on typewriters from that era.
Correction; A few years ago they DID get away with this kind of skullduggery.
Many times.
And the people of the US payed for it in blood, treasure,and loss of liberty.
Never again, they don't hold all the aces anymore.
Welll now, some of us are created MORE equal than others. Don't these PIGS know this? Good work Orwell!
Gee, this guy should take a few deep breaths, calm down, and read the 500 threads on FR on this subject, and follow the links from those to sites all over the web where great work has been done.
This guy builds a straw man, knocks it down, and hopes his readers feel as good as he does.
A lot more solid case for forgery has been made than he's letting on.
Look closely at the number of coincidences that would have had to have taken place in order to validate this report.
CBS had, obviously, not checked source data before airing their "rendition" of the facts and are now trying slither out of their responsibility to report authenticated news.
Thank God that we now have alternative news sources other than the alphabet networks. Come on, CBS, you really screwed up. Admit it!
Well, I won't argue with that. The Air Force could certainly produce documents. But we are talking about specific ones here ....
He is just a Leftist Robot reciting the Media Matters talking points ... those talking points are laughable. Realy typographers are making more solid and serious comments than merely "Times Roman" font ... they are saying the *Exact Font* is NewTimesRome 'truetype' that is in MS Word. It wasnt even invented until the 1980s. and you would need the exact font and kerning/'negative C' spacing to get the exact match
that little green footballs got when he did it (in 10 minutes no less!)
"The guy is basically a moron. Every single one of his "refutations" is about 30° behind yesterday's power curve."
Dittos.
Like CBS using the 'raised' th and not noticing how different the real typewriter th is from the fake memo 'th' superscript.
Logic tells me that if the documents are fake then the story in them is fake too. But logic is about as important to liberals as truth.
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