DUmmie FUnnies 10-04-05 (Mary Mapes Spins Fiction---Book Excerpt)

DUmmie FUnnies ^ | October 4, 2005 | Mary Mapes and PJ-Comix

[Charles Henrickson]

I saw CBS vice president Betsy West standing in the CBS building’s eighth-floor lobby, waiting for the slow, unreliable elevators

Reporters. Slow, unreliable reporters.

[decal]

"I wonder if Mapes was agape when she got a load of the picture of Dan's daughter I dug up?" I know I was. Yeech, Everything except for the stopid suspenders...

[Charles Henrickson]

how hurried and harried we all had been

how horrid and hated we all had been

[Charles Henrickson]

"That’s as close to the sausage making as I ever want to get."

Yeah, I never sausage a blatant case of bias in my whole life. It was the wurst.

[Charles Henrickson]

We both felt good about the story and agreed that it had looked polished on the air. . . .

Polish sausage?

[Charles Henrickson]

I had a well-earned reputation for being able to “crash,”

Since these are the DUmmie FUnnies, we'll name you an honorary Crash Test DUmmie.

[Purrcival]

"Yeah, I never sausage a blatant case of bias in my whole life. It was the wurst."

"You got any links on that?"

Groooooooaaaan!

[Charles Henrickson]

There was no analysis of what the documents actually said, no work done to look at the content, no comparison with the official record, no phone calls made to check the facts of the story, nothing beyond a cursory and politically motivated examination of the typeface. That was all they had to attack, but that was enough.

Earth to Mary: Maybe the fact that the "memos" were such OBVIOUS FRAUDS might just call into question the veracity of their CONTENT! Just a little bit, don't you think?

But you were so BLINDED by your absolute HATRED of Bush and your "wanting to believe" that you could stare at those memos for hours and not notice something that others of us were able to notice pretty much right away.

[Charles Henrickson]

"60 Minutes is going down," the writer crowed exultantly.

Just like you had crowed exultantly, "Bush is going down!" Except we are not pretending to be impartial.

[pigsmith]

[Charles Henrickson]

Faxing changes a document in so many ways, large and small, that analyzing a memo that had been faxed---in some cases not once, but twice---was virtually impossible.

Now, Mary, didn't I just read a couple of paragraphs back that you said:

There is nothing more frightening for a reporter than the possibility of being wrong, seriously wrong. That is the reason that we checked and rechecked. . . . Being right, being sure, was everything.

And didn't I read where you said:

Steve Glauber, a veteran 60 Minutes producer, had worked round the clock, flying to the other side of the world and then back from Kuwait in forty-eight hours, carrying precious videotape.

So Mary, here's my question to you: Why didn't you, with all the financial resources of CBS News at your disposal, have someone get on a plane and go to ABILENE FREAKING TEXAS, which is a whole lot closer thatn Kuwait, and GET THE ACTUAL PHYSICAL MEMO? Hel-lo? How come I can figure this out?

Do you want to know why you didn't think of doing that, Mary? I'll tell you why. You were so BLINDED by your absolute HATRED of George Bush that you were practically SALIVATING to get this story on the air ASAP, if not sooner. That's why.

[wildcatf4f3]

we need to forward this to Mary Mapes

[Charles Henrickson]

This was like rounding a corner in the woods and spotting a new creature, all venom and claws and teeth. You didn’t know what it was, but you sure knew it was out to get you. As I watched the postings pile up and saw the words quickly become more hateful, it dawned on me that I was present at the birth of a political jihad, a movement conceived in radical conservative back rooms, given life in cyberspace, and growing by the minute.

OK, you lost on the facts, so now you're going to resort to colorful rhetoric. Let's just be clear what you're doing.

"Oooooh! It's the conservative boogie monster!" < /Count Floyd voice>

[Charles Henrickson]

a devastatingly one-sided account of Barnes’s past financial troubles and long-ago political scrapes, along with ancient accusations

Couldn't those same descriptors be applied to your hit piece on young George Bush's military service? "Devastatingly one-sided," "past," "long-ago," "ancient". . . .

[Fenris6]

I may buy the book for the comedy value - but only if Buckkead, Howlin, and Tanker will sig it :)

The blogs have already ripped it to shreds. She's still clueless about proportional spacing. LOL. Remember guys, all the media execs described her as "brilliant". Really goes to show just how medicore and lazy the MSM is.

[Charles Henrickson]

Barnes had remained an active Democrat all his life and now was working as a fund-raiser for John Kerry. . . .

WHAT?! You're kidding me! One of your main sources for this story that you were gleefully thinking would "make Bush look like a slacker"--less than two months before the presidential election, btw--your key guy was AN ACTIVE DEMOCRAT WORKING AS A FUNDRAISER FOR JOHN KERRY?!! I am shocked! Shocked, I tell you!

[Fenris6]

"All these Web sites had extensive write-ups on the documents: on typeface, font style, and peripheral spacing,"

Bwahahaha! The ownage continues! What a stupid hack.

[Charles Henrickson]

I was afraid that this time Matley, who was an experienced document analyst and longtime expert witness, was out of his element.

To paraphrase Walter Sobchak in The Big Lebowski:

"MARCEL, YOU'RE OUT OF YOUR ELEMENT!"

[Fenris6]

Here's the contrast - according to Kerry, the most pivotal point in his life was when he lost faith in the government because of his "Christmas in Cambodia". It was SEARED into his memory so deeply that he testified about it under oath before Congress (around 1973?). Its part of the congressional record, yet no "journalist" thought to follow up on Kerry's "experience" and discover that he was a fraud. Or maybe they did, and buried it.

[Charles Henrickson]

Political operatives were having a field day turning Ben Barnes into their latest pinata, and his larger-than-life history was making it easy. He had been a boy wonder in Texas politics until a financial scandal in the early seventies had tainted him---unfairly, as it turned out. He was investigated, along with a number of other state politicians, for taking bribes in the Sharpstown payola scandal. Sharpstown was a Texas-sized bribery and development scandal that destroyed the careers of a number of once powerful state politicians, who were accused of handing out political favors in exchange for cash. There were never any charges filed against Barnes, never any case brought against him. He and former Texas governor John Connally had lost their fortunes together rather spectacularly during the savings and loan bust in the eighties. Furthermore, Barnes had a well-deserved reputation as the life of the party, a glib, funny, overwhelmingly charming man who turned heads, slapped backs, and twisted arms to get what he wanted. Remember that picture of Lyndon Johnson bending a congressman backward over a desk trying to wrangle a vote? That’s what Ben Barnes looks like ordering dinner. He has always been louder than life, a living, breathing caricature of a Texas politician. Now the Republicans were turning over every aspect of his personality, every past action, and recycling them into mud to throw at him and defuse his story. I felt terrible for him and for his family. He had told us that he worried most about the impact doing the interview would have on his wife and two young daughters. Barnes felt he could take whatever came his way. He was afraid they could not or would not. I knew Barnes was pretty tough. In fact, he had already survived more near-death political experiences and hardball partisan attacks than most human beings could. That pretty much comes with the territory in Texas politics. If you can’t take a hit, can’t survive a scandal, can’t talk your way out of a corner or dominate the field, you had better get out of the game. Barnes was an expert at the game. He had been on the scene of countless political and financial implosions. It was his political good fortune to always be the one person who would come staggering out of the building when it blew up. He might be covered with smoke and ash, his clothes ripped and ragged, but he would be alive and he would begin rebuilding his career.

Mary, will you please enter this section in our Bad Pitt Writing Competition? I think you would stand a good chance of winning.