Posted on 09/11/2004 3:43:17 AM PDT by Quilla
A few weeks ago, Thomas Oliphant of the Boston Globe was on PBS' ''Newshour'' explaining why the hundreds of swift boat veterans' allegations against John Kerry's conduct in Vietnam was unworthy of his attention. "The standard of clear and convincing evidence," he said, talking to Swiftvet John O'Neill as if he were a backward fourth-grader, ''is what keeps this story in the tabloids -- because it does not meet basic standards.''
Last week, we got a good idea of what Thomas Oliphant's ''basic standards'' are. Dan Rather and the elderly gentlemen at ''60 Minutes'' were all atwitter because they'd come into possession of some hitherto undiscovered memos relating to whether George W. Bush failed to show up for his physical in the War of 1812. The media had been flogging this dead horse all spring, but these newly ''discovered'' memos had jump-started the old nag just enough to get him on his knees long enough for the media to flog him all over again.
Unfortunately for CBS, Dan Rather's hairdresser sucks up so much of the budget that there was nothing left for any fact-checking, so the ''60 Minutes'' crew rushed on air with a damning National Guard memo conveniently called ''CYA'' that Bush's commanding officer had written to himself 32 years ago. ''This was too hot not to push,'' one producer told the American Spectator. Hundreds of living Swiftvets who've signed affidavits and are prepared to testify on camera -- that's way too cold to push; we'd want to fact-check that one thoroughly, till, say, midway through John Kerry's second term. But a handful of memos by one dead guy slipped to us by a Kerry campaign operative -- that meets ''basic standards'' and we gotta get it out there right away.
The only problem was the memo. Amazingly, this guy at the Air National Guard base, Lt. Col. Killian, had the only typewriter in Texas in 1973 using a prototype version of the default letter writing program of Microsoft Word, complete with the tiny little superscript thingy that automatically changes July 4th to July 4th. To do that on most 1973 typewriters, you had to unscrew the keys, grab a hammer and give them a couple of thwacks to make the ''t'' and ''h'' squish up all tiny, and even think it looked a bit wonky. You'd think having such a unique typewriter Killian would have used a less easily traceable model for his devastating ''CYA'' memo. Also, he might have chosen a font other than Times New Roman, designed for the Times of London in the 1930s and not licensed to Microsoft by Rupert Murdoch (the Times' owner) until the 1980s.
Killian is no longer around to confirm his extraordinary Magic Typewriter, but his son denied the stuff was written by his dad, and his widow said her late husband never typed. So, on the one hand, we have hundreds of living veterans with chapter and verse on Kerry's fantasy Christmas in Cambodia, and, on the other hand, we have a guy who's been dead 20 years but is still capable of operating Windows XP. It took the savvy chappies at the Powerline Web site and Charles Johnson of ''Little Green Footballs'' about 20 minutes to spot the eerily 2004 look of the 1972 memo, and various Internet wallahs spent the rest of the day tracking down the country's leading typewriter identification experts.
Bombarded with accusations that CBS had fallen for an obvious hoax, Dan turned to his trusty Smith-Corona and bashed out a few e-mails: ''For the umpteenth time,'' he said angrily, ''this is the kind of sleaze I had to put up with when they scoffed at 'What's the frequency, Kenneth?' "
Are Dan Rather and ''60 Minutes'' a bunch of patsies suckered by the Kerry campaign? Not exactly. According to the American Spectator, ''The CBS producer said that some alarm bells went off last week when the signatures and initials of Killian on the documents in hand did not match up with other documents available on the public record, but producers chose to move ahead with the story.''
Hey, why not? Who's gonna spot it? If CBS says it's so, that's good enough for Thomas Oliphant's Boston Globe, the New York Times and the Washington Post, all of whom rushed the story onto their front pages because it met their ''basic standards.'' On Friday morning, Paul Krugman, the New York Times' excitable economist, filed a column called, ''The Dishonesty Thing,'' and for one moment I thought he was about to upbraid CBS for rushing on air with their laughably fake memos. But no, he was droning on about how the National Guard story demonstrated George W. Bush's ''pattern of lies: his assertions that he fulfilled his obligations when he obviously didn't ..."
The tragedy for Rather, Oliphant, Krugman and Co. is that even if the memos were authentic nobody would care. Their boy Kerry had a crummy August not because he didn't hammer Bush for being AWOL in the Spanish-American War but because the senator's AWOL in the present war. Big Media are trashing their own reputations in service to a man who can never win.
After the 2002 election, I wrote, ''Remind me never to complain about 'liberal media bias' again. Right now, liberal media bias is conspiring to assist the Democrats to sleepwalk over the cliff.''
The media and the Democrats sustain each other's make-believe land. Dan Rather tells his staff, ''Kerry's told me there's nothing to this Swiftvet thing.'' Kerry tells his, ''Rather's assured me this Swiftvet story's going nowhere.''
George W. Bush ought to wake up every morning and thank the Lord the media aren't on his side.
Remember the Hitler Diaries? They turned up in the '80s. Only problem is they weren't by Hitler. But by then various prestige publications had paid a fortune to serialize them. Among them was the Sunday Times of London, owned by Murdoch, who wasn't happy. He called the editor, Frank Giles, into his office, and said, ''Frank, I'm promoting you to editor emeritus.''
''I've always wondered,'' murmured Frank, ''what 'editor emeritus' means.''
''The 'e-' means you've been given the elbow and the '-meritus' means you bloody deserve it,'' said Murdoch.
I have a feeling after November CBS News will be promoting Dan Rather to editor emeritus.
Either that, or next week's ''60 Minutes'' -- ''Exclusive! Handwriting Expert Says Bush Wrote The Hitler Diaries!'' -- will have much better fact-checking.
That was Ellen Ratner regurgitation of the DNC talking points from Fox & Friends via post # 21
Therefore, he trashes President's Bush's speeches.
BOSTON GLOBE PUBLISHED KNOWN-BY THE GLOBE-TO-BE-FROM-PORN-SITES PHOTOS:
The Boston Globe KNEW the pics were porn, knew they were from a porn site frequented by Boston Globe reporters,
and knew they were held by an admitted racist who segregates whites from meetings,
and outrageously and odiously said they were from "credible" sources.
The Boston Globe KNEW lies were being published so as to result in murders of Americans.
The proterrorist writers at the Boston Globe KNEW exactly what they were doing.
Boston Globe Publishes Fake Iraq Rape Pictures to have Americas Murdered (Again) - Thread 1
Boston Globe Publishes Fake Iraq Rape Pictures to have Americas Murdered (Again) - Thread 2
This latest lie against AMERICA was from none other than the bow-tied home of liar Jayson Blair =====> The Boston Globe.
More examples?
From The Boston Globe's (and New York Times') own wars against the War for Enduring Freedom.
The Boston Globe has a history of falsifying front page polls
BOSTON GLOBE FABRICATES FRONT-PAGE POLL [4/9/03]
If she had lived (being abandoned alive in a submerged car driven by Sen Kennedy),
Mary Jo Kopechne would be 62 years old.
Through his tireless work as a legislator,
(Democrat) Edward Kennedy would have brought comfort to her in her old age.
Charles Pierce, January 5, 2003 Boston Globe Magazine
[I used to think Andrew Sullivan was close to Michael Kelly's level, except for one little thing. But, of course, that little thing has now consumed Sullivan and his writing and twisted everthing in his universe to its service. The comparison between Kelly and Sullivan now stands in embarassing relief as it has been revealed what was the most important thing, the essence of each human being:
Kelly--devotion to his calling as a journalist and his willingness to put everything on the line and embed himself with the troops in a war he believed in;
Sullivan-- well ..... his one little thing has distorted all that he previously professed to believe in.
This is the comment I found to be the most astounding. In essence, Rather is saying that forged documents have raised key questions and we should all concentrate on the "substance" that was made up out of whole cloth. If the documents are forgeries, and I believe that they are, there is no substance on which to focus. There is NO STORY if the "support" for the story is bogus.
Steyn bump
bookmark
"Their boy Kerry had a crummy August not because he didn't hammer Bush for being AWOL in the Spanish-American War but because the senator's AWOL in the present war."
Bang!
link for post #44
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1213038/posts?page=15#15
I agree. CBS knew the memos were forgeries and expected that President Bush would either ignore them (which would give the Dems a clear field to use the lies) or say they were forgeries (which would let the Dems say that Bush is a cry baby). Bush did neither. He released the memos to the blogosphere and let us do the job. And we did it well.
Thomas Oliphant wears spectacles and a bow-tie. I'm not kidding.
Who does the "60 minutes" on 60 minutes?
WOW. Did he catch the irony, the hypocrasy, the perfidy of the Dimocratic party! I love this guy! (No wonder I've never heard of him, he's not a drooling, washrag liberal lapdog!)
Thanks for not being that excerpt-happy guy!
Dan
THANK you for the ping.
Right.
Like, "I did not have sex with that woman and, if I did, she was a Republican plant, and Ken Starr is an evil man!!"
Dan
Amen!
...Big Media are trashing their own reputations in service to a man who can never win...
Mr Steyn, we are not worthy.
2004 will go down in history as another election L-A-N-D-S-L-I-D-E for the Republicans over a totally inept democratic candidate BUT MOST OF ALL IT WILL GO DOWN IN HISTORY AS THE YEAR THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA MAGGOTS LOST THEIR POWER TO INFLUENCE AMERICAN ELECTIONS.
Goodbye and good ridance.
Steyn's take ping.
Right on! I think you hit it on the head. CBS is like Goebbels. There is no limit to what they won't try to push on the public. They control so much of the guiderails that they game the system and figure they can prevail either way.
This is what is behind the obvious arrogance. They must have known that the documents were forged--[I would not be shocked if they did not order up the forgery--via dark sources, of course. ] There is no way that they are that stupid. No, they knew it and that is what I like about your post. It explains how it did not matter to them that the forgery would be discoverable. They counted on that discovery not being able to be heard in the national conversation.
Well, they did not calculate the blogosphere would be able to be heard. But now, after 24 hours, they try the slimeball response of saying but not quite saying that the story that the documents were supposed to support is "true" so that is what should be focused on. Indeed, they arrogantly assert that we should listen to CBS now and trust in their reporting on this story despite the fact that the documentary evidence they used is now shouwn to be forged---deliberately concocted to falsely support a proposition.
Rather [& CBS'] response last night--after 24 hours deliberation-- is striking. They still believe they can carry it off and push the "story" even without the documentary support. They wont admit the forgery of course, and stupidly cite the fact that hte typeface was invented in 1930's without saying the obvious point that the typeface was not available to typewriters ever-and only became available to the genreal population via personal comuters in the late 80's early 90's.
CBS knows all this AND THEN DECIDES TO COUNT ON THE RELATIVELY SHORT ATTENTION SPAN OF THE GENERAL POPULATION TO NOT HEAR THE TRUTH THROUGH THE DIN OF DSITORTION WHICH IT IS NOW again INTENTIONALLY SPREADING INTO THE NATIONAL CONVERSATION.
THE REASON THEY TAKE THIS TACK IS BECAUSE THEY ARE, AFTER ALL, ONLY AFTER VOTES, NOT INTEGRITY.
It is this contempt for truth and intelligent conversation that you see on the cable shout shows. Say anything, regardless of how incredible. The point is only to grab a few percentages of boob votes.
THESE PEOPLE ARE SO ARROGANT AND SO MALICIOUS THAT NO PUNISHMENT WOULD BE UNDESERVED.
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