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A new Steyn: CBS falls for Kerry campaign's fake memo
Chicago Sun Times ^ | September 12 2004 | Mark Steyn

Posted on 09/11/2004 8:31:00 AM PDT by Pitiricus

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.


TOPICS: Editorial; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: 60minutes; cbs; documents; forgery; killian; marksteyn; mediabias; oliphant; rather; rathergate; selectricgate; steyn
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Steyn is again wonderful!
1 posted on 09/11/2004 8:31:04 AM PDT by Pitiricus
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To: Pokey78

Ping!


2 posted on 09/11/2004 8:32:37 AM PDT by Rummyfan
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To: Pitiricus

Previously posted, but worth reading again.

This might be Steyn's best ever.


3 posted on 09/11/2004 8:32:42 AM PDT by samtheman (www.georgewbush.com)
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To: Pitiricus

** CBS 60 Minutes Advertiser Contact info **
Contact Information
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1211490/posts
Posted on 09/09/2004 7:26:05 PM CDT by woodb01
The most important thing you can do is to contact CBS and voice your disgust about Dan Rather. Second, about CBS's anti-Bush taint, and third, send media links to the controversy to the advertisers and lodge a complaint with the advertisers that they must repudiate the 60 Minutes hit piece. Do they want their products associated with a politically motivated hatchet job which turns out to be a fraud?
CBS 60 Minutes Hit Piece on Bush
This should be enough to put a LOT of heat on CBS if you're willing to do the work. Complain to CBS advertisers. Most of these are advertisers that were involved with the 60 Minutes slam on Bush, but hey, complain to them and ask for them to pull their advertising from the Bush Hating CBS...

CBS Television Group
51 W 52nd St # 35
New York, NY 10019
(212) 975-4321
CBS News FAX is (212) 975-1998
60 Minutes Spokesperson: Kelli Edwards 212-975-6795

CBS News Comments
212-975-3248. (Leave a comment on the answering machine)

60 Minutes
524 West 57th Street
New York, NY 10019
212- 975-3247 CALL AND COMPLAIN!

60II@cbsnews.com


4 posted on 09/11/2004 8:33:49 AM PDT by Maria S ("We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good." Hillary Clinton, 6/28/04)
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To: Pitiricus

Brilliant!


5 posted on 09/11/2004 8:34:49 AM PDT by austingirl
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To: Pitiricus

Thanks for posting this.


6 posted on 09/11/2004 8:35:43 AM PDT by syriacus (Kerry lied, while honorable men died. Benedict Arnold REALLY was a war hero before he was a traitor.)
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To: syriacus

Every day I check www.marksteyn.com for new articles...

He has become somewhat of an addiction for me...


7 posted on 09/11/2004 8:37:28 AM PDT by Pitiricus
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To: Pitiricus

Beautifully done. The Swiftvet-connection just superb.


8 posted on 09/11/2004 8:37:31 AM PDT by Mach9 (.)
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To: samtheman

agreed, superb


9 posted on 09/11/2004 8:38:26 AM PDT by mwl1
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To: Pitiricus

He is so good!


10 posted on 09/11/2004 8:40:47 AM PDT by The Ghost of FReepers Past (Legislatures are so outdated. If you want real political victory, take your issue to court.)
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To: Pitiricus
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.

Steyn is the Mozart of punditry.

11 posted on 09/11/2004 8:41:05 AM PDT by workerbee
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To: Pitiricus
Another Steyn home run!

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.

Goodbye Old Media! I think Rather will be done very shortly.

12 posted on 09/11/2004 8:42:25 AM PDT by Rummyfan
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To: Pitiricus
Great stuff:

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.

13 posted on 09/11/2004 8:44:49 AM PDT by GOPJ
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To: mwl1

Oliphant is a pompus girly man!
His "Standards" are " Did these documents Hurt Bush"?
then they are clear for transmission.

The American "Old Media"= Stalinists.


14 posted on 09/11/2004 8:46:29 AM PDT by LtKerst (Lt Kerst)
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To: Pitiricus
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.''

That's it! The Journalistic Gold Standard of 2004!!!
15 posted on 09/11/2004 8:47:47 AM PDT by gipper81
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To: Pitiricus

I figured this whole schtick was to steal the SBVT's thunder


16 posted on 09/11/2004 8:48:25 AM PDT by joesnuffy (Two Heads Are Better Than One...Unless They're On The Same Person -Andy Sipowicz)
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To: Pitiricus

I haven't paid much attention to this writer before, but he sure knows how to cut to the quick with the salient facts.
I am in awe of his ability to hammer out a winner of a column day after day.


17 posted on 09/11/2004 8:49:23 AM PDT by ridesthemiles (ridesthemiles)
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To: workerbee
Bush failed to show up for his physical in the War of 1812.

Didn't Kerry fight in Korea? Isn't that what the K stands for?
18 posted on 09/11/2004 8:49:40 AM PDT by Mike Fieschko (Oh, and Dick Cheney too.)
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To: The Ghost of FReepers Past

Yes, it's a hoot.


19 posted on 09/11/2004 8:49:59 AM PDT by WHBates
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To: Pitiricus

I haven't paid much attention to this writer before, but he sure knows how to cut to the quick with the salient facts.
I am in awe of his ability to hammer out a winner of a column day after day.


20 posted on 09/11/2004 8:51:37 AM PDT by ridesthemiles (ridesthemiles)
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