Posted on 09/13/2004 12:25:29 PM PDT by areafiftyone
As everyone knows by now, last week "60 Minutes" aired a "report" by "newsman" Dan Rather that "revealed" something damaging about President Bush's early 1970s service in the Texas Air National Guard. Exactly what, we do not know; as we noted Thursday, we find the topic too boring to think about.
But it turns out there is a fascinating story here, a story of journalistic fraud, of bloggers humbling ye olde media, and, very likely, of political dirty tricks. Shortly after Rather's story aired, blogger John Hinderaker wrote a post on PowerLineBlog.com in which he noted that the four memos that were central to Rather's story appeared to have been produced on modern word-processing equipment, not 1970s-vintage typewriters. (The memos' putative author has been dead for 20 years, conveniently for Rather.)
At least one of those memos is unquestionably fraudulent. Blogger Charles Johnson typed the text of the memo, putatively written on Saturday, Aug. 18, 1973, into Microsoft Word using the Times New Roman font and default tab-stop and margin settings. The result was an exact match: Everything from which words fell on which line to the annoying little superscript th after an ordinal number was identical. Here is an animated GIF file Johnson prepared that shows the CBS version and his re-creation:
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
What a phenomenal advertising ploy for IBM typewriters: Prepare documents that will look modern 31 years from now! Had they known they could have promoted their now obsolete office machines with that approach...
I thought you went blind if you did that.
Blather is said to be seeking asylum in Cuba..
Forget the "issues", just realizing what kind of people support the other side should give any decent person all the clues to decide on which side he belongs.
Gee Dan its not that bad! Don't do it!
The IBM "Selectric" Composer was the first desktop typesetting machine. It was based on the successful "Selectric" technology. In case you're not familiar with that, the IBM Selectric typewriter is the one that has a small ball with all the letters imprinted on it.
The basic task of the IBM Composer was to produce justified camera ready copy using proportional fonts. It has the capability of using a variety of font sizes and styles.
IBM Selectric Composer
Which image was typed on an IBM Selectric Composer? Which one was typed in Microsoft Word?
Answer: The one on the LEFT was made in Microsoft Word.
Yes, Miss Landers
A Pandora's box it was, indeed -- for Rather.
To which quote are you referring?
Sorry, I found it...
I'm sorry you found it too. Hope you don't loose your lunch! *L*
I guess Kerry didn't plan on this blogging thing.
Just for that, Beaver, you and Gilbert will have to stay after school and give me a facial.
The author of the PC Magazine article is receiving a pretty thorough smackdown in the comments section.
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