Posted on 09/13/2004 10:29:51 PM PDT by quidnunc
The fierce excuses and imaginative explanations are dying in gleeful laughter, but Dan Rather still can't find the frequency. Kenneth seems to have disappeared, too.
Rarely has a media organ been so shamefully exposed, publicly ridiculed, and, against a tsunami of evidence, so stoutly (and less believably) defended.
The documents that Dan and CBS attempted to sell to the gullible as proof that George W. Bush was a slacker, shirker and goldbrick during the Vietnam War are already regarded by everyone but Dan and perhaps one or two of his CBS colleagues as "the National Guard forgeries." The forgeries join a jolly list of literary scams that unraveled because the editor of any reasonably good high-school newspaper would have recognized them as too good to be true.
Prudent editors — and presumably even prudent television producers — get a wake-up call every time one of these scams surfaces in the media. Jayson Blair made fools of Howell Raines and his senior editors at the New York Times, and sent shivers down the spines of newspaper editors from Portland in Maine to Portland in Oregon.
Forgeries, even artless forgeries like the National Guard memos, infuriate a viewing and reading public whose faith in the mainstream media, so called, has dwindled to the vanishing point. CBS News, once the mighty pillar of "television journalism," seems particularly vulnerable to temptation.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
I sure hope this story doesn't drop off the surface of the planet. Every rebuttal that Rather gives sinks his story even faster, since he's been trying to sidestep the issues and debate facts already proven otherwise.
I hope he comes clean soon - I don't want to miss the premier of Survivor, but I'll make my sacrifice to keep the pressure on.
I love this line: 'Dan Rather, regarded as the world's greatest journalist (you only have to ask him) and the successor to Walter Cronkite as the foremost impresario of self-importance, hasn't been quite the same since he was discovered, disheveled and confused, on a Manhattan street babbling to "Kenneth," otherwise unidentified: "What is the frequency?"'
Will this be the media's "Enron"?
Will old media finally clean up its act, or will it simply go bankrupt, like the earlier corporate frauds?
At least it is good to see at least one paper trying to still have a shred of journalistic integrity.
Rush was saying on Monday that there is no way in HELL that CBS can possibly go back now. They are totally committed at this point and no amount of "well, we were wrong" is going to save their credibility.
Unfortunately, I think the only way they can lose their credibility is for the others (ABC, NBC, CNN) to come out and do a story on CBS. I just can't see that happening.
I think you're rigtht. I don't see them confessing. I see them brazening this out.
I have done as you have commanded, oh my lord and master.
Only the wily and perceptive Terry McAuliffe is wise to your devious plan to destroy the Old Media and the democrat party in a single brilliant stroke.
With Adoration and Robot-like Compliance,
Your servant, Dan Rather
What is indisputable in this fiasco is how CBS applies completely opposite standards to each side of this story.
They defend the memos, despite never having seen the originals, validated the source, or explained the anomilies of formatting and content.
Yet they question the (presumibly unimpeachable) US Governement documented honorable discharge, records of points accumulated, and eye witnesses to Bush's service in Alabama.
They are 180 degrees from themselves in their standards in each aspect of the same story!
The National Guard/Memogate scandal exposes CBS for what they are - partizan hacks intent on bringing down the president.
Umm, you forgot:
They accepted Kewwy's word for it on Christmas in Cambodia, despite corroboration, and despite lack
of documentation.
But Official Memos, eyewitness testimony, and his own
word, are not enough to believe Dubya.
No blood for Brie.
That cartoon is PERFECT!
OMG! Go to the link and read the whole thing. Pruden is ruthless, and FUNNY!
Neither he nor his bosses at CBS will say where they got the National Guard memos. Not yet. Perhaps the memos, like the Hitler diaries, were preserved in "a metal-lined container" discovered in the crash of the Kerry campaign and delivered to CBS News by Major Gundlfinger. As an explanation this would be pretty thin soup, but more believable by far than the stew of artless bluff and blarney Dan and CBS have offered so far.
Don't tell anyone, but Terry McAwful is our mole/double agent. When he gets through the current Rat party will look like the German Army after WWII.
Wesley Pruden is using humor like a slaughter house worker uses his knife to cut the meat off of a carcass while it is still kicking.
And having a damn good time doing it, blood flying, whistling.
It is not for nothing Liddy calls Pruden "the take-no-prisoners editor of the premier newspaper of the nation's capital."
As this is unrolling, one of the Clintoon thugs Lehane has just resigned. I bet his slithering scale marks were all over one of these recently exposed lies.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2003/09/16/kerrys_communications_director_resigns/
Kerry's communications director resigns
By Glen Johnson, Globe Staff, 9/16/2003
CHICAGO -- The communications director for Senator John F. Kerry's presidential campaign has resigned following a disagreement over tactics that highlights a Boston-Washington split about the campaign's direction, aides disclosed yesterday.
Chris Lehane, 36, a Lawrence native who served as Vice President Al Gore's spokesman during the 2000 campaign, resigned because his suggestion to be more aggressive in confronting rival Howard Dean was not heeded by Kerry, according to several current and former aides, who all spoke on the condition of anonymity. Lehane -- whose hiring earlier this year was seen as a coup by the Kerry campaign -- also favored quickly moving beyond the senator's biography as a decorated Vietnam War veteran by espousing an optimistic message that could be encapsulated in a single sentence. That suggestion was also disregarded by top advisers and, ultimately, Kerry himself.
The resignation precedes likely additions to what was supposed to be a lean staff, and is occurring amid speculation about the hiring of an individual to supersede campaign manager Jim Jordan.
Like Lehane, Jordan, 42, counseled a more aggressive campaign as Dean, a former Vermont governor, surged in the polls this summer. Their entreaties were resisted by Robert Shrum, the veteran Washington political strategist with strong Boston ties, as well as a group of older, longtime Kerry advisers from Boston, including pollster Tom Kiley. They favor a more stately campaign focused on President Bush.
The tension between the Boston and Washington staffs exploded into public view Sept. 2, the day Kerry had hoped to gain positive media attention by publicly declaring his candidacy with staged events in South Carolina and Iowa. Amid the tour, Kerry was asked about possible staff changes and gave a less-than-emphatic affirmation of his staff, saying, "I think there's some things we could have done better."
An hour later, he delayed the start of an event in Des Moines while he and his aides crafted a one-paragraph statement declaring "there will be no changes." Last week, Kerry backed off on that language, telling the Globe in a Sept. 10 interview, "Those weren't precisely my words. They were the words of a press release sent out."
Lehane, at Jordan's direction, had written an alternative candidacy speech proposed for delivery on Sept. 2. That version was rejected by Kerry, who instead used the speech he drafted with Shrum.
In an interview yesterday, Kerry denied a chasm between his advisers and expressed optimism about the campaign's direction. "I am never more confident than I am today about what is happening in our campaign. . . . We know what we are doing," he said.
Kerry reiterated that he had no knowledge of Lehane's plans until late in the evening of Sept. 12. In the Sept. 10 interview, and a follow-up conversation last Friday afternoon, the senator was asked repeatedly about possible staff changes. He and his staff mentioned nothing about the departure of Lehane, even though Lehane had tendered his resignation up to a week earlier. Instead, Kerry responded by saying that there would additions, not subtractions of to the staff. The campaign said yesterday that it did not consider Lehane's resignation official until late in the evening of Sept. 12.
"You know, I have great confidence in the people who are involved in the campaign, and I think what we have to do [is] find a way for the people not there every day to weigh in more effectively and we are doing that," the senator said last week.
Aides said that in the coming weeks, they expect Kerry to add levels of supervision over people with whom he is unhappy, rather than seeking their resignation. Jordan said in an interview such growth was planned.
"The campaign will obviously continue to grow. . . . Certainly no departures are contemplated," he said.
The campaign manager also played down talk of a Boston-Washington split, saying, "Chris's decision had nothing to do with the 617 area code."
Lehane told Jordan of his plans to quit at the end of the week of Sept. 1, the week in which Kerry publicly declared his candidacy and participated in his first party-sanctioned forum with the other eight candidates for the nomination, one aide said. Lehane withheld an announcement of his decision while he spoke with additional advisers. He told reporters yesterday.
"John Kerry is a great American," Lehane said in an interview from his home in San Francisco, where he has been living while working in an unpaid capacity. He had been expected to join the campaign full time this fall and move to Washington. "He has put together a great team to take on George Bush, and I wish them good luck," Lehane added.
Lehane is partners in a communications company with Mark Fabiani, a former Gore campaign aide. Together they help represent major sporting figures such as Kobe Bryant, the Los Angeles Lakers basketball player recently charged with rape, as well as efforts to build a new football stadium in San Diego and allow gambling on Indian lands in Maine.
Fabiani had assumed much of the work as Lehane helped launch Kerry's campaign, but in recent weeks, Fabiani has been approached to be communications director for retired Army General Wesley Clark of Arkansas, a possible presidential candidate.
Lehane's departure clears the way for Fabiani, according to one of the aides interviewed.
Michael Kranish of the Globe staff contributed to this report from Washington. Glen Johnson can be reached at johnson@globe.com.
Phil are you enjoying this filleting of the rat mediots by Pruden and Free Republic?
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