"I was in SEA in 1968. Somehow a rumor started in my unit that my father was a US Senator.
The only "special" treatment I got, was ass chewings when I deserved them,
and promotions when I deserved those.
"
The actual sons of senators/congressmen would have their preferential treatment come from above - I am not sure why people don't think that the army is going to go out of its way to avoid getting the son of that congressman who votes on their money killed.
my above comment should read 'armed forces' rather than just army, but my point remains...
my take on the media is that they probably push frauds and forgeries pretty often, but only get caught when they either do something realllly flagrant under a LOT of scrutiny (the rather memos were way too high profile to push such bad efforts) or they take on a Big-Gun company who can go head to head with them, such as GM vs GE/NBC in the early 90's.
More than anything, I am baffled at the quality of the forgeries. A very small investment of time would have produced memos with identical typewriter key-type to the extant documents from that unit, which despite other irregularities might have sufficed to keep this from becoming a national story.
For those who want to buy into the Rove paranoia theories, sadly it is the gross incompetence of the forger that most supports it. This must be doing tremendous damage to kerry's prospects.