Rather party

Atlanta-based author, pundit and media consultant Phil Kent, former president of the Southeastern Legal Foundation, tells this column that he's hosting a party on the evening of March 9 in the Buckhead section of the city to honor popular Internet blogger "Buckhead" - otherwise known as prominent Atlanta lawyer Harry MacDougald.

"Harry is the bathrobe-clad guy - literally - who 'outed' Dan Rather and CBS less than four hours after they broke the phony Bush National Guard papers" story, Kent says.

Rather, who will relinquish his anchor chair after 24 years next week, is accused by conservative critics of being motivated by politics in developing the now infamous - and discredited - segment on President Bush's Guard service.

"We'll be watching Dan Rather's last broadcast," Kent says of his party, "and I'll present Buckhead a framed certificate for 'going above and beyond his patriotic duty.'"

"Because since 1994, congressional Republicans (first led by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich) have set the political debate in America," he says. "First, they changed Bill Clinton into a budget-balancing, tax-cutting, welfare-reforming centrist, and later, with George W. Bush in the White House, they had even more power to direct the nation's agenda."

In other words, Garrett concludes: "The media didn't suddenly become captives of conservative groupthink. They simply filtered the dominant political action of the day."

He has it exactly backwards. The movement back toward a constitutional republic has occurred because of the shift in media away from the Old Dominant Liberal Media. That created the 94 election swing, as the public became partially aware of how much they were lied to. Rush wasn't voted "The Majority Maker" by the 94 elected freshmen for nothing. The Old media managed to keep Bill Clinton in office for two terms, but only by lying continually and by sacrificing enormous amounts of their most precious capital: their credibility. The chickens started coming home to roost with the election of 2000, when Democrats were shocked that conservative/libertarian activists protested in the streets and prevented them from stealing the election.

Rathergate shows that the inflection point of oligopoly media power has turned, and that the ability of the Old Media to lie with impunity is gone forever.

Ok, credit is due. Buckead discovered and announced Rather's attempt to use forgeries to attack W. But, how about all the times in the past that Rather has done about the same? I know, now that he is gone, what difference does it make? But, Rather will write a book and his left-wing friends in the neocommunist media will praise it and it will enter the folklore as the definitive version.

Rather has pulled this crap in the past. I'd love to see some discovery of Rather perfidy from 1996 or 2000 that would sink him for good. He has always been a flaming, anti-American left winger. Stopping him was great, destroying his reputation forever would be better!

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