Mapesgate (We are now the KKK!)

dallasobserver ^ | 11/10/05 | Jim Schutze

[rdax]

Shudup Mapes

[trisham]

You know, sometimes I have doubts about my sensitivities. Looking back, I think I was mainly worried about the dogs. How the heck were they going to get walked?

******************

This rubbish cries out for a Barf Alert.

[Tarpon]

Naw, let her talk -- it confirms everything we knew about CBS and the rest of the dying liberal parrots.

[ThinkDifferent]

One of many intriguing points in Mapes' book--a thing I shouldn't have had to be reminded of--is that the documents she and Dan Rather based their story on were never exposed as fakes.

Wow. This guy is an idiot or a partisan hack. And the "or" is not exclusive.

[siunevada]

Mapes presents contextual evidence to show that the documents make an uncannily smooth factual mesh with other documents of known provenance. Not the sort of thing one would expect from fakes.

Geez, I guess this guy has never read a spy novel. A 'smooth factual mesh' is exactly what you want in a disinformation operation.

[robowombat]

How can liberals write so much and say so little. What a piece of s--t.

[altura]

He's right about one thing, the Dallas Morning News IS the realm of darkness.

That's about it.

[ScaniaBoy]

Has anybody here read the book?

It would be interesting to know what kind of expert opinion she has found. The forgery of the memos were on par with the Niger documents (if we are to believe the MSM and IAEA on those).

[hsalaw]

What tripe. This is more about how great his neighborhood is than anything else. Oh, and by the way, his good neighbor Mary's book has proved the documents aren't fake, or has at least put the burden of proof on the KKK, er, I mean, the blogosphere. If this is what passes for journalism today, I'm very glad I cancelled my subscription to the Bee.

[Zeppo]

Certainly on the technical side of this I am not a good arbiter. . . . Anybody with an honest intellectual curiosity about this story will have to read the book or find some other way to confront the arguments in it.

Jim Schutze destroys his own credibility and his own argument. He is the one who can't muster any honest intellectual curiosity about the story. Rather, he comes to his conclusions by relying on authority and on one-sided, weak rebuttals, and childish name-calling, while ignoring what his own eyes can tell him.

Using the same criteria that he approves, I could produce fake-but-accurate memos alleging that Jim Schutze is a serial child molester or a Soviet spy, and he would be unable to refute those allegations. Do people like Jim Schutze become newspaper columnists in spite of their lack of critical thinking skills, or is that a prerequisite for the job?

[Taliesan]

After dealing with the typeface issues, Mapes presents contextual evidence to show that the documents make an uncannily smooth factual mesh with other documents of known provenance. Not the sort of thing one would expect from fakes.

1. As others have said so many times, the burden of proof is to prove a document is true, not to prove it is false. Mapes has reversed that presumption because of the weak position she is in intellectually.

2. It is amazing to hear journalists caught thinking out loud: we would not expect fakes to have a "smooth factual mesh" with genuine documents? You can't be serious! This is EXACTLY what you would expect from a fake! Who ever fakes a document without taking great pains to make it "mesh" with other known facts in the context? What boneheads these people must be.

3. I have not read Mapes' book, but maybe one of these true believers could extract just ONE NEW FACTUAL ARGUMENT from the book to refute the KNOWN FACT that the document matches exactly the default settings in Microsoft Word, which match creates an even greater PRESUMPTION that the document is fake unless proven true.

[End Times Sentinel]

I'm the KKK?  Hardly.  I mean, admittedly I went to a few cross burnings in my younger days, mostly out of curriosity, but I never actually completed the initiation (although I did pay the non-refundable fee), so saying I'm "IN the Klan" is clearly a gross mischaracterization of me.

Owl_Eagle

(If what I just wrote makes you sad or angry,

 it was probably sarcasm)

[Repub4bush]

You are right!

I have an uncle that wanted to join the KKK back in the day, until my grandfather told him he would kill him!!!

He is the only one in my mom's family that is still a Dem! What does that tell ya?

[StrangerInParadise]

Muck Fapes!

[oyez]

Listen, some of my favorite neighbors are pro-Bush, and they're surprisingly decent people.

I stopped reading right there.

[samtheman]

refute the KNOWN FACT that the document matches exactly the default settings in Microsoft Word

She writes a whole book but remains stymied by a single fact. It must be painful to be a leftist idiot.

[NorCalRepub]

so true....the more she spouts that BS....the more ridiculous it sounds......just like Palmeiro saying he got steroids from a Vit B shot...the more he says it, the more he alienates....old Mary needs to seek life elsewhere

[KarlInOhio]

CBS has learned important lessons from this...Always Chyron everything. Never display the "original" documents. Never, ever post the "original" documents. Only display retyped excerpts to destroy the evidence.

If they had followed these rules TankerKC wouldn't have seen that the memos were the wrong format for USAF memos of the time, Buckhead wouldn't have seen the type face, and the image switching between the "original" and the MS Word version could never have been created. Mapes and Rather would likely have gotten away with it.

[Jersey Republican Biker Chick]

Just damn, and I don't even own any white sheets. Can you come to meetings in flower print?

[Zon]

Memo to: Mary Mapes

Nobody that matters is interested in your book

Regards,
Oz

P.S. People in third world countries without toilet paper will eventually appreciate your efforts.