Courage for Dan Rather (Mapes rants!! Worst case of Bush Derangement Syndrome I've seen)

Real Clear Politics ^ | 9/21/07 | Mary Mapes

[teddyballgame]

Instantly, the far right blogosphere bully boys pronounced themselves experts on document analysis, and began attacking the form and font in the memos. They screamed objections that ultimately proved to have no basis in fact. But they captured the argument. They dominated the discussion by churning out gigabytes of mind-numbing internet dissertations about the typeface in the memos, focusing on the curl at the end of the "a," the dip on the top of the "t," the spacing, the superscript, which typewriters were used in the military in 1972.

It was a deceptive approach, and it worked.

These critics blathered on about everything but the content. They knew they would lose that argument, so they didn't raise it. They focused on the most obscure, most difficult to decipher element of the story and dove in, attacking CBS, Dan Rather, me, the story and the horse we rode in on -- without respite, relentlessly, for days.

[teddyballgame]

One word: delusional

[SubMareener]

I’ve seen Mapes’ birth certificate, and it is forged! She really is a Space Alien! ;-)

[theDentist]

Aww Mary, just because Danny boy decided to leave you holding the bag is no reason for you to blame the Pajama Media for your lack of ovarian fortitude to fight back and lay his offal at his feet.

[neodad]

far right blogosphere bully boys

Hey, I like the sound of that!

[Anti-Bubba182]

It’s sad.

[EQAndyBuzz]

Dear Ms. Mapes,

The typeface did not exist in 1972. Fact is you put on the air a phoney document. People did their research, you didn’t.

Get over it. Be grateful you are not in prison for being part of crime to forge documents to remove the leader of a free nation.

[Condor51]

Your link to the article ‘disappeared’, goes to the Home Page now.

[popdonnelly]

There is no explaining the mentality of some people. They’re incapable of facing reality. Just note them and ignore them.

[opus86]

These critics blathered on about everything but the content.

Uh, Mare...That's because the docs were so OBVIOUSLY fake that the content DIDN'T MATTER. The approach you've taken in presenting those documents was, "Prove that they're fake", instead of, "Here's proof that they're legitimate." That was Basic Journalism 101 when I was in HIGH SCHOOL.

[teddyballgame]

Bush Derangement Syndrome. Sadly, it afflicts millions and it’s effects can be devastating. For some it proves to be fatal. Thoughts & prayers to Mary and her family.

[Cymbaline]

These critics blathered on about everything but the content. They knew they would lose that argument, so they didn't raise it.

Well, you see Ms. Mapes, if the document in question was created in Microsoft Word using default fonts and settings, it doesn't really matter what the content is, does it? What part of this is hard to understand? You tried to pass off a forgery as real, and you got caught. Deal with it.

[teddyballgame]

Remember with Liberals it’s not the substance of the charges but the outrageous claims that matter. This is where the whole Drive By Media term started. Facts don’t matter. What matters is the headlines. When the facts are revealed, oh well time to move on, damage done. Except on this case, as the errors were so obvious from the very beginning and so transparant as to what CBS was trying to do - throw the election.

[Mad Dawg]

They knew they would lose that argument, so they didn't raise it. They focused on the most obscure, most difficult to decipher element of the story and dove in, attacking CBS, Dan Rather, me, the story and the horse we rode in on -- without respite, relentlessly, for days. [emphasis added]

Ms. Mapes: Two things and some advice:

Thing #1: We agree. The Republican bully boys resorted to something sneaky and toally unknown to the news media. It's called evidence. You didn't have any, except for what you forged.. They did. You lost.

Thing #2: When I was in school "dove" was a kind of bird and NOT the past form of "dive". But, of course,, that was when schools were about truth and not ideology and when journalists made an effort to discover rather than invent facts.

The advice: Get over it. You lost.

[SteveH]

Here is the article at the Huffington Post website:

Courage for Dan Rather

From Mapes' Truth and Duty book website:

Truth and Duty

In order to conclude that the documents are forged or utterly unreliable, two questions must be answered: 1) how could anyone have forged such pristinely accurate information; and 2) why would anyone have taken such great pains to forge the truth?

Can someone please explain?

[pieceofthepuzzle]

A sick individual who is clearly so biased she never had any business being in journalism in the first place. She got called out, and hates it. It’s that simple. Like many of her fellow travelers she appears to have no humility.

[Shqipo]

Somehow, Dan and Mary left out of their report that the fake docs were forwarded by known BDS patient Bill Burkett. I take it they didn’t find that relevant.

[jaydubya2]

"Actually, we had done a straightforward, well-substantiated story. We presented former Texas Lt. Governor Ben Barnes in his first ever interview saying that he had pulled strings to get the future president into the National Guard after a Bush family friend requested help in keeping the kid out of Vietnam.

And we showed for the first time a cache of documents allegedly written by Bush's former commander. The documents supported a mountain of other evidence that young Bush had dodged his duty and not been punished. They did not in any way diverge from the information in the sketchy pieces of the president's official record made available by the White House or the National Guard. In fact, to the few people who had gone to the trouble of examining the Bush record, these papers filled in some of the blanks."

Mary, of course the documents filled in the blanks! They were forged to do precisely that! This women is delusional.

[ErnBatavia]

On top of everything, she's such a babe.

(...wonder how she'd look in that candy bikini....)

[GlennBeck08]

Mary,

You get nothing! You lose! Good day, sir!