Posted on 05/01/2012 6:47:53 AM PDT by MindBender26
Dan Rather just wont let it go.
Nearly eight years after his fabled career at CBS News imploded like a death star over the notorious George W. Bush/Texas Air National Guard segment on 60 Minutes Wednesday, he cant stop combing the debris for shards of vindication.
I have a story to tell from my point of view, he says about his new book, Rather Outspoken: My Life in the News, which roasts network management for its spineless behavior during the Bush episode; takes potshots at his successor in the CBS Evening News anchor chair, Katie Couric, as a purveyor of News Lite; and settles scores with former colleagues who, as he writes, after pretending to be friends for all those years, stealthily snuck around giving anonymous newspaper quotes and otherwise scheming to put the dirk in deep when I was down and hurting.
Rather explains: I wanted to tell it as honestly and as candidly as I could withas Lyndon Johnson used to saythe bark off.
The Sept. 8, 2004, Bush segment and its use of dubious documents to bolster the case that the 43rd president benefited from family connections and then went AWOL during his Vietnam-era stint in a champagne unit of the guard, plus Rathers subsequent lawsuit against the network he served for 44 years24 of them as anchor and managing editor of CBSs flagship news programaccount for only a fourth of the book. Rather initially dug in his heels during the firestorm that accompanied his damning report on a sitting president two months before his reelection. But he ultimately apologized for airing widely debunked photocopies of purported memos critical of young Bushs performance and allegedly written by his commanding officer, the late Jerry B. Killian, lieutenant colonel in the Texas Air National Guard, saying CBS News could no longer vouch for their authenticity.
A CBS-commissioned investigation of the disasterheaded by Richard Thornburgh, U.S. attorney general when Bushs father was president, and Associated Press chief executive Louis D. Boccardifaulted Rather and his top producer, Mary Mapes, among others, for their misplaced reliance on a dubious source and their sloppy vetting of the questionable documents, which should never have aired. They made the situation far worse, the investigation concluded, by defending the documents for nearly two weeks after the initial reportnever mind the mounting evidence against them from the blogosphere, competitors in the mainstream media, and CBSs own hired document experts. Five news executives and producers, including Mapes, lost their jobs in the aftermath, and 60 Minutes Wednesday was canceled.
But these days Rather insists the Killian memos were real. Pop Quiz
I believe them to be genuine, he tells The Daily Beast, holding forth in his corner office at his weekly HDNet magazine program, Dan Rather Reports, in a musty old building off Times Square. I did at the time, I did in the immediate aftermath of it, and yes, I do now ... And I think the longer we go, nobody has ever proven that the documents were not what they purported to be, and after this length of time and given the controversy and high profile of it, my view is that if they were not genuine, by this time somebody wouldve come forward and said heres the proof that theyre not. Nobody has done that. (Unfortunately for Rather, nobody has come forward with proof that they are in fact legitimate, and the preponderance of the available evidence continues to cast doubt on their authenticity.)
...Refrigerator Perry in a bad dress.
[followed by]
http://www.mcculloughsite.net/stingray/images/9-00robin-rather.jpg
Darnit, Bender! It’s gonna take DAYS to get the afterimage out of my mind.
I remember the “Fridge” from back in the day I still loved football. It just ain’t the same now...
Tell me you can look at that picture of her and not think of “Mongo Like Sheriff Bart”
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_cPw_GFunY0w/SeiMtOY7l7I/AAAAAAAABDc/fZI5Uc64TwE/s400/mongo.jpg
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