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How did the establishment media come to a place where as Lancey Howard wrote, it "tried to corrupt a Presidential election by using forged documents to support a one-sided hit-piece interview with a Kerry fundraiser just weeks before the election"?

Nor, as Theresawithanh pointed out, was this Rather's only sin. Even so, Rather was hardly alone in this mischief, CNN has had its share of phony Vietnam stories. The New York Times would shape any account to further its gay agenda.

How did the establishment media get to a place where plagiary (Goodwin,Barnicle), outright fabrication (New York Times, Washington Post), forgery(CBS), staged exploding trucks(NBC), and blatant agenda shopping have become bylines of these once revered media icons?

I think it goes back a half century to the civil rights struggle. There the cause was so righteous and so important that it was unthinkable not to shape the story to fully present the invidiousness of prejudice. Next came Vietnam, and again, the horror of the war, the apparent futility of so many deaths, created a temptation which could not be resisted by all to present a picture which would end the holocaust. Richard Nixon acted counter to this instinct to stop the war, at least in their eyes, so his destruction by the media was rationalized because audio tapes confirmed his guilt. Big media was once again confirmed in their notions of their own exceptionalism.

Since the 1950s media has seen itself as right on all the big issues and Republicans/conservatives wrong. Watergate ensured that Hubris would distort the media until a fall was inevitable because Watergate told the media that it had a role in the making as well as the reporting of the news.

They tried to unhorse Reagan with a synthetic recreation of Watergate called Iran-Contra but it fizzled. Undaunted, the media easily deconstructed a honorable but media challenged George H.W. Bush in favor of their flawed new paladin, Bill Clinton. Here, the media really had to hold its nose and work its bias for the peoples' greater good. Here, the Faustian compromises became harder to rationalize as audio tapes which scuttled Richard Nixon had to be dismissed when produced by Gennifer Flowers. The phase "knee pad media" had become commonplace by the time DNA left the sympathies of the media on the wrong side of this "gate."

Clinton's disgrace caused the nation to see what only some in the media like Bernie Goldberg who broke ranks and told truth to power could or would see, the Democrats were clearly not on the right side of the big issues. But old habits die hard and old convictions die even harder and self righteousness never dies in some. For Rather, now a septuagenarian, how hard it must have been to surrender to new realities.

Time enough for one last crusade. Mount up and ride to the sound of the guns. The world must be saved from Vietnam redux. Rather and his generation can smell a quagmire from a continent away. George W. Bush must be unhorsed as was his father but, alas, the son had gone to school on his father's media wreck and nothing seemed to work against his persona.

It was not enough to confect news on 60 minutes with Clarke and to smear Bush with Wilson, Bush held his position in the polls. Playing defense against the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was not getting the job done. Bush himself, his character, his infuriating image of rectitude, must be destroyed so that the nation might be spared another disaster worse than Vietnam. Oh the glory, to save the nation once again, to be right once again on the biggest issue of the new generation, to bring truth and order to the world! Legacy thrice and forever secured!

But there is no time to lose, the election is only a few months away and against the resistance of talk radio and the likes of FreeRepublic, we are making no discernible headway. Our ratings are disintegrating to 50% of our glory days and our newscasts are disputed on the internet before the delayed broadcast reaches California. What to do? Here is the matter of Bush's Guard service....

Let us draw a charitable curtain and leave the speculation about the mechanics of how CBS succumbed this time to its Faustian temptations behind the drapes. Enough that it is obvious that CBS knew or should have known that it was inflicting a fraud on all of us. Enough that there is a word for this: Arrogance.

Dan Rather, Cromwell said it best: You have sitting here too long for the good you have been doing. Be gone, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!