King of Zing . Com: Rather Pathetic

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September 16, 2004

Rather Pathetic

So, Gunga Dan strikes again.

On 60 Minutes II, Dan Rather went on the air and finally admitted that there are some 'legitimate questions' about the ~~memos~~ forgeries in regards to President (then First Lieutenant) Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard.

To paraphrase, Rather essentially stated that while challengers to the story have indeed disputed the legitimacy of the memos (typed on Microsoft's brand new Word 1973), nobody has dared challenge the substance of the memos, namely that Bush was a child of privilege who got into the Guard unfairly, and did not meet his service requirements.

Wow, Dan. You mean nobody bothered to challenge the content of obviously forged documents? I can't imagine why! Oh, wait, that's because the content of a forged document is irrelevant! Why in the world would I even remotely trust the content of six memos that I could forge myself in about 10 minutes? Yeesh!

So, to make a long story short, Gunga Dan and SeeBS are now admitting that the memos are "possibly" forgeries, yet they remain resolute in their claims that the content of the forged memos cannot be challenged.

Amazing.

Naturally, the story doesn't stop here. On every pundit's show, the major networks have trotted out their own brownshirts to slam bloggers, bulletin boards, and other New Media as amateurs unconcerned with the reliability of their own sources.

Naturally, the irony here is downright staggering. If we are amateurs, two questions must be posed:

1) How did CBS, the 'professionals', allow obvious forgeries to be run as news?

2) How did we worthless pajama-wearing amateurs debunk the 'news' story within two hours of its release?

If you have the answer to either of those questions, Mr. Rather, I'd love to hear it. Until then, consider yourself and the rest of the Old Media irrelevant.

Posted by Tim at September 16, 2004 10:04 PM