As Memogate/Rathergate heats up, it's entertaining to watch good old Texas Dan dance around the gigantic pink elephant in his living room as if it didn't exist. This story from the New York Observer is the best I've seen so far when it comes to demonstrating Rather's complete rejection of reality. The man is living in another dimension. He's always been a little nutty, but if he believes half this stuff then he's finally gone around the bend for good. This is a long one, but I just can't pass up this opportunity to examine Rather. It's just fascinating to watch a man's complete psychological breakdown. Let's take a look at some of the highlights.
As the headline of the story reads, the story begins with Rather's exortation to the president to 'Answer the questions.' He suggests, with no small amount of arrogance, that their campaign would be better off if they did. He elaborates that a lack of an official denial is somehow proof that the allegations are true.
"It’s never been fully, completely denied by the Bush-Cheney campaign or even the White House that he was suspended for meeting the standards of the Air Force or that he didn’t show up for a physical," he said. "The longer we go without a denial of such things—this story is true."
First of all, the president has BEEN denying these charges for over eight years. They came up in his gubernatorial campaign in Texas and then again in his first presidential campaign. He has said, time and again, that he completed his duty and is proud of his service. That is the answer, Mr. Rather. That is the denial. Of course, that isn't what Dan wants. What Dan wants is a direct point by point set of evidence proving that the president is telling the truth. He summarizes it as a simple 'deny it' but if that's all he wanted, he'd already be satisfied.
What's more, how exactly do you deny questions raised from false, bogus sources? I wonder if Rather would have such tenacity if someone asked him to prove that he'd never cheated on an exam in college? It's no more reasonible for Rather to ask the president to prove that he didn't disobey an order, considering the extent of record keeping over 30 years ago in the Texas Air National Guard. Indeed, this becomes a spinoff of the old courtroom trick: 'How long has it been since you stopped beating your wife?'
Rather continues his jaunt into fantasy land by taking a play from Hillary's playbook: it's a vast right-wing conspiracy to obfuscate the truth by questioning the documents!
"I think the public, even decent people who may be well-disposed toward President Bush, understand that powerful and extremely well-financed forces are concentrating on questions about the documents because they can’t deny the fundamental truth of the story," he said. "If you can’t deny the information, then attack and seek to destroy the credibility of the messenger, the bearer of the information. And in this case, it’s change the subject from the truth of the information to the truth of the documents. "This is your basic fogging machine, which is set up to cloud the issue, to obscure the truth," he said.
Dan, we're not seeking to destroy the credibility of the messenger. You've done a wonderful job of that, we wouldn't want to interfere. We're refuting the SOURCE of the information, not the bearer of it! While one should always take the source of condemning information in mind when reviewing the information, that isn't the issue here. If clearly, provably real memos had been brought forward and we sought to ignore them due to the source of the revelation (currently rumored to be MoveOn.Org) then he'd have a point. The source of the information, in this case, only provides us with the individual to arrest and charge with the various crimes associated with trying to sway a public election using fraudulent military documents. The documents themselves are the question, Mr. Rather, not the source.
But wait, it gets better. We're deep inside Neverneverland, Wonderland, or whatever fantasy world Rather inhabits when he suggests that he and his producer, Mary Mapes, have been trying to get these files for FIVE YEARS! That would put it back to when Bush was just beginning his first campaign in the primaries, such is the apparent foresight and wisdom of Dan and Co. I'm sorry, but you'd have to be an utter fool to believe that the Democrats, MoveOn.org, the Kerry campaign, AND the mainstream media had no clue that these existed for the last five years and only the unstoppable journalist team of Rather and Mapes was able to cajole the source into forking over the goods. It's simply absurd.
After writer Joe Hagan gives Rather ample opportunity to suggest these intellectually invalid arguments, he finally gets around to inquiring about the papers themselves. Dan's responses show an absolute disconnect with reality. Here's his opening salvo on the issue of forgery.
Mr. Rather said that it would require an exceptional amount of knowledge to craft a forgery—and not just the typographical kind. "You’d have to have an in-depth knowledge of Air Force manuals from 1971," he said. "You’d have to have Bush’s service record, you’d have to have the Air Force regulations from 1971, you’d have to know nearly all of the people involved directly at that time, including the squadron commander, who was Bush’s immediate superior, and his attitude at the time—you’d have to know all those things and weave all those things in."
He's absolutely right, and it's clear that the person who forged these documents didn't have an ounce of that knowledge. I can't believe he's actually refuting the accusation that they're bad forgeries by claiming that one would have to be a master forger to create these documents! The entire BASIS of the accusations is that they're very poor forgeries, full of both technical impossibilities as well as errors in jargon, context, and format. You're right, Dan, it would take someone who really knew what he was doing to forge these. The person who tried to do it in this instance apparently didn't know much about his subject, thanks for pointing that out.
But despite a number of experts calling the memos forgeries, he said that "the truth of these documents lies in the signatures and in the content, not just the typeface and the font-style. Let me emphasize once again, these are not exact sciences. Not like DNA or fingerprints."
I'm guessing Rather has been watching CBS's biggest hit, CSI, and now believes he's Gil Grissom. No, Dan, I'm sorry, they ARE exact sciences. In fact, from the little I know about them I'd say they're equal to or MORE exact than fingerprinting. The amount of knowledge one can gain from examining a historical document is vast, considering the accusations we've seen so far. He's suggesting that the signatures (which have not been verified and have several inconsistencies) and the content (also full of holes) somehow exonerate an otherwise completely bogus set of documents.
"In terms of the experts, you’re going to find an equal number of experts on the authenticity arguments," he said. "I don’t think that’s going to resolve the argument. The core truth of the reporting, I think it’s already clear that it’s true. And I think as time goes along, it will become even more apparent."
There are an equal number of experts who think they're authentic? WHO, Mr. Rather, WHO? Give us names! Bring them out for questioning! Every expert you've referred to in your reporting so far has either refused to be named or has since refuted the accuracy of the documents! Here, Rather is intentionally living in a state of denial. No one has yet to even find one partisan 'expert' that they could parade out and claim the docs are real, but he thinks it's 50/50.
He's then confronted with the street address given for the president on the documents...an address he had moved from the year before the documents were supposedly created. Hagan also asks him about the fact that the signatures are different from the way Killian always signed official documents.
"Both of the allegations are wrong," he said. "I feel confident in saying that." But when asked to offer a specific rebuttal to the observation about the address, Mr. Rather didn’t have one, saying only: "It’s our position, and I believe we demonstrated it …. The address doesn’t match the Bush service time frame—that’s their basic allegation? We think that’s wrong. We took a look at this, and we just think they’re wrong about it."
Ladies and gentleman, you're watching one of the most esteemed reporters in the history of televised journalism stick his fingers in his ears and go LA LA LA LA LA LA LA NOT LISTENING like a four-year-old who's been told it's his bedtime. Can you believe the arrogance and denial involved here? The man is claiming that the president lied about what STREET he lived on over 30 years ago! Man, he's a crafty one, that Dubya, knowing that he should lie about his move so that he could eventually prove damning documents about his service to be forgeries when they were really authentic. I bet he came up with that plan the same day he delivered the magical typewriter to Maj. Killian that prints documents that look identical to Microsoft Word docs and convinced Killian to sign any documents he wrote about Bush in a new double-secret signature so they'd be hard to trace back to him.
If there's one comfort here, it's knowing that whatever mystical imaginary world Dan occupies, it's likely a happy, pretty place. He probably spends his days frolicking through fresh heather and daffodils with his friends the leprechauns and the prankish tree fairies. Back here in the real world, we can only sit back and feel satisfied that he's probably happy there...and if this issue keeps going the way it has been, he may soon have plenty of free time to spend there with his little forest pals.
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