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DAN SAVES DEMOCRACY
Suddenly, Dan Rather is an opponent of big government:
On CNN’s Larry King Live Thursday night, Dan Rather insisted that his $70 million lawsuit against CBS was an attempt to save “our democracy” from “big government interference and intimidation in news” ...
Whoa there, crazy old guy! You think you were attacked by “big government”? That’s not what your producer says:
What was different in our case was the brand new and bruising power of the conservative blogosphere, particularly the extremists among them. They formed a tightly knit community of keyboard assault artists ...
So who took Dan down - big government or a a “community of keyboard assault artists”? This story is jumping around like a ... searches for appropriate Ratheresque faux-folksy image ... like a square-dancin’ squirrel on a Gatlinburg griddle! The LA Times’ Tim Rutten ain’t none too impressed, no sir:
Dan Rather took the best seat in the house that Murrow built and then left the place a ruin. Now he has returned to torch the rubble.
CBS shouldn’t be alarmed; the last entity Rather tried to destroy ended up getting re-elected.
I recall fondly reading avidly the analyses posted on LGF, Powerline, and other conservative blogs, presently a compelling yet rebuttable presumption that Dan Rather and Mary Mapes relied on patently fake memos. I can remember sitting in front of the TV waiting for the CBS NEWS to begin, telling my wife “okay, now Rather has to address the many points arguing against the authenticity of the memos. If he doesn’t, or worse, he continues claiming they’re authentic, he will effectively have ended his career”.
He chose to do the latter. He has no one to blame but himself.
Posted by wronwright on 2007 09 22 at 11:45 AM • permalinkDanny boy is not only around the bend, he’s effing insane.
I presume that his ego is so huge that he can’t live without publicly blaming someone else for shooting himself in the foot….and is so arrogant that he wants to get paid for doing so.
I keep on wondering if Silky Pony will drop his presidential campaign to take up this case for Gunga Dan. That would be killing two birds with one stone.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2007 09 22 at 12:03 PM • permalink‘On CNN’s Larry King Live Thursday night, Dan Rather insisted that his $70 million lawsuit against CBS was an attempt to save “our democracy” from “big government interference and intimidation in news” ...’
Crap. Leftys just think they’re ENTITLED to an income.
Same old story.
Posted by Dave Surls on 2007 09 22 at 12:03 PM • permalinkWanna see an act of REAL “courage”, Dan?
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2007 09 22 at 12:33 PM • permalinkWaaaaaaaiiiiiitttt a minute. Didn’t any of you ever consider that “a community of big government keyboard assault artists” might have been responsible? I mean, where do all those millions (nay, perhaps billions) of dollars raked in by LGF and Powerline come from, exactly, anyway? (To say nothing of the
thousands hundreds tensamounts garnered by such as timblair.net and Iowahawk.)I think Scary Mary (streetname) Mapes and Gunga Dan just might actually be on to something this time. Now I wonder, where did Paco stash Lucy Rameriz/wronwright?
Posted by JorgXMcKie on 2007 09 22 at 01:04 PM • permalinkI can remember sitting in front of the TV waiting for the CBS NEWS to begin, telling my wife “okay, now Rather has to address the many points arguing against the authenticity of the memos. If he doesn’t, or worse, he continues claiming they’re authentic, he will effectively have ended his career”.
I remember that, too, wronwright. By the Friday after the Wednesday report I absolutely “knew” he had no choice but to come out on the CBS News that evening and either retract the story or say there were serious problems with it and it was being re-investigated. I would have bet a very substantial amount of money that those would be the words that would come out of his mouth. Then the broadcast started and I was floored when he defended the report and put the whole controversy off as the work of “partisan political operatives”. At that point it was obvious that he had stepped into some sort of parallel universe which was governed by different natural laws from our own.
I gave him one more small chance when the Monday newscast rolled around (perhaps someone near him had beat some sense into him over the weekend), but instead of taking the opportunity to snatch his career back from the jaws of defeat, he went even farther into crazyland by putting on incompetent “experts” that he practically pulled off the street. (Tim Blair gets a mention in that link.) It could only end badly after that. Rather was clearly grasping at straws. It was also clear that he had absolutely zero understanding of the technology (computers, typewriters, fonts, superscripts) at issue. That cluelessness did nothing to help his case.
jorgxmckie—Lucywright is still on maternity leave after that incident with Kevin Rudd…
When she gets into character, she REALLY gets into character.
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2007 09 22 at 02:15 PM • permalinkI miss the old .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Since Katy Couric, the bimbo who replaced him started, the show’s ratings have tanked. Dan charitably observed that CBS news had been “tarted up and dumbed down.” Tarted up, definitely. Dumbed down? Not possible.
I always got a good laugh when dummy Dan went on foreign assignments. He always wore an Abercrombie & Fitch safari jacket with epaulets and big pockets. What a ridiculous picture he presented!
It’s true he misses the limelight which is probably why he is suing. In fact, he’s a jackass and will only succeed in making himself more of a laughingstock.
Posted by Mystery Meat on 2007 09 22 at 02:45 PM • permalinkWas it really three years ago that Dan and SeeBS embarrassed themselves? All this reminiscing makes it feel like it was just yesterday (like a reunion of friends and family).
And as to practically pulling so-called “experts” right off the street—they actually did with the IBM typewriter repairman in Manhattan (IIRC they referred to him as an engineer). I think he’s the one that introduced the notion of the $10,000 (or whatever) IBM typesetting machine that “could’ve” been used to type the TANG memos.
Rather’s complaint (the lawsuit) does make especially humorous reading. He essentially claims to have been an “empty suit” talking-head, merely reading the teleprompter, and was made the scapegoat for someone else’s screw-up.
Copies made a Kinko’s—25 cents apiece.
Phone calls to Mary Mapes—25 cents a minute.
Dan Rather getting caught perpetrating a fraud on the American public…
Priceless!Truly the Internet’s finest moment. “Buckhead” ...
That reminds me of another reason that Dan and company got knocked on their collective can. They couldn’t understand the rise of the SME (the Subject Matter Expert) on the Internet. They refused to beleive that someone could look at a memo and tell right away that there was something stinky about the font used. In their mind, it had to be a conspiracy. They were so used to the reporters’ standard of knowing a tiny bit about this and that while pretending to know everything about everything that it took them by surprise when the rules changed, and the Internet brought forward people who really knew what they were talking about, instead of just pretending to. At that point, they didn’t stand a chance.
They couldn’t understand the rise of the SME (the Subject Matter Expert) on the Internet. They refused to beleive that someone could look at a memo and tell right away that there was something stinky about the font used.
What’s worse—the amount of knowledge necessary to spot the fakes was incredibly low. I’ve played around a bit with TeX; that was enough to teach me the difference between fixed-width and proportional fonts, kerning, etc. The “documents” were so obviously out of a modern word processor it hurt that anyone would think of them as dating from the typewriter era!
How insulated from reality—or just plain delusional—do you have to be to believe those things were real?
Posted by Rob Crawford on 2007 09 22 at 05:52 PM • permalinkYou people are too much. It isn’t about the money, or attempting to resurrect a career from the landfill of false accusations. It’s the principle of the thing.
Of course, he didn’t actually define what principle he is attempting to uphold here. Vague catch-phrases from the 60’s (when bigness was designated an evil unto itself) don’t suffice when talking about principles. At least not for serious people.
They couldn’t understand the rise of the SME (the Subject Matter Expert) on the Internet. They refused to beleive that someone could look at a memo and tell right away that there was something stinky about the font used.
You know, that appears to be entering the courtroom, too. Last year I was on a jury in a multi-million dollar (asking for $110+M) malpractice suit. The plaintiff’s lawyer was one of those guys who “knows everything” and he brought in a witness (PhD Econ) who proceeded to blow it by making assertions that three out of the eight jurors knew was wrong (and we explained it to the others during deliberations). I think the reason the other five bought our explanation of what was wrong and why was rather quickly accepted because all but one of them were regular users of the webs and most had a hobby or such that the visited blogs to read about. They were accustomed to ‘ordinary people’ being expert at something specific.
I wonder what other changes in behavior the web will drive?
Posted by JorgXMcKie on 2007 09 22 at 06:04 PM • permalinkI wonder what other changes in behavior the web will drive?
I wonder how many of us truly appreciate what a revolution occurred circa 1996, when the Web exploded (note to Larvatus Prodeo - I don’t mean that it blew up into little bits.) We’re living in a turning point more momentous than Gutenberg’s.
I try to imagine living back in the 1980s, and I can’t. Too primitive.
<grouchy old man voice>
In my day we went to the library and did our research with Real Books which we looked up in card catalogs and we made our notes on 3x5 note cards and encyclopedias took up an entire shelf which nobody ever looked at because they were out of date as soon as they were printed and we liked it!
</grouchy old man voice>#19
In my day we went to the library and did our research with Real Books which we looked up in card catalogs and we made our notes on 3x5 note cards and encyclopedias took up an entire shelf which nobody ever looked at because they were out of date as soon as they were printed and we liked it!I liked it then too but I don’t think I’d like it now. Only problem is I’m overwhelmed with data, am on almost constant information overload and don’t know what to do with half that information - which I really don’t need.
Wish I had some way of defragging my brain on a regular basis. A holiday now and again just doesn’t do it.
What? Winnie Mandela “necklaced” Dave S.? That’s awful!
Look, I’ve got nothing against “necklacing.” I may even have indulged in it a few times. And if you were to look in my “special” video collection at the bottom of my sock drawer, you might find a few DVDs devoted to various iterations of it. But I have always been the “necklacer”, and never the “necklacee.” Besides which, I’m pretty sure Winnie is a chick, so unless we’re talking about a prosthetic, a hand pump and a quarter-cup of condensed milk, I’m not sure that would work.
Sadly, I must admit I have absolutely no idea what Dave S is talking about.
Posted by wronwright on 2007 09 22 at 11:53 PM • permalinkIt seems that Dan Rather, having been shot down in flames by some backwoods hicks with shotguns on his bold attempt to divebomb the president and win the war, has crawled from the wreckage, limped back to the runway, found the decrepit old World War 1 biplane sitting in some forgotten corner of the hangar, and is yanking repeatedly on the propeller trying to get the old wreck started for a kamikaze run, determined to take his target out this time.
(Yeah, I know, something about hitting rock bottom and looking for a shovel would be more appropriate, but that’s just so cliche these days…)
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Dan Rather to the rescue of democracy? We’re doomed! Looks like Tsaritsa Hillary and the dictatorship of the Arkansarchs, after all. I hope Wronwright’s got enough room in the Tardis to evacuate all of us (I’ve got dibs on 1939).