Wednesday, November 02, 2005
MAPES: "I WAS AN IDIOT"
Ex-CBS producer Mary Mapes, fired after her Rathergate role was exposed, complains in a book extract published by Vanity Fair:
"If I was an idiot, it was for believing in a free press that is able to do its job without fear or favor.”
She was an idiot for believing she could do her job without facts.
”I didn’t know that the attack on our story was going to be as effective as a brilliantly run national political campaign, because that is what it was: a political campaign."
And her ill-researched attack on Bush was ... what, exactly? Mapes’ soon-to-be-published book, by the way, is entitled Truth and Duty. Which leaves the field so wide-open for jokes that at the moment I can’t think of any.
At one point, for example, she asserts that CBS News chief Andrew Heyward said that if the bloggers could come up with “lousy analysts” to attack the authenticity of the memos CBS could find its own “lousy analysts."
At last—the mystery of “document expert” Bill Glennon is explained!