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Last updated on March 5th, 2018 at 01:45 pm
John Leo identifies the Mary Mapes saga as one of the top 10 victim stories of the year: “For unknown reasons, Mapes’s new book is titled Truth and Duty rather than I Messed Up Big Time and I’m Sorry.” Roger L. Simon recently caught Mystified Mapes hawking her story on TV:
Mapes was out there in denial mode, blaming “conservative bloggers” through clenched teeth. Her body language was rigid and hostile. I imagined she was giving her publicist at St. Martin’s Press nightmares. You wouldn’t want to spend five minutes with this woman, let alone alone the time it would take to read 384 pages.
Still, Mapes has her fans. Seattle Post-Intelligencer associate publisher Kenneth F. Bunting is buying her book for his friends, although even he admits:
Yes, it is a tad defensive.
- I saw the video of her interview with Howard Kurtz. Defensive?! That’s like calling al-Zarqawi irritable. Also, the camera does not love Mary. She always looks like she’s been raiding the medicine cabinet.Posted by RebeccaH on 2005 11 13 at 03:54 PM • permalink
- “A tad defensive.” And Bill Burkett “gets some funny ideas.”Posted by Jim Treacher on 2005 11 13 at 04:58 PM • permalink
- Bunting’s comment is due to the well-know Seattle characteristic of understantment. The “-Itelligencer” part of the paper’s name stands as an oxymoron. The only virtue I could see in the rag when I lived there was that it carried Dilbert on its comics page, and the Seattle Times did not. I understand it has gotten worse since then.Posted by Michael Lonie on 2005 11 13 at 07:06 PM • permalink
- The most striking thing to me about Bunting’s column was that it was clear that he really didn’t know much, if anything, about the entire issue. It read like he had heard something about the whole affair but didn’t know any of the details, so Mapes version of reality (if you can call it that) was as good as any other. He apparently hadn’t read any of the stories debunking the documents, the Lucy Ramierez nonsense, Bill Burkett’s track record, it was all news to him I guess. And this guy is an associate publisher of a newspaper in one of the country’s largest media markets?
- @ DanG That view would be more common than you would wish. In the blogosphere, we tend to get ticked at people actively attacking the ideas and people we hold dear. Much of the reading public does not even rise to that level. “I heard it on the news…there’s some people who write nasty stuff on the internet…CBS had some story about Bush and the National Guard…the bloggers said terrible things about her and started following her around…”
The MSM still has an enormous legacy of credibility, and most people don’t research what’s told to them on the news. They have heard accusations of bias, but it just doesn’t seem worth looking into.
Posted by Assistant Village Idiot on 2005 11 13 at 09:24 PM • permalink
- Mapes is only a few japes away from a rubber room. One can picture her there, sitting on the floor in a wrap-around canvass blouse, rocking back and forth to the sound of a thousand 1973 IBM selectric typewriters clattering away in the echo chamber of her mind (her attention occasionally diverted by the cockatoo noises coming from the rubber room next door, where a sixty-ish female journalist, late of the New York Times, squawks vaguely snarky, but largely incoherent, sentence fragments . . . “Bush” . . .”Howard” . . . “Both belong in a penal colony”).
- “You bashers of Mary will have your comeuppence as soon she finds Lucy Ramirez.”
That should be forthcoming momentarily. I understand Mary has joined forces with O.J. Simpson in his fierce search for his wife’s killer, as he scours the golf courses of Florida.
Posted by Bruce Lagasse on 2005 11 14 at 08:21 PM • permalink
- Seattle Post-Intelligencer associate publisher Kenneth F. Bunting is buying her book for his friends…
There’s a reason I refer to that paper as the Post-Intelligence.
Michael Lonie’s right, the only thing worth reading in that birdcage-liner is Dilbert. Thankfully, thanks to the internet, I no longer need to buy it to read the strip.
- More proof that our president is Christian—he turns the other cheek to idiots like her. And unlike certain other former presidents I could name, when Mr. Bush is out of public life he will undoubtedly not write a book along the lines of “They Were So Fucking Mean To Me” or “Why My Administration Was Better Than The Current One Although It Seemed To Be The World’s Biggest Fustercluck At The Time.”Posted by Monroe Doctrine on 2005 11 15 at 11:19 AM • permalink
- ’Mapes chides the mainstream media for being spun into joining the attack on CBS, and paying no attention at all the story about Bush’s military service. ‘
How many cracks with the lead pipe will it take her to figure out it’s because she used forged documents?
Posted by IcallMasICM on 2005 11 15 at 01:32 PM • permalink
You bashers of Mary will have your comeuppence as soon she finds Lucy Ramirez.
Sorry; Lexa Doig already said she wouldn’t play the part again.
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 11 15 at 09:47 PM • permalink
- Re Lexa Doig as Lucy Ramirez.
In an interview with USA Today, Burkett may have hinted at where the name Lucy Ramirez originated.
After he received the documents in Houston, Burkett said, he drove home, stopping on the way at a Kinko’s shop in Waco to copy the six memos. In the parking lot outside, he said, he burned the ones he had been given and the envelope they were in. Ramirez was worried about leaving forensic evidence on them that might lead back to her, Burkett said, acknowledging that the story sounded fantastic. “This is going to sound like some damn sci-fi movie,” he said.
If he’s a sci-fi fan, he probably knew of Lexa Doig’s work, no? And, yes, his story does sound like a work of fiction.
