Rather: Still a shmuck
Confederate Yankee hears Dan Rather on the air defending his National Guard story and the documents behind it and now he has the audio to prove it. Says Rather: “I believe them to be real. I wouldn’t have put them on the air if I hadn’t… The story was true…. To this day, nobody has even proved that the documents were not what they purported to be…. I still believe it to be true. In fact, it is true. And any reasonable person looking at the facts knows that what we reported in the story was absolutely true….”
Tags: journalism
November 7th, 2006 at 4:49 pm
Jarvis: Still Pompous
November 7th, 2006 at 6:20 pm
So far as I know, he’s right - nobody has actually shown them to be fake. So why is Rather a schmuck for defending his story?
November 7th, 2006 at 6:23 pm
Jarvis: Still profound.
November 7th, 2006 at 6:42 pm
So sad that in defending someone (Bush) from unproven scandal allegations, those doing so decided to take Rather down through unproven scandal allegations.
Let those who aren’t schmucks cast the first stone…
November 7th, 2006 at 8:17 pm
It must really suck to be a moderate lefty because anytime you stray away from the excepted theology the “Kenneth’s†demand you check the frequencies.
But bless your little hearts because you give me a serene, tranquil feeling. Because even if team lefty wins today, I know there are million guys out there just like the above and you are going to force the Dems to overplay their hand. So, if you could, please help with a couple items—
Speaker Pelosi and Everyone one together! I-m-p-e-a-c-h-m-e-n-t!
November 7th, 2006 at 8:29 pm
“Jarvis: Still profound.”
Yes, because calling Rather a Schmuck is truly profound ;-?. Jarvis often has an interesting perspective but trying to call him profound for this post is like trying to call someone profound for yelling “Neener…neener…neener!” It is more than a stretch, it’s just silly.
PS
While there has been some controversy over the provenance of the documents, the substance of the allegations has not been disproved. Most of the hype over the story was stock-in-trade Republican manufactured indigence to divert attention to the actual truth about Bush’s National Guard service.
November 7th, 2006 at 10:05 pm
I don’t know what more proof anyone could need than the fact that the documents can be reproduced exactly with Microsoft Word. But I know it’s difficult to reason someone away from a faith-based conclusion.
November 7th, 2006 at 10:21 pm
Man, a lot of Dan Rather kool-aid drinkers here.
November 7th, 2006 at 10:28 pm
Most of the hype over the story was stock-in-trade Republican manufactured indigence to divert attention to the actual truth about Bush’s National Guard service.
And the “actual truth” is what?
The following is a copy/paste from something I saved about Bush’s National Guard service after viewing it at another site. I don’t know the identity of the author. I don’t have the expertise to know if all he/she said (below) is fact. But I’ll bet it’s closer to the truth than Rather got!
QUOTE:
“Never mind GWB had 952 Guard service points when 300 are required in 6 years.
Never mind GWB had 52 points his last year of service, 1972, when 50 were required.
Never mind GWB flew a single seat fighter. (I know of no, zero, none, instructor pilots who would get in a jet with someone who did not qualify to be in that seat).
Never mind the risk of driving the 106 was higher that being in a swift boat.
Never mind GWB had better grades that both Al Gore and Jon F’ing Carry.
Never mind GWB has a Yale undergrad and Harvard MBA. While AlGore flunked Divinity School and dropped out of law school.
Never mind GWB GWB had higher military assessment scores than Jon F’ing Carry.
Never mind GWB has had an Honorable Discharge. While Jon F’ing Kerry had a review board review his service record and gave him an honorable discharge years after his service, indicating his original discharge had been anything but Honorable.
Never mind the economy is recovering after both a recession and 9/11
.
Never mind that there have been zero attacks against US targets since 9/11.
Never mind GWB has gotten his agenda accomplished in Congress (while I might not agree on all the issues) he gets things done.
Never mind stubborn little things like facts.”
November 7th, 2006 at 10:40 pm
So you’re not going to watch Rather on the DAILY SHOW’s election coverage tonight?
November 7th, 2006 at 11:13 pm
“Never mind stubborn little things like facts.â€
Clearly you take your own advice.
“Never mind the economy is recovering after both a recession and 9/11″
You call 8 trillion dollars in debt and climbing “recovery?” And multi-billion dollar war that isn’t even accounted for in the stated budget deficit.
“Never mind that there have been zero attacks against US targets since 9/11.”
Instead, GWB has gutted our constitution and its protections and turned the the US into a dictatorship with secret arrests, secret prisons, secret trials with secret evidence and even **secret methods of “harsh” interrogation** (aka, torture) that detainees aren’t even allowed to tell their attorneys (meaning the government can never let any interrogated detainee out for fear they will tell these secret methods.) Just try and tell me that the terrorists haven’t won–we are sacrificing our very ideals for false promises of safety.
Your false claims are too numerous to bother enumerating…You live in a fantasy world.
November 8th, 2006 at 12:02 am
Right, secret…then how the hell do you know fantasy boy?
November 8th, 2006 at 12:25 am
“Right, secret…then how the hell do you know fantasy boy?”
Apparently nuance is something that escapes you. Where are the secret prisons? Who is in them? How long have they been there? What is the evidence against them? These things are still secret. Your disingenuous ignorance is shows that you don’t really care about freedom, only that “your side” (the side of authoritarianism) has the upper hand–like the purges in Stalinist Russia or Communist China.
Currently GWB can declare anyone in the world, including US citizens **in the US** an “enemy combatant” and keep them jailed forever in secret–with no right to judicial review. That is a **real fact**. You can read the legislation. That is **real** dictatorial power–the same kind the constitution was designed specifically to protect us from. Why is it you don’t care about freedom? Real freedom is what America is about, at least until your GOP friends turned it on its head.
November 8th, 2006 at 1:22 am
The deposition of Dan Rather’s evidence against Bush is like the acquittal of OJ Simpson. Dispute the evidence, make a federal case over it to remove the spotlight from the merit of the case to let lose the criminal. Speaker Pelosi, let’s keep it real with a serious 60 minutes investigatation of who handled those no bid war contracts, why Bechtle is cutting and running. May Mr Rather find the real paper that leads to a well-deserved impeachment!
November 8th, 2006 at 2:47 am
You lefties should be having a good time tonight. Live it up a little, get yourself a cocktail, and maybe throw out some good natured banter. But no, we get somber sophomoric bullshit defending an old news reader that pissed away his career’s work in a silly partisan gambit.
Taking a spin around du tonight and it’s the same thing. Self righteous blather and humorless people.
November 8th, 2006 at 3:10 am
Rather’s quote seems factually correct. It’s probably why he was set-up and hung out to dry. shRub was derilect in his duties and to make it about Rather was perfect cover. Prof. Jarvis needs to write more about the echo-chamber (especially how crucial stories become non-issues - such as Bev Harris’ Black Box Voting. Citizen journalism at it’s FINEST!! - if only MSM had cared).
November 8th, 2006 at 11:13 am
First, Ravo, the documentations points are essentially meaningless- that last year, he only earned 41- someone gave him a freebie of fifteen points to put it over the minimum. In 1973, he won the majority of his points in just seven days, which are widely believed to have ben ‘make up days’ because he had not been showing up. His commanders in Alabama claim he never showed up, and his documentation, whic was provided with the names conveniently torn offshows him completing drills in Houston, even though those commanders say he never returned.
On the matter of grades, If I recall correctly, both men had near identical GPAs, although I’m not sure John Kerry’s grades have to do with Bush’s service, or his abominable record as president?
And, as other commenters have stated, record debts are not a ‘recovery.’ they are a bankruptcy waiting to happen.
Lastly, there was an attempted terrorist atack just this year, which would have been successful had the would be suicide bomber managed to uignite himself..so that’s all relative, isn’t it?
November 8th, 2006 at 11:46 am
Discouraging that Jarvis doesn’t even consider that Dan Rather may be right.
November 8th, 2006 at 12:59 pm
“The deposition of Dan Rather’s evidence against Bush is like the acquittal of OJ Simpson.”
Yeah, like the blood sample that spent a day in a cop’s back pocket. I have no idea if OJ was guilty (though if I had to guess I’d say “yes”) and nobody ever will because all the evidence against him got tainted by one cop’s obvious dishonesty.
The lesson here is whether your cause is right or wrong, once you start fudging the data you deserve to lose.
November 8th, 2006 at 1:19 pm
“The lesson here is whether your cause is right or wrong, once you start fudging the data you deserve to lose.”
Interesting, because it was allies of GWB who shredded key parts of his National Guard record. I’m glad you, by your own logic, now have to admit that GWB has no credibility on his National Guard service.
November 8th, 2006 at 1:58 pm
Here in Austin, stacks of Bush’s National Guard records were found in the dumpster in Camp Mabry. Most likely they had been picked over to remove any incriminationg evidence. Apparently very few people read an account by a military journalist that concluded that Bush gamed the system and did not serve his time.
How will I explain to my grandkids that a real war hero was maligned and a deserter was protected by the mainstream media?
Who served with Bush? Why didn’t he take his drug test/physical?
Where are the answers for these questions?
November 8th, 2006 at 3:23 pm
Hiding data is a lesser sin than fudging it.
In court it’s obstruction of justice, but it doesn’t call into question the veracity of the data you do present, just its completeness.
Once you’ve been caught doing it, whenever you speak, people will rightly ask “So what are you leaving out?”
In court, fudging data is perjury, and once you’ve been caught, *anything else you say* is no longer valid evidence either. People will rightly say “I already know you’re a liar, so I’m disregarding every word you utter.”
You want to prove OJ’s guilty? Start by discarding anything Vannatter and Fuhrman have been within fifty feet of, as any halfway skeptical jury will presume it might be bogus. That’s how Goldman finally won in civil court, with footprint evidence collected by an *entirely different* group of police.
You want to prove stuff about Bush? Start by throwing Dan Rather overboard, along with any “evidence” he has ever been been within fifty feet of.
While Bush did log time in a jet fighter, so he must have shown up at least part of the time, it still remains possible that you can someday prove that he went on a bender and blew off his last year of service.
If you do manage to prove that, Dan Rather will *still* be a liar with no right to expect anything he says on any subject to be given the least bit of credence, and defending him will still reflect poorly on the honesty and judgement of those who do so.
November 8th, 2006 at 3:37 pm
Fake but true!
Now *that’s* journalism, CBS-style.
November 8th, 2006 at 3:39 pm
Whatever happened to Lucy Ramirez?
November 8th, 2006 at 4:04 pm
“Hiding data is a lesser sin than fudging it.”
Oh, so now you are one of the “moral relativists” that you presumably revile. Actually, tampering with evidence–including deleting it–even in a civil suit can and does result in **default judgments** against the person who deleted the material. I would think that tampering with and deleting federal National Guard records is a crime in itself. Glad to see you’ve chosen such a firm moral high ground ;-> (That’s sarcasim, just in case it isn’t obvious to you.)
“While Bush did log time in a jet fighter, so he must have shown up at least part of the time,”
Boy, that’s some strong evidence you have there! The point has never whether he showed up **some** but rather whether he used family connections to get in and to doge his legal obligations to serve his full duty once in. You keep trying to change the subject because you are wrong so often you have to try and distract people rather than defend your hero on the facts.
“you do manage to prove that, Dan Rather will *still* be a liar with no right to expect anything he says on any subject to be given the least bit of credence, and defending him will still reflect poorly on the honesty and judgement of those who do so.”
Rather has decades of credibility from his years as an exemplary journalist. Do you? Even if he were to be wrong on one issue, that would not negate all of his credibility. Only an idiot would try to argue that it would. But, I suppose it is more satisfying for such a hypothetical person to try to argue that Rather is the person we should be talking about rather than the **real issue**: GWB and his lies and power grab.
November 8th, 2006 at 4:20 pm
Lucy Ramirez? Anybody? Maybe she’s hiding under Scote’s smoldering keyboard…
November 8th, 2006 at 4:46 pm
“Rather has decades of credibility from his years as an exemplary journalist.”
Had. Then he insisted on the validity of obviously cumpter-generated documents supposedly from the 1970s. I’m old enough to remember what tyewritten documents look like, and so is he. Did he consciously go with something he knew was false? Did he ignore the mental alarm bells because he so wanted the story to be true? I don’t know what was going on in his head, I can’t know, and ultimately I don’t care. What matters is he went ahead “evidence” that was obviously bogus, and is still sticking by it.
Rather had decades of fame before the Internet came along and people could fact-check his ass - now I have to wonder how much other stuff did he make up? How many other times did he bend the rules, though maybe not as far?
I expect politicans to lie. Reporters are supposed to catch them at it and point it out. If they’re known to be liars too, what use are they?
“Oh, so now you are one of the “moral relativists†that you presumably revile.”
Uh, no. Murder is a greater crime than assault and battery. Armed robbery is a greater crime than picking pockets. This makes me a relativist?
“You keep trying to change the subject”
*I* keep changing the subject?
The title of this thread is “Rather: Still a schmuck.”
He’s not a schmuck because of anything to do with the *merits* of the case but with the *methods*. (See above, if I had to guess, I’d say OJ’s probably guilty, and Fuhrman is without a doubt a schmuck who destroyed any chance there ever was of putting him in jail. Anti-Fuhrman doesn’t make you pro-OJ, and anti-Rather doesn’t make you pro-Bush).
Even if everything you say about Bush is true, the facts remain that (1) Rather is a liar and (2) Rather’s lies have made it harder for you to ever convince anyone about anything related to Bush/TANG.
So why are you still pimping for him?
November 8th, 2006 at 5:12 pm
“So why are you still pimping for him?”
So now you are calling Dan Rather a prostitute? Have you no shame? (Actually, I think the answer is pretty obvious.)
“Uh, no. Murder is a greater crime than assault and battery. Armed robbery is a greater crime than picking pockets.”
Murder? Armed robbery? You are changing the subject. This isn’t about murder or anything like it. It is about GWB and his fishy service record.
“I have to wonder how much other stuff did he make up? How many other times did he bend the rules, though maybe not as far?”
Ah, completely made up allegations. No facts what so ever. Republican Stock in Trade.
Of course, you are still obsessed with Rather. A complete bit of mis-direction so that you don’t have to talk about GWB’s real National Guard Record–you know, the one they tried to shred? (and in some cases did…)
You are welcome to keep trying to distract us, but the recent election shows us that you are loosing the distraction battle. Worship your hero all you want, but there is no there there.
November 8th, 2006 at 5:32 pm
(1) Yes, I think Dan sold his professional integrity to the Democratic party.
(2) For those too dim to follow - the “murder” vs. “armed robbery” thing was an *analogy* to point out that having a hierarchy of badness for bad things does not make one a moral relativist.
(3) You’re the one changing the subject. Read the bar on the top of your web browser: “Rather: Still a schmuck.”
(3a) “It is about GWB and his fishy service record.” You seem to care a lot about this. I don’t. I know the young GWB was a drunken yahoo fratboy, the exact details of the toga-party excesses aren’t real important to me. (Especially seeing as how whatever happens, his political career is over in a little over 2 years.)
(4) No actual allegations against Rather, just general skepticism. Once you’ve caught someone in one lie, it’s prudent to start being skeptical of other things they’ve said.
(5) Obsessed with Rather? No, he’s just good for a giggle now and then. Concerned that he might not be the only journalist willing to sacrifice his professional ethics to get the “right” result? Yes, very much so. It’s bad when cops plant evidence on people, even if they’re guilty, and it’s bad for the same reason when reporters do it.
(6) Bush, hero? Don’t get me started. He’s almost as big a putz as Rather (and Fuhrman, and OJ too.)
November 10th, 2006 at 2:22 pm
The scary thing about all of this is that they could have dug up an old typewriter to do this, and the documents would have been accepted as true, even without any other factual support. Even when they were clearly done in Microsoft Word, two years later you have people still arguing the docs were legit.
I don’t think Rather sold his professional integrity to the Democratic party per se, he just wanted to make a big splash, and the purported story fit in nicely with his preconceived notions. The fact that he still clings to the illusion the docs were legit is not surprising, but does not speak well of him.
November 16th, 2006 at 7:57 pm
Stunning that there could be an argument that Dan Rather isn’t a schmuck. From the Right side he tried to even a personal and political score by airing obviously faked evidence. From the Left side he was too stoopid to do even a halfway decent job.