September 15, 2004

Dan Tries Jedi Mind Trick

Dan Rather’s latest spurious defense:

“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,” Rather told the paper.

“Powerful and well-financed forces.” Ooga-booga! To whom does he refer? Is he implying that Powerlineblog.com, indcjournal.com, littlegreenfootballs.com, RatherBiased, and the rest of us bloggers are being paid to point out the obvious, that there was no proportional font matching the Times New Roman used in the memos in the 1970s?

Heck, Dan gets paid to do his job. We don’t begrudge him that. We’d just like him to do it in an honest manner that doesn’t do harm to America and to his own employer.

This is very funny. One second we’re in pajamas, and the next we’re powerful and well-financed. We could be powerful and well-financed pajama-wearing bloggers.

Dan continues:

“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.

Ahhh… okay… then, Dan, why not just admit the documents are untrue, since you say they’re immaterial to your case?

How does that Jedi mind trick go?

“Those are not your memos. Those memos are immaterial to the case. The memos are of no consequence.”

Who’s Watching the Watchmen?

Monday night I posted:

Only demonstrable provenance can remotely justify Rathers use of those memos. Provenance is precisely what Rather is failing to provide. Its a gigantic gaping gap in his Monday-night defense. Without provenance there is no possible justification for the use of those memos.

Yet Rather used them anyway. Does this equal fraud?

In response to Tuesday’s revelations by ABC that several experts consulted by 60 MINUTES advised that the memos could not be considered authentic, Beldar argues that 60 MINUTES’ behavior does equal fraud:

Dan Rather was complicit in defrauding the American public in an attempt to defeat a sitting President. Rather must be fired now. Congress should subpoena CBS News’ lawyers and all documentation of their advice.

It really makes a lot of sense. Dan Rather knew darn well at the very least that they couldn’t confirm the authenticity of those memos, but he used them anyway as proof. He didn’t care if they were authentic or not—he just wanted to use them to push his attack on Bush. And now he’s relying on this absurd “we’re 60 MINUTES and you don’t dare question us” defense.

It makes you wonder how much other questionable material 60 MINUTES may have passed off on the public over the years.

There’s an old saying: “Who’s watching the watchmen?” In the case of the press, with the coming of the blogosphere, there is now an answer to that age-old question.

(Hat tip for Beldar article to Andrew Breitbart ).