"I'm a Dan Man myself, so I tend to look at this from his viewpoints [sic]." -- WaPo media critic Tom Shales, on today's "Morning Joe."
It's a morning for candor on "Morning Joe." Earlier, Mika "Bubbles" Brzezinski had admitted that "the SATs were not my strong suit." Later in the show, the notoriously tough-on-conservatives [see, e.g., MRC item #3 here] Tom Shales acknowledged that he has a soft spot for Dan Rather, calling himself a "Dan Man."
I'll say. Despite the overwhelming mountain of uncontroverted and incontrovertible evidence, Shales refuses to admit the obvious: that the documents at the heart of Memogate were the most transparent [literally] and amateurish of forgeries.
Substitute anchor Willie Geist interviewed Shales at 8:30 A.M. EDT this morning.
View video here.
WILLIE GEIST: Tom, why is Dan Rather bringing this suit up at this time?
TOM SHALES: I think it's a matter of honor for him. Which is kind of an old-fashioned concept, these days, honor. People don't usually care about it much anymore. I really think he does; he doesn't need the money. It's just that as the record stands, he talks in the suit about this, the way CBS allowed this scandal to be called "Rathergate," or it just came to be known that way because they pushed Dan up there as the front man, the guy that took all the knocks for it. And I don't think he wants the record books to have that asterisk next to his name, that, you know, he left CBS after disgracing them with this so-called flawed report on George Bush.
A bit later, Shales proclaimed his fealty to Rather.
GEIST: One of the items in the complaint says that Mr. Rather was forced to make that on-air apology, it was an apology he says he didn't write, it was written by a PR person for him. Basically, that he was forced to read that "Memogate" apology on the air. And I think that the question a lot of people ask is: you're Dan Rather. You're the Managing Editor of the CBS Evening News. Why did you read it if you didn't want to read it?
SHALES: Yeah, well, again, I'm a Dan Man myself, so I tend to look at this, you know, from his viewpoints [sic].
Shales went on to say that Rather was a good team player who chose to take the bullet for the sake of CBS. Sort of like Shales, letting his own credibility go down with Dan's as he continues to deny the undeniable: that the documents were the most blatant of forgeries.
Neither Geist nor Brzezinski, who also participated in the discussion, were gauche enough to allude to the 800-pound forgery gorilla in the room.
And Shales should really save us the Dan-cares-about-honor shtick. Dan didn't give a fig for besmirching George W. Bush's honor by propagating those forged documents in the days immediately preceding the 2000 election.
—Mark Finkelstein is a NewsBusters contributing editor and host of Right Angle. Contact him at mark@gunhill.net.
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A Poem for the Dan Man
September 20, 2007 - 10:22 ET by Dr_LibertyTom the Dan Man
Should try a new plan
And get his face out of the cake pan
He should lose some weight
Before it is too late
Or Hillary's plan will decide his fate!
(Send the guys who got Elian Gonzalez over to his house to make sure he gets on the treadmill a little bit more.)
<insert witty signature here>
Or you could just send
September 20, 2007 - 11:12 ET by Hero SquadOr you could just send these guys to his house.
*****
"Why would the library ban a book like The Six Bunny-Wunnies Freak Out?" - Linus Van Pelt
Method to Rather madness
September 20, 2007 - 10:41 ET by KC MulvilleMy first hope was that the Rathergate lawsuit would be a legal fight over liberal bias. I’m quickly losing that hope, and seeing another issue emerge. The early pundits are all wondering why Rather would do this – they can’t understand it. They’re chalking it up to his natural vindictiveness. But I’m beginning to see a method behind his madness. I’m afraid this is going to be a battle over corporate control over the news. If he succeeds in making that the issue, Rather can’t lose.
The essence of Rather’s lawsuit is that CBS forced a journalist (dedicated to the truth) to agree to tarnish his own reputation (vital to his career) for the sake of its own corporate reputation. Rather is going to sell the idea that he is a purist journalist, beholden only to the truth, and that the corporation had no right to interfere with his pursuit of the truth. If that’s the issue, Rather can’t lose. His argument will be that a corporation forced him, on pain of losing his job, to broadcast a statement which he did not personally believe. If he loses the lawsuit on that basis, it will “prove” that corporations are interfering in the news process. The case will hinge on two issues.
Do corporations have the right to dictate what its employees broadcast, even if it interferes with the exercise of the freedom of the press?
Do individual journalists have the right to broadcast whatever they (individually) consider the truth?
I’ve always held that the press has no more constitutional rights than individuals. Being a member of the press doesn’t give anyone special rights. If you want to express your opinion as a private individual, you have the right to do so. But when you agree to join a corporation, you inherently agree to broadcast what the corporation approves, so long as you’re using their resources to perform the broadcast. If Brian Williams wants to say something at a cocktail party that conflicts with NBC, he has the right to do so, but when he uses the resources of NBC to broadcast, he owes it to NBC to get their approval. Rather will try to sell the argument that as a journalist, he’s duty-bound to broadcast only what he believes. Journalists will love the idea, but it’s wrong.
Brzezinski would never
September 20, 2007 - 10:52 ET by TEBrzezinski would never challenge Shales claim that the bogus, Microsoft Word produced, alleged "National Guard", fraudulent, so-called "documents" were something other than transparent forgeries because: (1) Brzenzinski is a like minded, run of the mill leftist dingbat; and (2) Brzezinski once worked with Rather at the uber-far-left CBS so-called, self-described, as Rather would see and decree "News".
RATHERGATE - heh-heh-heh
September 20, 2007 - 12:57 ET by TruthMongerun-truth and consequences, right time...?
or was it newsweek? or the enquirer? is there any difference actually
Rather was a good team
September 20, 2007 - 11:15 ET by taznarSo the liberal version of the "team player" is one who chooses to "take the bullet," then sues for damages?
Rather was a good team
September 20, 2007 - 13:08 ET by motherbeltRather was a good team player who chose to take the bullet for the sake of CBS.
If this is true, then why is he still out there claiming still, no one has proved the story false?
Maybe it is his contention that CBS disgraced him unfairly; that they should have stood by him because the story is true????
Shales sounds like a skin
September 20, 2007 - 12:21 ET by mattmShales sounds like a skin disorder...he looks like one too.
Oh, I know ad hominem attacks are not what we're supposed to be about here, but frankly Shales isn't worth much more than that. He's one of the most over-employed people I've ever heard of.
I looked at Shales and
September 20, 2007 - 13:12 ET by motherbeltI looked at Shales and thought, OMG, this guy just keeps getting bigger and bigger! I swear I don't remember him being this size...is it me?
Mark. On the other side of his issue - Kerry
September 20, 2007 - 12:31 ET by Gary HallMark. On the other side of his issue - John Kerry. Leaving the Swift Boat folks aside, there were serious questions (certainly as serious as the one's Rather had of Bush) out there concerning a number of issues around Kerry; his enlistment (how many times did the draft board turn him down - RE: deferment), his medals, his departure from Vietnam, and his lie about his trip to Cambodia (and blaming it on Nixon, instead of LBJ), etc.
There was retired Navy Rear Admiral William Schachte. He was not one of the Swift Boaters. His story appeared in a column. NBC's Lisa Myers conducted one interview with him:
Is there any summary out there (or your view) that the CBS Evening News, with Dan Rather, really ever seriously investigated any of this, and actually grill, on TV, Kerry or his staff on these issues? Or, is the simple truth, that Rather, the CBS News and most of the rest of the MSM, as expected, had no stomach for being news reporters when it came to their side of the isle.
Always seemed to me, that if they disagreed with the Admiral, here, that they would have smeared him, like they did the Swift Boaters.
(;~> gary
Honor
September 20, 2007 - 12:49 ET by ThisnThat"People don't usually care about it [honor] much anymore". Sez who? It's sad that Shales wallows in the muck of liberal land where honor doesn't even appear in the dictionary, let alone be exhibited by any lib. Same could be said for a lot of other words: morals, truth, honest, and respect.
It's no wonder he would say this, and it's no wonder it goes unchallanged. But then to apply that word to Rather??!! Alice in Wonderland couldn't do better than this. Try out these words, Shale: Disgusting, coniving, immoral, dishonest, deceitful, and untrustworthy. These apply to Dan the man -- not honor.
If you want to see honor, Shales, look to our military. You won't find any better example. But that's really hard for a person like Shales, who wants to continue the liberal practice of re-defining words to suit their desires.
___________________________________
If you can read this, thank a teacher. If it is in English, thank a Soldier. - My barber
The buck stopped with Dan, or should have
September 20, 2007 - 13:24 ET by nkviking75"Shales went on to say that Rather was a good team player who chose to take the bullet for the sake of CBS."
Dan was more than a "pretty face" reading words fed to him on a TelePrompTer. One of Dan's titles was managing editor of CBS News. That gave him added responsibility for what came out of his mouth on CBS' air. Ideally, he should have been subjecting the story to thorough scrutiny. It should never have gotten past him. (In fact, it never should have progressed far enough to get to him.) But in a phrase I've heard Rather use, it was "too good to check". He wanted it to be true. As I've said elsewhere, CBS News probably should be suing Rather.
When you put the clowns in charge, don't be surprised when a circus breaks out.
They still can't admit the forgery
September 20, 2007 - 14:14 ET by DanSMy morning paper called the documents 'unverified'. I suppose you could believe that the documents are genuine but unverified if you believe that someone managed to use the exact formatting that is the default in Microsoft Word many years before Word existed, and this person also managed to use jargon and abbreviations that were not used in this Guard unit at that time. Also, it is still unverified that Elvis was in my local 7-11 this morning.
Not a forgery?
September 20, 2007 - 16:36 ET by Carbon SasquatchMr Shales looks to be about 55-60. That puts him in college or
starting his career (writing) around 1973. Anyone who was a
sentient being in that time frame can recognize that the "unverified"
documents were not produced on a typewriter. Spacing on a
typewriter was uniform regardless of the width of a given letter. so
that the fifth or fiftyfifth letter or space of any line formed a
vertical column. The key striking the paper left a physical
imprint into the paper, easily seen on the back. Superscript or
subscript characters were made with the same size type by hand turning
the paper roll half a line up or down.
Even if he can't remember
when the first rudimentary word processors came to use (or thinks the
National Guard had office technology unavailable to the populace,) how
can he forget the lovely images created by the dot matrix
printer?
Tom Shills
September 20, 2007 - 15:43 ET by fitzfongWhat is it with these "entertainment journalists" like Roger Ebert and Tom Shales, who derive their sizable incomes from stuffing their faces while watching movies and TV show that they think they're experts on matters of politics? Hey, fat ass, this was not a "so-called flawed report", this was a FACTUALLY FRAUDULENT REPORT. By the way, is that a fourth chin or a second neck?
I heard some of this
September 20, 2007 - 16:48 ET by bigtimerI heard some of this dribble this morning...
Shale is still a huge expanse of waste in every way possible IMO.
Why I wanted to comment is mark's calling Mika Bubbles.....
I am still laughing so hard it hurts...it fits so perfect.....Bubbles, ya gotta love it!
Btw....Let the circus continue is this matter...Dan Rather is nuts....a foolish shell of a man.
So arrogant he can't see the fool and proven liar he is showing for all to see....AGAIN.
Must be self-punishment.
Couldn't happen to a better self-bloviating arrogant fella either.