Fake and not a bit accurate. What part of that does Dan Rather after all these years and many investigations later not understand about why his September 2004 report produced at 60 Minutes by Mary Mapes was a complete fraud? Certainly no expert has come forward to claim that the six supposed Texas Air National Guard documents showing special treatment for George W. Bush were authentic instead of the obvious fakes they turned out to be.
And yet Rather continues to cling to the fiction that the documents were real and that he was unfairly removed from CBS News the following year. Perhaps he might have been able to retain his anchor job had he admitted the easily provable obvious: that the documents were fake and, as a result, his documentary based on those fake documents was equally fraudulent. Instead Rather went into a complete denial of reality which he maintains to this day as you can see in his quotes in a Page Six Cindy Adams column about the soon to be released movie about that scandal with the laughable title of "Truth."
Dan Rather is coming to your local movie theater. At least the story behind why he’s no longer at CBS is. In “Truth,” Robert Redford plays Rather. Cate Blanchett plays his CBS producer Mary Mapes.
In 2004, Rather reported that President George W. Bush’s powerful father arranged to keep his son in the National Guard to prevent serving in Vietnam. The report caused such hoo-hah that a treasured 24-year anchorman lost his job.
Dan: “I’ve read the script. It’s serious. People behind it do a good job. It’s two great actors. You couldn’t want for a better cast. Redford playing me makes me feel humble — which is not a word usually associated with anchors.
“The nuanced, not preachy, script makes clear our report was true. Facts can’t be denied. But today it’s more about big corporations having big power than about truth. Bush was up for re-election. Sumner Redstone wanted him re-elected and would have his news division do what he wanted. What develops is the habit of pulling back, working from fear."
Your report was true? Really, Dan? Facts can't be denied and the glaring fact here is that those Texas Air National Guard documents were not authentic. If they were then please produce the experts who back up your fairy tale. Since the laughably named "Truth" is based on Mary Mapes' book, "Truth and Duty," perhaps we can get an idea of the flavor of the flick by taking a look at excerpts of her book which can best be described as the melodrama of a juvenile with her hands caught in the cookie jar.
Although the original excerpts were taken down from Amazon, they have been preserved for all eternity by the DUmmie FUnnies in 2005 soon after Mapes and Rather entered a well deserved state of unemployment. Here are several overly drama queen excerpts for your comedic entertainment:
I was confident in my work and marveled once again at the teamwork and devotion of so many people at 60 Minutes. They really knew how to pull together to get a story on the air. I was also deeply proud of CBS News for having the guts to air a provocative story on a controversial part of the president’s past.
By the end of the day, all of that would change. By the end of the month, I would be barred from doing my job and under investigation. By the end of the year, my long career at CBS News would essentially be over, after a long, excruciating, and very public beating.
...All that changed about 11:00 a.m., when I first started hearing rumbles from some producers at CBS News that a handful of far right Web sites were saying that the documents had been forged.
I was incredulous. That couldn’t be possible. Even on the morning the story aired, when we showed the president’s people the memos, the White House hadn’t attempted to deny the truth of the documents. In fact, the president’s spokesman, Dan Bartlett, had claimed that the documents supported their version of events: that then-lieutenant Bush had asked for permission to leave the unit.
(Note to "Truth" film editor: please insert spinning room effect here.)
Within a few minutes, I was online visiting Web sites I had never heard of before: Free Republic, Little Green Footballs, Power Line. They were hard-core, politically angry, hyperconservative sites loaded with vitriol about Dan Rather and CBS. Our work was being compared to that of Jayson Blair, the discredited New York Times reporter who had fabricated and plagiarized stories.
(Film editor: vertigo effect here to emphasize her dizziness.)
All these Web sites had extensive write-ups on the documents: on typeface, font style, and peripheral spacing, material that seemed to spring up overnight. It was phenomenal. It had taken our analysts hours of careful work to make comparisons. It seemed that these analysts or commentators---or whatever they were---were coming up with long treatises in minutes. They were all linking to one another, creating an echo chamber of outraged agreement.
Of course your analysts either backpedaled or claimed they never authenticated the documents in the first place but back to your melodrama...
I was told that the first posting claiming the documents were fakes had gone up on Free Republic before our broadcast was even off the air! How had the Web site even gotten copies of the documents? We hadn’t put them online until later. That first entry, posted by a longtime Republican political activist lawyer who used the name “Buckhead,” set the tone for what was to come.
Was this in a chapter called "Mary Discovers Something Called the Web?"
There was no analysis of what the documents actually said, no work done to look at the content, no comparison with the official record, no phone calls made to check the facts of the story, nothing beyond a cursory and politically motivated examination of the typeface. That was all they had to attack, but that was enough.
Hmmm... If the documents are proven to be fake what good does it do to check the "facts" in those fake documents? We return now to the Protocols of the Elders of Killian:
People from around the country, especially those with a harsh political bent, began chiming in on the sites with accounts of their own experience with typewriters in the 1970s. Someone claimed to remember that electric typewriters at the time did not do “superscripts,” a small “th” or “st” or some such abbreviation that was lifted higher on the line than the other letters. This was important, because in the Killian memos, the 111th was sometime typed as the 111th, something that drove the bloggers wild. Another person claimed there was no peripheral spacing on old typewriters, even though there had been on some of the old official documents.
Facts. Such ugly things diverting attention away from our fictitious narrative:
I remember staring, disheartened and angry, at one posting. “60 Minutes is going down,” the writer crowed exultantly.
The surrealistically weird thing here is I think Mapes is quoting your humble correspondent.
My heart started to pound. There is nothing more frightening for a reporter than the possibility of being wrong, seriously wrong. That is the reason that we checked and rechecked, argued about wording, took care to be certain that the video that accompanied the words didn’t create a new and unintended nuance. Being right, being sure, was everything. And right now, on the Internet, it appeared everything was falling apart.
We return you now to As The Liberal World Squirms:
I had a real physical reaction as I read the angry online accounts. It was something between a panic attack, a heart attack, and a nervous breakdown. My palms were sweaty; I gulped and tried to breathe. My heart was pounding like I had become a cartoon character whose heart outline pushes out the front of her shirt with each beat. The little girl in me wanted to crouch and hide behind the door and cry my eyes out.
That scene would make for a good Advil commercial. Or should it be Valium? Note to film editor: great spot for medicinal product placement.
The longtime reporter in me was pissed off ... and I hung on to her strength and certainty for dear life. I had never been fundamentally wrong, never been fooled, never been under this kind of attack. I resolved to fight back.
Fighting back by denying reality along with Dan Rather who is continuing to do it to this day. There is much, much more of this hilarious drama queen comedy material at the DUmmie FUnnies for your enjoyment.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about the Mapes fiction on film which opens on October 16 will be the reaction from the mainstream media. Will they be so embarrassed by it as to completely ignore it? If not, I am putting them on Pinocchio alert. The honest MSM outlets will need a plethora of Pinocchios in ready reserve when reviewing the "Truth" which isn't.
