editorial by Mark Steyn, Chicago Sun Times columist
Of all the loopy
statements made by Dan Rather in the 10 days since he decided to throw his
career away, my favorite is this, from Dan's interview with the Washington
Post on Thursday:
''If the
documents are not what we were led to believe, I'd like to break that
story.''
Hel-looooo?
Earth to the Lost Planet of Ratheria: You can't ''break that story.'' A guy
called ''Buckhead'' did that, on the Free Republic Web site a couple of
hours after you and your money-no-object resources-a-go-go ''60 Minutes''
crew attempted to pass off four obvious Microsoft Word documents as
authentic 1972 typewritten memos about Bush's skipping latrine duty in the
Spanish-American War, or whatever it was.
The following
day Charles Johnson of the Little Green Footballs Web site drove a stake
through your phony '70s memos by overlaying them with modern MS Word
documents, whose automatic word wrap is amazingly an exact match with Lt.
Col. Killian's ''typewriter.'' And every document expert agreed with Johnson
your memos are junk, including your own analysts.
By now just
about everybody on the planet also thinks they're junk, except for that
dwindling number of misguided people who watch the ''CBS Evening News''
under the misapprehension that it's a news broadcast rather than a new
unreality show in which a cocooned anchor, his floundering news division and
some feeble executives are trapped on their own isle of delusion and can't
figure out a way to vote themselves off it.
So the only
story you're in a position to break right now is: ''Late-Breaking News.
Veteran Newsman Announces He's Recovered His Marbles.'' And, if last week's
anything to go by, you're in no hurry to do that.
Instead, Dan
keeps demanding Bush respond to the ''serious questions'' raised by his fake
memos. ''With respect, Mr. President,'' he droned the other day, ''answer
the questions.'' The president would love to, but he's doubled up with
laughter.
I was prepared
to cut the poor old buffoon some slack a week ago. But Dan's performance has
grown progressively more outrageous, to the point where it's hard not to
conclude he's colluding in the perpetuation of a massive if ludicrous fraud.
Dan's been play-acting at being a reporter for so many years now -- the
suspenders, the loosened tie, and all the other stuff that would look great
if he were auditioning for a cheesy dinner-theater revival of ''The Front
Page''; the over-the-top intros: ''Bob Schieffer, one of the best hard-nosed
reporters in the business, has been working his sources. What have you
managed to uncover for us, Bob?'', after which Bob reads out a DNC press
release. Dan's been doing all this so long he doesn't seem to realize the
news isn't just a show.
Round about the
middle of last week, he was reduced to shoring up his collapsing fantasy
with Bill Glennon, a Cliff Claven figure who was a typewriter repairman in
the '70s. But, because every other CBS expert had abandoned Dan's sunk ship,
Bill suddenly found himself upgraded to ''document expert.'' This guy's been
insisting that you could produce Dan's bogus memos on a 1972 IBM typewriter:
''The Model D had a lever that when pushed put a rubber stopper in front of
the keys so they did not strike the paper. You centered the paper using the
paper scale, put the carriage on the middle mark of the front index scale,
typed your heading and then made note of the number it stopped on. You then
moved the carriage back to the corresponding number on the left side of the
index scale and retyped your heading and . . .''
Yeah, right.
Every time I want to type a memo saying Bush is unfit to be president,
that's what I do, too. Look, if Dan thinks this guy's theory is correct,
let's put him and his IBM Model D and me and my computer in a room at CBS
News for an hour and see which one of us emerges with the closest replicas
of these four documents. I'll give him ten thousand bucks for every memo he
reproduces exactly, and round it up to an even 50 grand if he gets all four
right.
Any takers, CBS?
So the question
now is why won't Dan and Co. just admit their docs are crocks and let it go?
On Wednesday, CBS News head honcho Andrew Heyward, in a slippery statement,
announced that ''we established to our satisfaction that the memos were
accurate.'' Note that word: not ''genuine'' but ''accurate'' -- i.e., if Lt.
Col. Killian had had one of those IBM Model Ds and been willing to remove
the carriage return and replace it with a rubber stopper on the front index
scale while turning the crank, etc., these are the memos he would have
written. Rather and Heyward are adopting the rogue-cop defense: The evidence
is planted, but the guy's still guilty. Or as the New York Times' headline
put it: ''Memos On Bush Are Fake But Accurate.''
Why has CBS News
decided it would rather debauch its brand and treat its audience like morons
than simply admit their hoax? For Dan Rather? I doubt it. Hurricane Dan
looks like he's been hit by one. He's still standing, just about, but, like
a battered double-wide, more and more panels are falling off every day. No
one would destroy three-quarters of a century of audience trust and goodwill
for one shattered anachronism of an anchorman, would they?
As the network
put it last week, ''In accordance with longstanding journalistic ethics, CBS
News is not prepared to reveal its confidential sources or the method by
which '60 Minutes' Wednesday received the documents.'' But, once they admit
the documents are fake, they can no longer claim ''journalistic ethics'' as
an excuse to protect their source. There's no legal or First Amendment
protection afforded to a man who peddles a fraud. You'd think CBS would be
mad as hell to find whoever it was who stitched them up and made them look
idiots.
So why aren't
they? The only reasonable conclusion is that the source -- or trail of
sources -- is even more incriminating than the fake documents. Why else
would Heyward and Rather allow the CBS news division to commit slow, public
suicide?
Whatever other
lessons are drawn from this, we ought at least to acknowledge that the
privileged position accorded to ''official'' media and the restrictions
placed on the citizenry by McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform are
wholly unwarranted.
As for Heyward
and Rather, the other day I came across a rare memo from April 20, 1653,
typed on a 17th century prototype of the IBM Selectric. It's Oliver
Cromwell's words to England's Long Parliament:
''You have sat
too long for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say; and let us have
done with you. In the name of God, go!''