corrente

Yeah, so Rather "admitted" he got spoofed by a source. Insert obilgatory gasping of shock, horror, etc.here. He admitted these particular memos were not what he thought they were, and apologized.

This does not make him a bad guy, or a bad reporter, believe it or not. This is why we do not call Dan Rather rude names like "Kneepads," unlike some people with jobs in the media who get played for fools and help bring on unnecessary wars which kill and maim thousands, and have never yet admitted they were spoofed by their ever-so-trusted Chalabi source. Other similar examples are pointed out by the invaluable Digby

The thought of a network or major newspaper acting as a tool of political sabotage to sully the character of a president is chilling indeed.

But, I can't help wondering why this orgy of recriminations is happening over this incident when there have literally been thousands of even worse examples of the press willingly acting as partisan tools over the past 12 years or so, much of it fed to them directly by political operatives. Why is the thought of Dan Rather being used for partisan political purposes (if indeed he was) so shocking when we know that the mainstream press has been the victim of hoax after hoax by such outfits as Citizens United for years?

Did anyone ever call Jeff Gerth on the carpet for falling for the Scaife financed "Arkansas project" propaganda on the NY Times Whitewater stories? How about the chinese espionage "scandal" which was also a right wing hack job that proved to be absolutely bogus (aided and abetted by our good friend Rep. Chris Cox and his wholly discredited Cox Report.) Did anybody pay a price for pimping the Vince Foster story for the Mighty Wirlizter? Troopergate? The White House vandalism and stolen gifts stories? The list is endless. Years and years and years of hoaxes and smears and lies that led to tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer money wasted on investigations that went nowhere and NOBODY SAYS A FUCKING WORD about the press's incestuous involvement with those who perpetrated these expensive frauds on the American public. (I won't even mention the elephant sitting in the middle of the room with the words "Saddam and 9/11" tattooed on his forehead.)

The lesson in this is clear. Dan Rather made a big mistake all right, but it wasn't the one that the rest of the press corp is unctuously wringing its hands over. The lesson is that he should have never have shown the documents. He should have done the story with some guy in the shadows with his voice disguised saying that "he'd seen the documents." He should have hinted darkly at death threats and used many anonymous sources without ever producing any kind of proof. He should have dribbled the story out over a couple of weeks on the CBS evening news instead of presenting it all at one time.

Oh yes, and he should have done the story about a Democrat. Nobody ever gets in trouble for committing journalistic malpractice against them. In fact, it's a career booster.

"Memogate" has Karl Rove's fingerprints all over it, most especially the "non-denial" of the memo contents from the White House. He did his damndest to wave the red flag of distraction in our faces, to take attention away from Bush's crappy "service" record, noted below. Paul Lukasiak's brilliant, dogged work is getting attention all over the place, which we tried for months to do. We could never have done it without Karl's help.

I sometimes feel almost sorry for Karl. He's a good whore, in the sense that he does his best to service his client, but I bet he's sneaking a look at his watch about now to see how soon this one's going to be over. I hope he got a nice sum left on the dresser, because I don't see him getting a lot of work from here on out.