They Get Paid For This: Part II

Atrios - the #2 leftyblog - writes:

Nick's right that Dan Rather's "crime" eerily parallels certain mistakes made by a certain commander in chief.

Atrios is onto something!

Dan Rather consulted every other news anchor and managing editor in the business, all of whom also agreed that the memos were perfectly legit. In fact, the combined fact-checking departments of the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the London Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Minneapolis Tribune, the Trybruna Lyuda, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, CBN, New Yorker and Air America all agreed that the memos were the real McCoy.

And just like Bush, Rather went ahead based on that reassurance!

CBS screwed up by not making more of an effort to verify the documents, but let's remember that part of the reason they screwed up was because the White House gave their implied seal of approval when they were contacted.

"Honest, officer! I saw her in that skirt, and I couldn't control myself!

Doesn't take away from the screwup, but it does make it more interesting.

No, what makes it interesting is that, despite masterful ideas like this one:

I'm not yet ready to accuse Rove of a masterful 5 cushion bank shot, but if I were, say, writing a political thriller about one President Smush who had an advisor name Snarl Stove who had a history of doing exactly that kind of thing, I would pat myself on the head for thinking of such a brilliant plot device.

...it seems that we mere conservatives were right all along:

At the behest of CBS, an adviser to John Kerry said Monday he talked to a central figure in the controversy over President Bush's National Guard service shortly before disputed documents were released.

Wow.

I didn't know Lockhart worked for Rove!

Who knew?

Media Matters pays "Atrios" to support his blogging habit.

Posted by Mitch at September 22, 2004 04:59 AM | TrackBack