The authenticity of the memos is the most important aspect of this whole scandal. If documents can be forged, handed to co-conspiratorial media and used to hammer or destroy a political figure without regard to the fact that the documents are forged, then what the Left has long claimed about America will come true: we are not far removed from a Gestapo regime. Only the Left will itself will have brought it about, and the Left will be the new reichsfuhrers.
Read it all.
It occured to me in reading Sensing that he makes too much sense. He's rational, responsible and entirely lucid and honorable. That's when it struck me that it is those qualities that makes us repel most about CBS's faked memoes. The disregard for the rules of ethics and morality, decency, and fair play, produces in most of us an outrage at the flagrant lie the faked documents represent. But, really, should we be outraged?
It is not a frivilous question. Most of us do not think highly of the MSM and haven't for a long time. Since the 60s and with a constancy that has become so predictable that it is stale, the media has been far more liberal than average Americans. The acceptance of this as universal fact, though, is a rather recent phenomenon when you think about it. It is a consensus that was not reached recently, but assented to only a short time ago, responded to recently in our own form, our own way, on the internet, in blogs.
The Liberalism of the media is no longer something we sense but something we deeply resent. In concert and in chorus. So why should they act differently now and why should we suddenly expect more of them? Because we have caught them so flagrantly lying? That's just it -- they know this isn't an unusual occurrence. They know that when Rather pretended that those documents were genuine, it was not a first time CBS or Dan Rather scammed the American public. In a Joe McCarthy gesture, Dan Rather held up the memos, waved them, and expected us to accept his word. They can't respond with guilt because if they did, they would have to admit that this tactic was nothing new. Shame is a emotion they can't afford to display.
CBS isn't going to apologize and Dan Rather isn't going to quit. To do so would be to undermine the whole concept of a talking head journalist speaking to a one-dimensional audience he can only imagine beyond the lens of the camera out there... somewhere. People he never sees, never meets and never really exist in his reality are hard to address in terms of moral responsibility. How can you feel guilty about lying to people who despise you anyway?
That's what struck me about Rather's appearances this week. Think about his street interview outside the studio that day. Who did he remind you of? He looked like Madeline Albright and Sandy Berger and Judy Woodruff in that gymnasium for the first time in their lives in a live setting where the responses are not scripted, the audience wasn't hand picked, the game wasn't already fixed. They looked like deer caught in the headlights. They looked terrified.
It's what Dan Rather looked like. It was like he walked out into the sunshine for the first time in forty years, blinked, looked around, and was amazed, frightened, and unsure all at once. The MSM cannot operate in the glare of public scrutiny. They know it, too. They're scared.
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