Posted on 09/09/2004 10:31:38 PM PDT by kattracks
Edited on 09/09/2004 10:55:58 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
September 10, 2004 -- THE populist revolu tion against the so- called mainstream media continues. Yesterday, the citizen journalists who produce blogs on the Internet — and their engaged readers — engaged in the wholesale exposure of what appears to be a presidential-year dirty trick against George W. Bush. What the bloggers and their audiences did was call into profound question the authenticity of four documents proudly trumpeted by CBS News in a much-heralded investigative report on Wednesday night's edition of "60 Minutes" about the president's National Guard service in the early 1970s.These were "previously unseen documents . . . obtained by '60 Minutes,' " the network bragged Wednesday night on its Web site. Their author, supposedly, was Bush's squadron commander, Jerry Killian, who died 20 years ago.
They "include a memorandum from May 1972," CBS reports, "where Killian writes that Lt. Bush called him to talk about 'how he can get out of coming to drill from now through November.' " A document dated "18 August 1973" complains that Killian is being asked to "sugar coat" Bush's record. "I'm having trouble running interference and doing my job," the document says.
Liberals went wild with glee about the story, especially after the onslaught on John Kerry's Vietnam record by his fellow Swift-boat veterans.
Kevin Drum, the most talented of the left-wing bloggers, wrote: "This story is a perfect demonstration of the difference between the Swift-boat controversy and the National Guard controversy. Both are tales from long ago and both are related to Vietnam, but . . . in the National Guard case, practically every new piece of documentary evidence provides additional confirmation that the charges against Bush are true."
[snip]The Minneapolis lawyers who run powerlineblog.com were on the case early. Two of the blog's readers directed their attention to a note left on an Internet bulletin board on the freerepublic.com Web site, the 47th posting on the topic there. Post No. 47 pointed out that there was something off about these documents from the 1970s: The spacing between the letters and the words was proportional, and only a few IBM electric typewriters could achieve that effect back then.
Me too!
Great job, Howlin'!
Posted on 09/08/2004 7:39:18 PM EDT by Howlin
107 posted on 09/08/2004 8:19:00 PM EDT by TankerKC
47 posted on 09/08/2004 11:59:43 PM EDT by Buckhead.
See my post above. TankerKC mentions it first, then Buckhead.
Thanks for those links. You made some history today and are senior officers in the new media revolution. George Washington would be proud.
To: Howlin
Howlin, every single one of these memos to file is in a proportionally spaced font, probably Palatino or Times New Roman.
In 1972 people used typewriters for this sort of thing, and typewriters used monospaced fonts.
The use of proportionally spaced fonts did not come into common use for office memos until the introduction of laser printers, word processing software, and personal computers. They were not widespread until the mid to late 90's. Before then, you needed typesetting equipment, and that wasn't used for personal memos to file. Even the Wang systems that were dominant in the mid 80's used monospaced fonts.
I am saying these documents are forgeries, run through a copier for 15 generations to make them look old.
This should be pursued aggressively.
47 posted on 09/08/2004 8:59:43 PM PDT by Buckhead
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yep
I nominate Buckhead (Post 47) for Freeper of the Year!
When will the liberal media realize that they can help the most just by reporting these stories straight-up? When they sit on the stories they only cause the stories to gather stream and push their dear Kerry further out of the news. The best thing the liberal media could do, if they really want to help Kerry, is just report the news instead of trying to manage it. They think they are helping Kerry, but they aren't.
What a day!
The day the old media dinosaur was smashed by the incoming new media meteor!
I think that you and Buckhead deserve some kind of prize/honor!
There are many, many reasons why this is not a 1972-3 doc. Most of them should be discussed in court.
"I hope CBS can get sued."
Maybe we can hit 'em with a class action lawsuit alleging fraud.
I hadn't had this much fun since the hogs ate my baby brother!
It is something to behold. The collective knowledge at FR is pretty astounding.
Podheretz is right, populism kicked entrenched, Leftwing powers a$$ today.
Seems like you should get a bump on this heh.
Do you think that now John O'Neill might get a phone call from Katie or Matt or Tom?
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