Posted on 11/21/2005 2:17:55 PM PST by kristinn
Ever since the controversy over the CBS use of forged memos erupted, those disappointed by the exposure of the forgeries have wondered if the whole thing wasn't some sort of set up perpetrated by the Dark Lord, Karl Rove. Integral to this paranoid theorizing was their slack-jawed amazement that anyone could have observed and commented that the documents were fake based on typography as quickly as I did. How could anyone not on the inside have articulated a technical and convincing explanation that the documents were fake within a few hours of the broadcast? Well, here's your answer. It's probably too late to make any difference, but I am no longer able to stifle myself now that Mary Mapes' has written a several hundred page book parading her venomous disregard for those who exposed her lies and her delusional self-image as the Joan of Arc of investigative journalism.
So, how did I know?
The short answer is that I am 47 years old and I am not a blithering idiot.
A more elaborate answer is this:
I have been interested in computers since 1979. I have used dot matrix, mainframe line printers, daisy wheel, ink jet, & laser printers. I have worked in an office environment from 1980 forward, except for 3 years of law school from 1982-1985. I have typed thousands of pages on IBM Selectrics, and a few hundred on various mechanical and electric typewriters of the conventional variety. I have changed the type ball and pitch on Selectrics many, many times. I have changed the daisy wheel on daisy wheel printers. I have typed at least a thousand pages on a Wang word processing system, and had typed for me many thousands more. I was one of two people in our small firm that spearheaded the purchase and installation of a Apple Macintosh computer network in 1989. I was the office computer geek for 8 years. I read the manual for Microsoft Word 4 for the Macintosh. The manual has a discussion in the beginning explaining that with personal computers, word processing software and laser printers, typeset print quality and proportionally spaced fonts were available to everyone and not just those who could afford typesetting machines, and how this was a Great New Thing. The manual distinguished between monospaced fonts and proportionally spaced fonts. I immediately began using proportionally spaced fonts and have done so to this day. The distinction between monospaced and proportionally spaced fonts is very noticeable to me.
I have been typing my own documents in various versions of Microsoft Word, using proportionally spaced fonts, since 1989. In the 16 years since then, I have myself typed, prepared, and signed many thousands of pages using MS Word.
In my work career, especially the law practice, I have reviewed several hundred thousand, maybe more than a million, pages of documents prepared by businesses and government agencies from many time periods prepared on all manner of machines. I have many times reviewed documents that were multiple generation copies of the original, and bear the distortions that go along with that.
I have been a litigator for 20 years. I have encountered a lot of fancy and not so fancy lies.
In 1999, I filed a brief with the U.S. District Court, Northern Dist. of Ga., in Times New Roman 12. I used that font, which is rather small, to fit within the page limit, which I could not otherwise do using my preferred font, Palatino 12. (Most courts now specify font and type size by rule to preclude this ruse. Ask any litigator.) In any case, the other side objected to the brief on the grounds that it did not comply with the local court rule specifying that there could be no more than 10 printed characters per inch - a rule of which I was not aware at the time. I filed a brief in response to the objection. Trust me, the prospect of losing a contingency case over a font rule when you have invested years of work in the case will galvanize your attention on the subject of fonts. A pdf scan of a certified copy of that brief is available here at the link above to "1999 Brief." Compare what I said about typewriters, monospaced fonts and proportionally spaced fonts in the brief filed in 1999 with what I said in post # 47, on 9/8/04. I knew what I knew a long time ago, and the brief proves it definitively. So long, conspiracy theory.
I relied upon no one and nothing other than what I already knew and what I saw when I looked at the documents. I acted entirely alone, with no advance knowledge or warning of any kind or nature whatsoever from anyone anywhere at any time prior to the post. After the post, the blogosphere was on the case, and I was no longer alone at that point.
The notion that the ability to spot these memos as fakes for the reasons I articulated in that post is some kind of dark art limited to a select priesthood of credentialed experts in forensic typography is totally false and, on a moment's reflection, completely ridiculous. Any person who worked in an office before, during and after the desktop printing revolution and who was awake for more than a few minutes during that period could tell immediately that the documents were not from 1972. There are many millions of such people. If you read the thread you will see that less than seven minutes after my post another poster, NYCVirago, said "You're exactly correct." http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1210662/posts#49. There are many such comments later in the thread and in a later research thread on the subject, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1210702/posts. Many such comments were posted before 6:00 AM the following morning, which proves that the knowledge is common and widespread. The outpouring on the rest of the web, at Powerline, Little Green Footballs, INDC Journal, etc., proves the same thing. The problems with the documents that I identified were obvious to millions of people and that is one reason that the story took off like it did. That it was me rather than someone else who first noticed the font problem is pure coincidence. It would have been picked up by someone else in a few minutes if I just gone to bed instead that night.
But I didn't, and so Mary Mapes hates Buckhead along with everyone else that has participated in refuting her lies.
Excellent!
Boy do they hate it that the common person can see through their absurd lies and forgeries after having gotten away with it for decades.
Of course if the forger had only used Courier as a font, he might have gotten away with it.
With Mapes, I keep thinking of Scooby Doo and, "I would have gotten away with it if it weren't for those meddling kids."
ROFLMAO
Mary Mapes, you are DENIED. Way to go Buckhead.
Excellent!
This time, for some reason, unknown to me, the facts made it to critical mass. She was caught and it was so unfair.
After all, Dan Rather and Walter Cronkite had been doing it for years.
Buckhead's sharp eye saved the day on this one, and it's just plain astonishing that Mapes and her apologists can continue asserting those memos' veracity is "undetermined."
All they have to do is type the thing in Word and compare! An almost exact match.
They are in the most COMPLETE denial I have ever seen.
What a great tagline that would make.
Way to stand up Buckhead.
Ouch! Mary better put some ice on that!
ping
Buckhead, see comment #32.
My Uncle, just a few days ago, was castigating me about Iraq(I'm the family oddball conservative) and he asked me how my son had avoided the draft and wasn't in Iraq. Sigh
I immediately checked some documents I had from the serice, typed on typewriters, to check this, and viola!
Did you win?
Excellent. Thanks for posting this.
Ping!
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