I think Jane Galt has the right question for now - what drooling incompetent wrote these memos, how did the DNC get them, who passed them to CBS, and how could CBS be so mind-bogglingly stupid as not to notice that they had been written in Microsoft Word?
When you have an agenda, you tend to believe what you want to. That's the problem with Rather -- his agenda is no longer to be a newsman but to defeat Bush.
All you have to do is read either the Kerry or Bush threads to see clearly that prejudices trump common sense, on both sides of the aisle. Rather just let his prejudice trump his common sense.
Will he be foreced to recant? Probably not. Despite the mounting evidence, he has gone with this "definitive evidence" defense. Without the originals, and looking only at multiple copies, it's impossible to say definitively that they are forgeries. Without the originals, it's impossible to prove that they were produced by a laser or inkjet printer rather than a typewriter ribbon. Without the originals it's impossible to prove definitively that the paper was manufactured after 2000. From all that I've read, it's theoretically possible for them to have been produced on machines available in that day and age. Very expensive machines, yes. With great skill and difficulty and a lot of blind luck, yes. It's extraordinarly unlikley. But theoretically possible. On the order of finding two people with identical fingerprints, which has never happened but is theoretically possible.
But theoretically possible trumps "definitive evidence." Rather can survive with that. And he's paid so much and is so vital to CBS's news image that if he sticks to that, CBS won't jettison him. |
