Source: Dan Rather found in a spider hole

The Poorman compares and contrasts "Rathergate" with the recently concluded search for WMD. It is very informative.

Meanwhile, that preening paragon of the SCLM, Howard Fineman, finds that Dan Rather's comeuppance means that the mainstream media, or, as Fineman calls it, the AARPMCDTv (or something), has lost all credibility. To a degree, that's true. Fineman has about as much credibility as a Bush administration press release.

Still, the notion of a neutral, non-partisan mainstream press was, to me at least, worth holding onto. Now it's pretty much dead, at least as the public sees things. The seeds of its demise were sown with the best of intentions in the late 1960s, when the AMMP was founded in good measure (and ironically enough) by CBS. Old folks may remember the moment: Walter Cronkite stepped from behind the podium of presumed objectivity to become an outright foe of the war in Vietnam. Later, he and CBS's star White House reporter, Dan Rather, went to painstaking lengths to make Watergate understandable to viewers, which helped seal Richard Nixon's fate as the first president to resign.

"Good intentions?" Bejeebus. He hacks on, "The crusades of Vietnam and Watergate seemed like a good idea at the time, even a noble one, not only to the press but perhaps to a majority of Americans." Ignore for a moment the exquisite lack of proof reading (what does he think he's writing here, a blog?), but seemed like a good idea at the time? He's implying, I guess, that in the cold light of history, the press should have rallied around Johnson, McNamara, Haldeman and Nixon. If reporters had, Americans wouldn't think so cynically of the press. I repeat: Bejeebus.

What makes his hacktastic column induce even more teeth grinding is Fineman's assumption that us "Old Folks" are all a bunch of morons; that we won't notice he's twisting history to fit into the script he's mouthing. Cronkite became a foe of the war because he -- like a slim majority of Americans at the time (1968) -- could no longer correlate the pictures televised on his program every night with the bullshit coming out of the Pentagon (sound familiar?). Up until then, the press had been gung-ho supporters of the war. And to call Watergate a "crusade" on the part of CBS News is to exhibit an ignorance of recent history that is appalling (especially so, since Fineman works for Newsweek, which is owned by the freakin' Washington Post). If I were Bob Woodward, I'd demand an apology from his so-called colleague and fellow Post employee. Of course, the wingnuts are still sore about a sharp exchange between Rather and Nixon during a news conference in 1974. Never underestimate the aggrieved memory of the Right.

For more, better, and certainly more articulate takedowns of this over-paid source of scatology, check out Campaign Desk, try Wolcott, take a look at tBogg, and, of course, get the meaning of it all from Giblets.