Dan Rather is Nuts

Dan Ra^ther is Nuts

I traveled yesterday, and my rental car had Sirius satellite radio, so I skipped through a lot of channels looking for something interesting to listen to on my trip. FOX News' Neil Cavuto interviewed Dan Ra^ther, since his $70 million lawsuit against C^BS had just been thrown out of court. Part of the interview is here.

Some excerpts:

Ra^ther: We have strong documented evidence that what you have had here, you've had a large corporation, Viacom CBS, that basically buried an important news story in order to curry favor with and protect political interests who regulate them in Washington.

Cavuto: But they did let the story run, right? I mean, wasn't the issue with the quality of the documents that would support your story?

Ra^ther: That was an issue, but the basic issue was whether we reported the truth. Was the story true.

Cavuto: And you stand by the story to this day that it was accurate.

Ra^ther: I do.

Fake but accurate!

Ra^ther: I stand by the story as we reported it as accurate. But here's the important thing . . .

Cavuto: By the way, to that end then the documents that seemed to, to some experts reckoning to be forged or faked, you say no.

Ra^ther: I do. What I say - and this is very important to me, and I think to any reasonable person who's trying to be fair about this - and that is that no one to this day, although you read about the documents were quote "forged," that they were frauds, quote unquote, nobody has proven that.

I think he really believes that. As a "reasonable person who's trying to be fair," the side-by-side comparison of the C^BS memos showing identical documents printed out using Microsoft Word at its default settings pretty much convinced me that the C^BS documents were absolute, unalloyed, incompetent FAKES - and with that conclusion, anything else 60 Minutes II, C^BS News and Dan Ra^ther had to say to me was not only suspect, it was false until proven otherwise.


The only question I have now is whether Dan was nuts before he ran with the story, or did its exposure drive him over the brink?