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October 09, 2005

Mary Mapes - 'Truth and Doody'

You all remember Dan Rather's and the rest of the 60 Minutes Lite clan's politically transparent and pathetic attempt to pass off fraudulent memos to help the Kerry campaign? One would think that after the Chappaquidick-like slap-on-wrist-let's-all-put-this-behind-ourselves aftermath, that Rather, et al, would have thanked their Supreme Being of choice and quietly avoided any further mention.

Egotism coupled with psychosis doesn't work that way.

Dan Rather popped up on Sept. 19 to weep and rend his garments about the new journalism order and pretending for his ingenuous audience that it was the White House that brought him down, not his own malfeasance.

Human-embarrassment Al Gore follows Dan's lead and on Oct 5, rants and dissembles, about the evils of an unfettered Internet reviving his "digital brownshirts" slander and defending poor Dan.

Now, Rather's erstwhile producer and conspirator, Mary Mapes, is coming to the Psychotic's Picnic with a book to explain how she been done wrong. See, dear reader, the fault does not reside within her, it resides within bloggers

"I was incredulous that the mainstream press -- a group I'd been a part of for nearly twenty-five years and thought I knew -- was falling for the blogs' critiques. I was shocked at the ferocity of the attack. I was terrified at CBS's lack of preparedness in defending us. I was furious at the unrelenting attacks on Dan. And I was helpless to do anything about any of it."
Ahhh...poor baby. She was "helpless". And this isn't the only excerpt where feelings trump all. Baldilocks rightly wonders about the excerpt where Mary, now caught with spoiled goods, confesses:
The little girl in me wanted to crouch and hide behind the door and cry my eyes out."
Baldilocks says, "Maybe it’s me, but, that is just weird." No, it's not just you. It's not only weird but frankly embarrassing, because it plays to all the "hysterical" stereotypes of women in positions of power. Women as pure creatures of emotion, women as untrustworthy of positions of authority because they won't own up to their mistakes. Mapes reinforces the latter with this bit of sheer chutzpah in attempting to rehabilitate the fraudulent memos:
--"Faxing changes a document in so many ways, large and small, that analyzing a memo that had been faxed -- -in some cases not once, but twice -- -was virtually impossible. The faxing destroyed the subtle arcs and lines in the letters. The characters bled into each other. The details of how the typed characters failed to line up perfectly inside each word were lost."
Thankfully, Charles Johnson reposts his devestating demonstration of just how poorly these purported 1970's era memos were created. As Charles says in response:
... she’s arguing that faxing a typewritten document from the 1970s is more likely to make it appear as if it were printed with modern proportional typefaces, and would alter the spacing to exactly match a Microsoft Word replica.
Mary Mapes is taking a page from "performance artist" Karen Finley, except Mapes is not symbolically smearing herself with chocolate.

Posted by Darleen at October 9, 2005 08:25 AM

Comments

Human-embarrassment Al Gore follows Dan's lead

That was a laugh-out-loud line! I think I'm going to use that EVERY time I mention human-embarrassment Algore's name!

See?

Psychotic's Picnic, indeed! hahahahahaaaa

Posted by: Beth at October 11, 2005 07:01 AM

LOVE the picture, too. Perfect.

Posted by: Beth at October 11, 2005 07:02 AM

"'It's been one of television news' finest moments,' Rather said of the Katrina coverage."

Reporting non-existent mass-murder and rape in the Superdome, alongside 10,000 dead (actually closer to 800) is "one of television news' finest moments".

Good God the man is off his rocker.

Posted by: Strider at October 11, 2005 09:52 AM