The Dems Get Desperate, Part IV: When Will Rather Go?

First of all, everyone reading this should know by now that I absolutely enjoy the hell out Rathergate. Not only has the blogosphere ripped CBS a new one, they've been basically flawless in reporting facts that the mainstream media (MSM) gets to a few days later. Plus, a whole new world of people now know about some of my favorite places on the web to get news, like Powerline, InstaPundit, LGF and others. Best of all, the acronym for the Texas Air National Guard, TANG, has been used repeatedly.

Truth be told, we're now at a watershed point for CBS. They've dug in their heels on the story being true, in the face of all other reporting to the contrary. In a midweek edition of the Washington Post, they laid one of the CBS documents side-by-side with a legit doc from Bush's TANG file. Side-by-side examination of the documents makes it pretty damn clear someone was using something a helluva lot more advanced to draft the CBS documents. Granted, LGF beat them to the punch, but the MSM is starting to catch up. Meanwhile, ABC News managed to out-hustle Dan Rather (whose producer had been supposedly working on this story for five years) by grabbing an interview with the General who was referenced in the fake documents as providing pressure on Jerry Killian to sugar-coat things for Bush. General Staudt denies the charge, which would have been hard to prove anyway, since he had been retired for a year when the memo in question was written.

The source of the documents may well be Bill Burkett, the Texas Army National Guard official who's been in the news in the past for making wild (and typically false) allegations against George W. Bush. The blogosphere's been hammering the point home, and the Washington Post has now speculated about Burkett's connection as well. It appears Burkett might be the source for Rather, but the questions now seem to center on whether Burkett also provided said documents to the Kerry campaign as well, and if they played any role in getting CBS to pay attention to them. I'd guess they ignored Burkett as a crank, but I still wonder when there are loop jobs like Max Cleland involved (no, not questioning his patriotism, just his sanity).

But now, finally, the MSM has started to zero in on Dan Rather and his culpability. Tim Rutten at the L.A. Times misfires at times in his editorial, but watching him take CBS to task for destroying Murrow's legacy is, well, beautiful...

This, after all, is the house that Edward R. Murrow built. Anyone mindful of the legacy that keen and fearless man left to his network would want to make a tragedy of all this — with Rather, Lear-like, roaring on the moors. But it isn't that; what CBS has spun out over the last week is not drama but shabby farce. Rather and his network's executives resemble nothing so much as the doddering, penniless inhabitants of some crumbling old pile, lurking behind curtains and muttering increasingly incoherent excuses to the bill collectors pounding at their door.

CBS' initial report on President Bush's National Guard service was an embarrassment to Murrow's legacy. But the implications of that mistake pale alongside the potential consequences of the network's continuing refusal to do what the situation now demands: to forthrightly admit error, to undertake an independent inquiry and, then, to give a clear public accounting of how this happened. If the current custodians of CBS News willfully refuse to keep faith with their viewers, they will have disgraced Murrow's memory.

Jim Geraghty at the Kerry Spot, the leader of the Pajamahadeen, posted a nice strategy memo for people who want to see Dan Rather apologize and perhaps finally leave the anchor desk for a ranch in Texas. Perhaps Rutten's editorial is a sign that the MSM is willing to join that chorus.