Bye-Bye, Gunga-Dan

Rather resigns. Somehow, I feel like I should be celebrating a little more. Maybe it's the incomprehensible decision to have Rather remain as an "investigative reporter" on Sixty Minutes. Isn't that the part of the job that he actually screwed up?

The slew of reaction on the Web from the blogosphere is worth reading. Instapundit has a few reactions. Geraghty's got some additional ones here. In addition, Geraghty's own reaction is that it's not nearly enough and far too late. Andrew Sullivan is of a similar mind. ScrappleFace has one of the funniest headlines ever. Powerline is among those wondering what happened to the investigation, but takes time out to make an important point...

Rather and [Mary] Mapes [the producer of the piece] hated President Bush so much that they recklessly threw away their network's reputation--already somewhat tattered, to be sure--for integrity and accuracy. But isn't that a pretty good analogy to what the Democrats did? No one could have made a rational decision that it was a good idea to embrace Michael Moore as the party's house intellectual, or to launch such strident attacks against President Bush that many uncommitted voters must have wondered whether the Democrats had become unhinged. Like Dan Rather, the Democratic Party hated President Bush so much that it just couldn't help itself.

And maybe the folks who found Rather's bais abhorrent (like myself) should be enjoying the moment more. Check out Will Collier at VodkaPundit...

This is a humiliating comedown for Rather. Yes, it's a half-step. It's CBS trying to finesse its way out from under a disgraceful fraud committed by the network's most high-profile employee, but it is still a major, major defeat for CBS, and a crushing blow to Dan Rather. The CBS Evening News, even given plummeting ratings and a long slide in relevance, is still the crown jewel of CBS News. From its summit, Dan Rather has ruled the news division for a generation, effectively shaping a vast amount of the information that's broadcast over the network.

He never--never--would have voluntarily given up that much power and prestige under pressure. No way in hell would Rather give his critics the satisfaction of seeing him removed from that chair if he had any prayer of holding on to it.

The "this is no big deal" spin is a lie. The king is dead, and the blogosphere killed him.

I wonder if Little Green Footballs and Powerline should post Rather's head on the wall of the blogosphere hunting lodge in cyberspace.