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Rather Gets Surreal

Meanwhile, back to the topic of this thread :D ...

I happen to be fascinated with the mindset of people like Rather...what should be by most standards a satisfying career isn't enough for him...he has to invent combat as a Marine, and other fictions to spice up his life.

And he is far from alone...Geraldo Rivera/Jerry Rivers, Silver Star winner Lt.Commander Lyndon Baines Johnson, et al. just had to add in that extra layer of BS that caused someone to start digging and sully what could have been a perfectly acceptable biography with phonied up claims.

Some people call it 'lying on credit when they could tell the truth for free'.

And this sort of stuff has spawned a cottage industry of professional/quasi-professional debunkers, ala Randi...the Stolen Valor researchers, the Fake Navy Seals exposers...the more they dig, the more they uncover people working in positions of responsibility and authority...professors and department heads at universities, police officers and deputies, elected officials, in large numbers...all of them with that 'I was a Navy Seal on secret missions', or 'I picked up a little shrapnel in the 'Nam'...
...NOT as a casual BS line over cocktails, but as resume enhancement.

And NOT one or two, or a dozen, or a hundred...but many hundreds, heading towards thousands.
(As an interesting side note, is is a very common response for their employers, who should be outraged at being duped, to circle the wagons to protect the exposed employee).


Why do they do it?
 
I've been out of the loop for a while and only today really started reading about the memo controversy.

But I had the same question: Why would Rather dig in his heels like this? What has he got to gain?

The best explanation I've read so far was that if Rather comes out and admits the memos are forgeries, he's going to have to give up the source (why protect a liar?) and that just might be someone so partisan that CBS is going to look even worse for:

1) Not checking a partisan source; or

2) Looking like they were in on the fraud.

Call me partisan myself, but this does have some bearing on the election in my view. If the documents are forgeries (and I don't think there are many who are saying otherwise ... correct me if I'm wrong, I just started reading about this today) and they are somehow later linked to either the DNC or Kerry campaign, then as Dezi Arnez used to say, "Luci, you got a lota splainin' to do."
 
What I am wondering about is why Rather is so protective of his source of these memos. True, jouranlists have a duty to their sources and must keep their anonymity--but that is conditional on the source itself acting in good faith; you cannot perpetrate a deliberate hoax and expect your anonymity to be respected.

It is remotely possible the reason is that the reason for this secrecy is that the hoax came from some higher-up in the Democractic part or the Kerry campaign. Far more likely, however, is that if he tells us who the source is, other investigators will show just how trustworthy the memo's author was, and how easy it was for him to fool Rather & co. In other words, he isn't protecting his source--he is protecting himself from embarassment.
 
Skeptic said:
What I am wondering about is why Rather is so protective of his source of these memos. True, jouranlists have a duty to their sources and must keep their anonymity--but that is conditional on the source itself acting in good faith; you cannot perpetrate a deliberate hoax and expect your anonymity to be respected.

It is remotely possible the reason is that the reason for this secrecy is that the hoax came from some higher-up in the Democractic part or the Kerry campaign. Far more likely, however, is that if he tells us who the source is, other investigators will show just how trustworthy the memo's author was, and how easy it was for him to fool Rather & co. In other words, he isn't protecting his source--he is protecting himself from embarassment.
Click to expand...

I agree that it's more likely that the forged memos came from someone working independently.

If it turns out the forgery did not come an obviously partisan source, Rather looks foolish for not checking it out. The lack of investigation makes it looks like willful blindness motivated by bias.

But if it turns out the forgery came from an obviously partisan source, Rather looks like he was in on the fraud. If that's the case, it won't matter if he invested or not, his career is over. Since others have shown it to be an obvious fraud, nobody will believe Rather's claims to have investigated, which are doubtful in the first place.

Either way, Rather looks bad. When I first started reading about this, I thought it was willful blindness. But the longer he waits to give up his source, the more I think the truth just might be behind door number two -- obviously partisan source, no investigation on Rather's part, just trying to do a hachet job on Bush.
 
Okay, I have posted the above message 9 times. I am going to have to agree with Cleon on this - do we really need 9 threads about this? Corplinx himself has started 6 of them - did he really need to start another thread about "Rather has pancakes for breakfast" or whatever?

Face it, folks. There are NO new developments on this that require their own thread. The facts are:
1) Memo
2) Probably faked.
3) CBS probably has to CYA for legal reasons.
4) Rather is trapped

That's about it. Now can we please get back to threads about Michael Jackson, AWOL Bush, Kerry's medals, SBVT, military death toll in Iraq, Kerry flip flops, Bush lies, Limbaugh is a hypocritical drug addict, you are Hitler, .999...... = 1, atheism is not a religion, you are a troll, or one of the other subjects that comparatively suffer for lack of discussion?
 
Dorian Gray said:
Now can we please get back to threads about Michael Jackson, AWOL Bush, Kerry's medals, SBVT, military death toll in Iraq, Kerry flip flops, Bush lies, Limbaugh is a hypocritical drug addict, you are Hitler, .999...... = 1, atheism is not a religion, you are a troll, or one of the other subjects that comparatively suffer for lack of discussion?
Click to expand...
MAJOR STRASSER: I advise that this place be shut up at once.
CAPTAIN RENAULT: But everybody's having such a good time.
 
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