Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling!

[Comrade]

For pure speculation, I imagined what must be happening inside the brain of Dan Rather in his latest reporting. It's a ripe old FISKING.

Rather Concedes Papers Are Suspect
CBS Anchor Urges Media to Focus On Bush Service

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 16, 2004; Page A01

CBS anchor Dan Rather acknowledged for the first time yesterday that there are serious questions about the authenticity of the documents he used to question President Bush's National Guard record last week on "60 Minutes."

But on the inside Dan was silently raging, "Gawddamn bloggers and their Internet garbage. I shouldn't have to answer to pajama wearing lizardoids in their smug little blogosphere! Don't test the Danner, FOLKS!"

"If the documents are not what we were led to believe, I'd like to break that story," Rather said in an interview last night.

“I'd like to break that evil lizard at LGF too!", Dan fantasized.

"Any time I'm wrong, I want to be right out front and say, 'Folks, this is what went wrong and how it went wrong.' "

“In other words, Folks...right now I want you to all SHUT UP!”

Dan blinked. Oh shit did I just say that?

A bead of sweat formed at his temple.

No, he thought, he couldn't have. Because that would be wrong.

The Danner is not wrong.

after interviewing the secretary to Bush's former squadron commander, who told him that the memos attributed to her late boss are fake -- but that they reflect the commander's belief that Bush was receiving preferential treatment to escape some of his Guard commitments.

"I hope she doesn't talk about our interview.", he worries. "I really hope the family won't either."

Suddenly, reality seizes Dan's world like a fickle breeze.

He's actually asking a secretary who knew a man 30+ years ago to speak for the dead. All his thoughts on a single Guard member under his command invoked into the spirit of a true fraud. He's also ignoring the family of the same dead man who all contradicts her soothsaying.

And all to answer questions raised by a fraudulent memo deemed no longer of importance.

Dan almost feels like screaming out: "How dumb are you people watching this right now?!? Do you even care so long as Bush is targetted?"

Or... a scary thought occurs, "Am I a big joke?"

The former secretary, Marian Carr Knox, is the latest person to raise questions about the "60 Minutes" story, which Rather and top CBS officials still defend while vowing to investigate mounting questions about whether the 30-year-old documents used in the story were part of a hoax.

“Yeah,” Dan thinks, “you all like to hear the Danner joke around sometimes, , dont ya? See Danner is funny sometimes too, haha! Now shut up, the Danner is tired of joking!"

Their shift in tone yesterday came as GOP critics as well as some media commentators demanded that the story be retracted and suggested that Rather should step down.
"This is not about me," Rather said before anchoring last night's newscast. "I recognize that those who didn't want the information out and tried to discredit the story are trying to make it about me, and I accept that."

"Actually the GOP’s can kiss my Rather RUMP!”, Dan imagined for a moment.

“This story would have been buried on 9-11 if only…”. No, but the Danner cannot think of such things. But Danner also keeps a shovel nearby, too.

For Rather, 72, it is an all-too-familiar role. In his CBS career, he has survived an impertinent exchange with President Richard M. Nixon during Watergate, a clandestine trek through the mountains of Afghanistan, an on-air confrontation with George H.W. Bush over Iran-contra and a much-debated sitdown with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad.

Look at me, I am Dan!

"I laughed at Tricky Dick!"
"I confronted Bush!"
"I took a secret trip to Afganistan!"
"I had a sitdown with Saddam!

“And if some bloggers in pajamas on the net think they will take down the Danner they will be DESTROYED, fools!", he scoffed.

Now, on the final leg of a career launched by a Texas hurricane, Rather is trying to weather his biggest storm. And some of his closest friends and associates are concerned.

“And they all talk about Alzheimer’s, what is that anyway?”

"I think this is very, very serious," said Bob Schieffer, CBS's chief Washington correspondent. "When Dan tells me these documents are not forgeries, I believe him. But somehow we've got to find a way to show people these documents are not forgeries." Some friends of Rather, whose contract runs until the end of 2006, are discussing whether he might be forced to make an early exit from CBS.

“Oh man, did he just say that? Last time he said very, very serious people got fired..”

"They can't fire the Danner though. I broke this HOT story!"

In her interview with Rather yesterday, Knox repeated her contention that the documents used by "60 Minutes" were bogus. Knox, 86, worked for Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian while he supervised Bush's unit in the early 1970s.

"I know that I didn't type them," Knox said of the Killian memos. "However, the information in there is correct," she said, adding that Killian and the other officers would "snicker about what [Bush] was getting away with."

Rather said he was "relieved and pleased" by Knox's comments

Dan thought, “What will I do with this crap?”

that the disputed memos reflected Killian's view of the favorable treatment that Bush received in the military unit. But he said, "I take very seriously her belief that the documents are not authentic."

“This is serious, what the hell am I going to do with this story now?"

If Knox is right, Rather said, the public "won't hear about it from a spokesman. They'll learn it from me."

"And in a few months after this plays out, I'll announce my retirement early, because everyone had to pick on the Danner and I won't have that."

But he also delivered a message to "our journalistic competitors," including The Washington Post and rival networks: "Instead of asking President Bush and his staff questions about what is true and not true about the president's military service, they ask me questions: 'How do you know this and that about the documents?' "

In other words, Dan thought: “All of you media bastards are supposed to attack Bush, and not turn like sharks smelling my blood in the water. You are STOP NOW or the Danner will DESTROY you, fools! "

Because the Danner is mad at questions.

CBS News President Andrew Heyward defended the work that went into the Guard story. "I feel that we did a tremendous amount of reporting before the story went on the air or we wouldn't have put it on the air," Heyward said last night. "But we want to get to the bottom of these unresolved issues," including questions about the memos' typography, signatures and format. "There's such a ferocious debate about these documents."

Heyward said the account by Knox is "significant, which is why we're putting it on our prime-time program," "60 Minutes."

"Tick tick tick …", Dan heard again, watching again his last appearance on CBS on video in his living room.

He curses to himself, "Now what the hell is that damn clock counting down about? Is that a fucking joke 60 minutes? You thought it was time up for the Danner, didn't you?"

"Do you not know I can DESTROY you even now?!?"

Dan flips off the television. With both fingers.

Clothed in his pajamas, he digs around his feet among the pizza boxes and beer bottles for a keyboard, and begins to type madly into the blogosphere.

"Now revenge is mine!", former CBS correspondent Dan Rather cackles.

 

[Annie]

That was great! Kudos to Powerline, LGF, and INDC!