Dan Rather was always a lousy, biased, beclowned newsman, but it wasn’t until he tried to foist off those laughably obvious forged documents about President George W. Bush’s time in the Texas Air National Guard that his all of his prideful and left-wing flaws finally came home to roost. And they’re still roosting. To this day, Rather continues to make an ass of himself defending a disgraced career and the thoroughly discredited story that finally brought him down.
Lately, Rather has been popping up on various MSM venues to prove he’s nothing close to rehabilitated in the Department of Ethics. Today he was on “Morning Joe,” where he stood on his porch, shook his fist, and hollered a lecture at those who exposed him.
But that’s just Dan Rather being Dan Rather.
The worst part was “Morning Joe” panelist Mike Barnicle enabling the disgraced former anchor with this slop:
Mike Barnicle, “Morning Joe” panelist: The aspect of your life your story, the culture that we are all a part of, in that you have had and still have this tremendously honorable career across all of these decades. Going to Afghanistan in a few days for the 14th or 15th time covering a major story, war in our times.
And yet we live in an age where not just with you but one second of that career, one day, one hour of that career can be extracted and built up by elements of the culture around us trying to define an entire career. There is a danger in that.
Obviously, Rather jumped all over this and assumed his favorite position: the victim:
Dan Rather: Well, I agree with you. Of course, Mike, I would. But I do think it is something people can pull back for what we call in television, the wide shot and think about that with the internet, with all of its advantages — and I’m a great believer in the internet and the future of the internet.
But one of the downsides is exactly what you just said. That anonymous people, frequently organized for partisan and political purposes and/or their ideology, can anonymously absolutely blow up your reputation.
Whether it’s your neighbor, you can be a plumber or a welder or a businessman and if your neighbor doesn’t like you he can virtually destroy you over a 24, 36 hour period, anonymously, by putting out all kinds of misinformation, lies even about and that moment it’s frozen in time and many people identify you with that moment. It’s true.
One way to avoid this is to not give those “awful” Internet people ammo. You know, like fraudulent documents used in a partisan attempt to take down a sitting president.
Another way might’ve been to admit those documents were fakes instead of assuming the high-larious position of being the only person on the planet still defending them.
What Barnicle’s and Rather’s complaint ultimately comes down to is this: These are Old Media holdovers not used to accountability. When these two entered the profession of journalism (a term I use loosely), it was with the understanding that they would not only be the last word in accountability, but also that no one would ever hold them accountable.
Then, in the middle of their careers, the First Amendment had a beautiful new baby called New Media, and the party for the unaccountable came to an end.
Yes, suddenly the media’s worst nightmare came true. The Great Unwashed no longer had to sit there and suck on the lies and bias. Suddenly, we were able to fight back and do to the media what it does to everyone who disagrees with them politically: bathe ’em in sunshine.
And like the unholy monster the institution of the mainstream media really is, when faced with sunlight, it writhes and screams and hisses aloud hollow threats on its way to the ash heap of history, where it belongs.
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