Nolte: CBS Tries to Rehabilitate Disgraced Dan Rather

Disgraced former anchorman Dan Rather is 92 years old, and CBS, the network that fired him for trying to rig the 2004 presidential election, has joined the shameless rehab campaign.

During the waning weeks of the 2004 presidential election, Dan Rather was determined to ensure incumbent Republican president George W. Bush did not win reelection. And so, on 60 Minutes II, he ran a story that claimed Bush went AWOL during his time in the Texas Air National Guard. The story was true, and Rather had the documents to prove it. The story was also phony and timed to devastate the wartime president. Bush Jr. was exposed as a liar and shirker, in contrast with his Democrat opponent, John Kerry, who served a few months in Vietnam.

There was just one problem…

After the story was fact checked and authenticated by Rather, his 60 Minutes team, and CBS, some lowly bloggers (a new thing at the time) at Free Republic, Power Line, and elsewhere proved the documents were not just forgeries, but weak and lazy forgeries. Rather’s smoking guns were not the product of Vietnam-era typewriters. Instead, they had been created by Microsoft Word.

Caught red-handed, instead of apologizing and retracting his lie, Rather stood firm and then went “expert shopping” for someone — anyone! — who might save his con job. Pre-Internet, Rather, and CBS might have gotten away with this. But the World Wide Web delivered a whole new level of accountability to the corporate media. Every attempt to rationalize or wish the story away was met with public pushback that could not be ignored. Eventually, CBS was forced to admit the documents were fake. Rather, however, to his eternal shame, would continue to insist the story of Bush going AWOL was accurate, even if the documents were fake.

Bush won reelection, CBS released a damning internal investigation, but Rather still stood behind the story and was finally forced out the following year. Two years later, Rather sued CBS for $70 million, claiming they had made him a “scapegoat” for the story. The lawsuit was eventually tossed.

Since then, Rather has been at his most authentic, using various platforms, including social media, to forever prove what many of us knew decades before the Rathergate affair: that Dan Rather is a bitter and dishonest far-left extremist.

But.

Because others must be encouraged to do the same, the left will always rehabilitate those who sell their souls for the good of The Cause. Even proven liars, plagiarists, and bigots like Anita Hill, Christine Blasey Ford, Al Sharpton, Fareed Zakaria, Joy Reid, etc., are rehabbed.

Dan Rather could not be left out in the cold. This rehab attempt is a signal to everyone else in the media: fall on your sword with lies and fraud, and we will still take care of you and your legacy.

Hollywood attempted to rehab Rather by having him played by no less than Robert Redford in a Rathergate movie that claimed the Bush story was true. Truth flopped. (I loved it.)

Before CNN fired disgraced conspiracy theorist Brian Stelter, he did his part to rehab Dan Rather by treating him like an expert guest and Grand Poobah of journalism.

Netflix is going all in with a 95-minute Dan Rather documentary.

And now, CBS, who suffered untold reputational damage at the hands of Rather’s hysterical and dishonest partisanship, is climbing aboard the rehab train:

Minus the suspenders and his cigars, Rather remains just as I remember him: an intently curious, thoughtful, well-read skeptic, who wants nothing more than to wear out his shoe-leather chasing the next headline.

Asked what made him want to become a reporter in the first place, Rather said, “I’ve never quite known the answer to that question. All I know is, it’s the only thing I ever wanted to be, was a reporter. I get up every morning and as soon as my feet hit the ground, I say, where’s the story?”

This is all CBS has to say about Rather’s unforgivable meddling in a presidential election with a big, fat hoax:

In 2004 Rather filed a report for “60 Minutes II” that questioned George W. Bush’s service record in the Texas Air National Guard, reporting on “new documents and new information” about the president’s military service. But the documents on which Rather and his producer based their reporting could not be later authenticated.

Listen, because I have and will always need them, I’m all for second chances. Because I will always need it, I’m all for forgiveness. But contrition must come first. Rather still refuses to admit his story was fake. He stands by fake but accurate, and that is not only a lie on top of a lie and forgery, that is the opposite of contrition.

Dan Rather deserves only ridicule, contempt, and scorn.

FLASHBACK — CNN’s Cuomo to Dan Rather: What Should Media Do Going Forward? I Learned Anchors ‘Can Bring Integrity’ from You

John Nolte’s first and last novel, Borrowed Time, is winning five-star raves from everyday readers. You can read an excerpt here and an in-depth review here. Also available in hardcover on Kindle and Audiobook.