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Dan Rather Sues CBS for $70 million

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Looks like we were right to award Rather the James Earl Carter Bitter Old Man Award. Only someone following in Carter’s footsteps would file such a suit, faulting CBS for its “‘intentional mishandling” of the aftermath of a discredited story about President George W. Bush’s time in the Texas Air National Guard” (Emphasis added).

Um, Mr. Rather, if anyone intentionally mishandled that story, it was you. It seems, just like Mr. Carter, you (to paraphrase something I wrote in awarding you the Carter award) are attacking your former employers to deflect attention from your own failings. Or that you just can’t admit that your bias caused you to blow this story.

Powerline‘s Paul Mirengoff puts it best when he writes that the “suit, for as long as it survives, should serve to reinforce Rather’s status as a laughingstock.”

Comments

  2. Oh Danny boy, the gripes, the gripes are apalling
    From now and then and down the sweaty backside
    The summer’s gone, and all the flowers are dying
    ‘Tis you, ’tis you must go and we who must abide.
    Come ye not back when summer’s in the meadow
    Or when your mouth is rushed and white with foam
    ‘Tis well be here in sunshine or in shadow
    Oh Danny boy, oh Danny boy, you really have to go.

  3. Well it all depends if CBS gets pissed by this ingratitude and decides to fight/expose Rather… or to cave. A settlement as little as $500K, I should think, will be touted as a significant victory by the moonbat Left.

  4. I wonder if the lawsuit was typed on Dan’s mysterious IBM Selectric using Microsoft Word?

    Dan vs CBS – pity they can’t both lose.

    Vera’s favorite ‘Danism’: “This race is tight like a too-small bathing suit on a too-long ride home from the beach.”

  5. Well it all depends if CBS gets pissed by this ingratitude and decides to fight/expose Rather… or to cave. A settlement as little as $500K, I should think, will be touted as a significant victory by the moonbat Left.

    That’s my big worry – CBS settles for an “undisclosed amount” and agrees with Dan that the documents were “not proven to be false” or some usch nonsense.

  7. Meanwhile:

    “The Crusaders themselves have testified to their defeat in Afghanistan at the hands of the lions of the Taliban,”… “The Crusaders have testified to their own defeat in Iraq at the hands of the mujahideen, who have taken the battle of Islam to the heart of the Islam world.”

    -Ayman al-Zawahri on AQ video released 9/18.

    Now who, exactly, would those crusaders be? The NYT? Keith Olberman? MSNBC-BS? Harry Reid? Nancy Pelosi? CNN-BS? Turban Durbin? Jack Murtha? John F.uck You Kerry?

    How about all of the above including our own Ian, Gillie, Kevin, Chase etc. Who else would al-Qaeda be praising but our own America “loving”, troop “supporting” liberal left????

    It still astounds me that the liberal left and al-Qaeda are virtually indistinguishable, but the libs lack what it takes to be embarrassed and appalled by it. I mean, when the enemy of our country has you picked as the electoral favorite, you should feel at least a gas cramp in your gut.

    Don’t know whether it’s sad or funny. I guess it’s tragically funny.

  9. Sorry, but some of Wapo’s details are too rich not to quote:

    CBS management “coerced” the veteran news anchor “into publicly apologizing and taking personal blame for alleged journalistic errors in the broadcast,” says the $70 million suit, which also names Sumner Redstone, chief executive of the network’s then-parent company, Viacom; CBS Chairman Les Moonves; and former CBS News president Andrew Heyward.

    Several former colleagues said they were baffled by the move. “I think he’s gone off the deep end,” said Josh Howard, who was forced to resign as executive producer of “60 Minutes II” after CBS retracted the story. “He seems to be saying he was just the narrator.

    “He did every interview. He worked the sources over the phone. He was there in the room with the so-called document experts. He argued over every line in the script. It’s laughable.”

    Rome Hartman, a former executive producer of “CBS Evening News” who now works for the BBC, said: “It’s got to be about this lasting sense of hurt and pride. I was flabbergasted. I just don’t get it.”

    It gets worse from there. ROFL 🙂

  12. Somebody needs a few reminders!

    1) Bush served in the reserves 6 years, flying a particularly dangerous type of plane – a plane with a bad safety record, known for killing its pilots.
    2) That’s way, way, way more than Clinton ever did.
    3) Bush joined his fully expecting to be sent to Vietnam. Reserve and National Guard units fought then, as today. National policy projected an increase in U.S. forces from the 500,000s to the 700,000s, at the time he joined.
    4) Then the American people elected Nixon, who reversed all that. And no; not because he knew Bush. Deal with it.

  13. And Dick & Lon Cheney sat out the war watching “Dark Shadows” as part of their charm offensive?? Which is less then Gore & Kerry did!!
    Bush’s attendance record has more holes then you find in Swiss cheese.
    Not all of us were born with a silver spoon in our nose…

  14. #14 james requires “honorable” wartime service for his presidents. Scratch Carter. Scratch Clinton. Scratch Kerry. Scratch Gore. Scratch Hillary. (Kerry got hoodwinked by a change in plans for Swiftboat service, but he worked the system and got out of harm’s way in record time. Gore carried a heavy camera and reported from bars all over Saigon.)

    Just how many left wingers are there in this volunteer service? Maybe a Jim Webb or two who will wax conservative for years and then jump on the liberal band wagon when desperate democrats and personal advancement call.

    The last democrat candidate who had anything to talk about in terms of war experience was old George McGovern. And do you remember when Bob Dole ran? The democrats tried to sell the story that his twisted arms and crippled paw were all part of his own retarded actions as an inept soldier. You guys are an embarassment. You rely on patriotic conservative Americans to keep you free and then attack them as a bunch of hayseed, extra chromosone religious zealots who are in dire need of elitist guidance. Ask me about Max Cleland.

  15. Now you’re really reaching, james. I love all that subject-changing. It’s like watching a dancer pirouette.

    The subject is: Dan Rather’s absurd lawsuit to reverse his earlier apology for the absurd forgeries that he, allegedly a fine journalist, absurdly yet dangerously (if you love democracy) peddled to a nation in the throes of a *Presidential* election.

    You can’t possibly win on that ground, so you change the subject to: Bush. And not anything current, but an ancient debate on his military service record.

    I show how you can’t win on that ground either. So you change the subject to: Dick Cheney, of all people. (I mean: huh?) What’ll your next move be: Bob Dole? Britney Spears? Plan 9 From Outer Space?

    ROFL 🙂

  16. [lefties] rely on patriotic conservative Americans to keep you free and then attack them as a bunch of hayseed, extra chromosone religious zealots who are in dire need of elitist guidance.

    That’s just it, H. Only it’s not just military: it’s police, fire, charity volunteers, business people, line workers, inventors… Anyone who is responsible, productive, brave, useful, grownup, etc. is supposed to just shut up and take Hillary’s or Ted’s orders. Just keep producing, keep doing the grownup work that makes the world go, while lefties alternately spit on them and run things into the ground.

    How DARE military people, business people, line workers (the good ones), etc. organize – under the “conservative” label, or whatever – and rebel against the MSM/Soros/Kennedy/academia/Hollywood elites!!!

  17. God bless you ILC! I mean it!.

    “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players”….: except for elite liberals who sit back and fill the role of critics.

    And, damn, there sure are a lot of them and seem to love to suck on the government tit.

  18. Poor Dan. Apparently his lawsuit isn’t/wasn’t the only empty suit at CBS.

    If he claims honestly that his former title of ‘Managing Editor’ (ahem!) was more than simply being a mouthpiece, he admits his suit is baseless and that he spent his career conning everyone into thinking he was a journalist rather than an opinionist.

    If he claims he was the victim of staff error, he betrays the con and proves he managed nothing other than good eye-lip coordination.

  19. You got to hand it to leftists and the MSM. When there isn’t proof of one of their hair brained theories….they just make it up and forge some papers. When called on it, they swear the underlying story is correct. When moved aside, Rather has the stones to sue, like he’s the victim. We are truely through the looking glass here Alice.

  20. And that’s what I think was funny about this.

    I mean, Mary Mapes was caught red-handed calling the Kerry campaign and coordinating media activity with them. This was a planned assault using CBS News to help throw a Presidential race with forged documents.

    And they came within a whisker of doing it.

  22. I’m still mad about this. The story was true. One document was forged. And that f***-up neutralized the story. Everyone connected to the Texas National Guard in the 60s will tell you that Bush rarely showed up for duty, and some of those people who will tell you voted for him.

  23. Last year I worked on a project for several months for
    Dan Rather’s company.
    He has never paid me one penny.
    They said they would send a check, and never
    sent it.
    I FEDEXED Rather personally, and told him what
    happened. He never responded.
    Before this, I thought that he had been treated badly.
    Now, I think that he is unscrupulous.
    I think that he knew the document was bogus.
    I personally believe that CBS had things on him that
    they could not air in public.