The following document just fell into my hands. It came from a source I can't disclose, but that's okay because it was authenticated by experts whose names I can't disclose. Except for the ones whose names I announced who now say I've been lying all along, but I can't be lying because what I say is always the truth, Q.E.D.

It's a page from Dan Rather's diary! I have a special, special source. Whom I can't disclose.

I'll never give in. They can't prove it, they can't. They can't, they can't, they can't. I'm the great Dan Rather, and they are trying to take my strawberries. I won't admit it, and they can't fire me because I'm the Great. Dan. Rather. Just because I manufactured evidence for something doesn't mean I'm not the greatest journalist who ever lived. When you're a Great Journalist, you're allowed to make the stories up as you go along.

I wish it weren't Kerry; he's a poopy-head. A real poopy-head. But better than Bush. I'm a Great Journalist, and Kerry is a poopy-head.

They say I don't look like I used to, but the boys still pay for my services. They know I'm the Great Dan Rather. A Great Journalist. Worth paying for the privilege.

I've been turning tricks in the Village. And Kerry is a poopy-head. And I will always be the Great Dan Rather.

Oh, and it's typewritten. Or maybe it's in Crayola or something. I have second-generation copies, but I'm only going to let you see my transcription onto this blog. But my Sooper Secret Experts say that's all you need to see.

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If you were watching the football games yesterday—or spending the day in sober reflection—make sure to stop by Bill at INDC Journal's place as well as Rather Biased, and Patterico. Also, check out this wonderful essay by Hindrocket at Power Line, who compares the new media paradigm to that we have had to go through with respect to security issues as a nation in the wake of 9/11.

Also: Protein Wisdom has several link-rich updates on this issue, one of which is both a linkfest and a hilarious faux-interview. With Dan Rather's ego, no less.

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blogging outfit is a T-shirt and cutoffs. But I suspect that's close enough.

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My prediction: if this thing goes legal, Dan Rather is gone before the end of this year. If not, CBS will wait. Then he'll resign in January or February of '05. Personal projects, time with his family, athlete's foot—something.

This document flap is turning into the Watergate of the Fourth Estate.

This difference is, the media is the message this time.

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found the Microsoft Soft Word feature involved in the Rather Hoax.

And Politicalities has the more advanced option.

(Via James.)

And yet one more: Jay Reding sends his version of Clippy to Rather Biased, where it displays next to the post on Bernard Goldberg's take on the scandal.

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scoops us all on a series of e-mails from the early 70s that prove Bush was AWOL from the National Guard.

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. . . And CBS should fire anyone else who actually looked at the documents it presented on its 60 Minutes segment. Forget all the subtleties that are apparent to anyone with even a light background in typography. There are two things that should have leaped to the attention of anyone, even a 20-year-old who's never seen a typewriter in his/her life:

1. The signatures on the real documents don't match the ones on the fakes. That should have raised some questions.

2. The person who created the forged documents didn't even use Courier. The shocker isn't that these were forged, but rather the fact that they were done in such a sloppy fashion.

At this moment I believe this is a story about the failure of the mainstream media (MSM), rather than a story about the election this November. That will change if it appears that somene in the Kerry campaign supplied these fake memos—that's Watergate-level stuff.

Your main links are here: the Weekly Standard, which has a concise summary of the major issues with the problem documents. Powerline, which broke the story, and Drudge, who is also providing regular updates. But don't just go to the main Powerline link; scroll the entire main page while you're there, because Deacon, Rocket, and Trunk are constantly updating on the forgery issue. There were 334 trackbacks to that main post when I was last there; amazing.

Here's my question for the rest of the class: 3.If these memos have been in Jerry Killian's personal files (that his family says he never kept) for three decades, and have only recently been spirited out without the knowledge of his family members (who say they know nothing of their origins), how come they've clearly been copied many times? If they were authentic, the paper itself might be yellowed, but where would all those specks have come from? After all, they've just been sitting there in Killian's personal file for three decades . . .?

Here's a summary of the problems that are being reported with the forged memos. It's meant to be a study guide only, as the story is still developing and the blogosphere is still doing its research. In this case there are far too many issues for any one blogger to cover, so I'm giving you an overview. This is what is being said at present (I'll vouch for the first three items):

4. The suspect memos are kerned. Not just proportionally spaced, as an IBM Selectric "golf ball" would have done, but actually kerned. (Type "To" in your word processor, and look at how the two characters get all cozy. A typewriter can't do that.)

5. There is a single "curly quote" used as an apostrophe, rather than the "tick mark" one sees on typed documents from the 1970s.

6. There is a superscript "th" that comes and goes. Micrsoft Word supplies these automatically, but in those days we were supposed to shift the paper in the typewriter to move the letters in ordinals around, and they didn't end up being smaller: just higher in relation to the numerals.

7. The term "memo to file" can be superimposed on the two separate documents that bear it. Very fishy, in two documents supposedly produced four months apart.

8. The paper in use by the military around that time was not 8 1/2 x 11; it was 8 x 10. Yet the suspicious documents have no lines around the edges to show they've been photocopied in a larger-format machine (yet clearly these are supposed to be copied of copies, given the degradation in quality).

9. Some have detected a pattern in the dots that are apparently supposed to signify age in the document.

10. Jerry Killian apparently referred to his unit using different abbreviations at different times, if we are to believe the suspect documents.

11. The phrase "medical examination" was apparently not used. It should be "flight exam," or "flight physical," or "flying physical."

12. The date 04 May 1972 is incorrect; it should be 4 MAY 1972.

13. One of the suspect memos appears to have been written on a Saturday.

14. Medical exams were supposed to occur by the end of the month in which the pilot was born, so there would be no reason for Bush to be examined at any other time than during the month of July (by the end of the month).

15. Exams were never ordered. It was simply understood that if the physical didn't take place, the pilot wouldn't get paid. It was something individuals were responsible for; their superiors didn't get involved in it.

16. There's not SSCI code at the top of the page, and that is critical for all U.S. Military correspondence. (Aha! Maybe Killian just typed it up at the end of a long day, like we do in corporate America when we sense a political shitstorm brewing 'round us that may get us in trouble 30 years later, after we've died. But Killian didn't type.)

17. The protocol for Killian to refer to his own rank was not "Lt. Colonel." It should have been "LC," or "LTCOL," or "Lieutenant Colonel, [branch of service]."

18. "Commander" is incorrect usage for that time. It should have been "Commanding."

19. Killian's widow, Marjorie Connell, says a) Killian didn't keep his own files; b) the suspicious memos don't sound like they use language he'd actually employ; and c) when he needed records, he wrote things down. But mostly he kept things in his head. Morever, d) he liked G.W. Bush.

20. Killian's son maintains some of the documents were forged.

21. The term "MEMORANDUM FOR" is incorrect for that time frame.

22. There should be no periods after the rank, according to the Air Force style manual of the times.

23. Ditto the abbreviation for Fighter Interceptor Squadron (FIS). Ixnay on the periods.

24. The phrase "not later than" would never have been spelled out. Only the abbreviation (NLT) would have been used.

25. Lt Col Killian's signature block is incorrect for letters from the 1970's. This document employs a three-line signature element; these were only used by colonels and generals in organizations well above the squadron level.

26. The signature element is placed far to the right, instead of being left justified. The signature element was not supposed to be placed to the right of the document until almost 20 years after the date of this letter, per Air Force standards.

UPDATE: Donald Sensing has more on the military irregularities in the problem memos.

See below for the rest of the linkfest.

more...

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Patterico continues his fine work as a one-man fact-checking team for the Old Media. Today he shifts his focus from the L.A. Times and onto the AP, which has been Dowdifying Cheney's speech from the convention.

I don't think Cheney was saying, "if you elect Kerry, we'll be hit again." Because I think he—and everyone in the Administration—thinks we will be. Sooner or later, AQ is going to get past our defenses. The danger Cheney was speaking of was of using the old, failed "law enforcement" model when that does happen, which only perpetuates more terrorism.

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I missed this last week, since I was working my job job, but Baldilocks saved the day with a link.

Remember that incident wherein a Chinese newspaper used The Onion as a source for a story about American legislators insisting that a new Capitol building be built—or they were going to leave Washington, D.C.? Funny, that. But who expects the Chinese to "get" American humor, right? It's a different culture, and we must make allowances.

Salon just did the same thing. In a story Mark Follman wrote about credentialed bloggers covering the RNC, he cherry-picked a few "frivolous"-sounding quotes from a handful of RNC bloggers, and discussed Protein Wisdom's tidbits about the party surrounding the convention. The problem, of course, is that Jeff Goldstein of Protein Wisdom was home in Colorado, and his articles about such things as literal pissing contests, dwarf-tossing competitions, getting drunk with Ann Coulter, and Michael Moore eating an entire elk were actually, um, a joke. In other words, the Bush twins weren't really taking part in a dwarf-tossing event. Fancy that. And Coulter didn't really write "Joos for Bush" on Jeff's forehead with a lipstick.

The beautiful part is this: after Jeff blogged about Follman's colossal stupidity (my words, not his), Follman actually showed up in the Protein Wisdom comments section to claim that he was in on the joke all along, and was just "playing along" in order to make an obscure point about other bloggers at the RNC. Uh-huh.

The Captain has a nice takedown of Follman's article in which the Goldstein gaffe is mentioned in passing; it's clear that mainstream journalists (besides being sloppy and literal-minded) can't understand that blogging is a different medium entirely than what they're used to.

One of the Captain's commenters, Kris, offers this small glossary:

A 'Lapham' is time-travel journalism, so it doesn't really fit. Perhaps 'Follman' could be coined to mean something else.

Reporting on something without being there? No, wait, that's a 'Blair.'

Falling for a farce or hoax, and then when called on it, pretending you were 'in on the joke' the whole time?

Bingo!

And, of course, there's the original Alex Beam hatchet piece to consider. It's a scary time for Old Media. They are losing readers and viewers by the minute.

And I wonder why.

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