Anachronisms Galore; Power Line Powers On

The fiasco at CBS (and, by extension, the New York Times and Wash Post) continues. Their eagerness to see Bush defeated, so obvious for so long, has discredited them beyond expectations as the "60 Minutes" story on the President's National Guard service has unraveled. Expert after expert has determined that the documents on which the story rests are forgeries, and crude ones at that. Although CBS claims to have consulted its own document authority, even an amateur like me can look at the papers in question and see anachronisms. This looks more like a case of willful ignorance than sloppy reporting. Even ABC has a story on the likelihood that the document are fake.

Power Line has the scoop today as it did yesterday, again proving the invaluable service of new media in uncovering frauds perpetrated by the old media elite. Hindrocket, a lawyer in Minneapolis, rounds up yesterday's coverage, including Drudge's report which crashed PL's web site (the dream of all bloggers). They follow up with a superb entry by a recently retired Air National Guard officer who lists the reasons he believes the documents to be forged. They're all anachronisms that prove, to me at least, that the documents are new. And this morning's entry covers last night's episode of Ted Koppel's show, along with this insight:

"Koppel returned to the forgery issue late in the show during an interview with former Gore operative Chris Lehane. This was the damage control segment but, significantly, the damage being controlled was not that inflicted on CBS, but rather the potential damage to the Kerry campaign. Koppel and Lehane agreed that the campaign almost certainly was not responsible for the forgery because the consequences of being caught are too high. (Lehane even floated the idea that the Bush campaign might have been responsible). Under this analysis, the Nixon campaign couldn't have been behind the Watergate break-in either -- it must have been the work of Democrats or the CIA. But, again, the real point is that the MSM and the Democrats have figured out that CBS and its report are probably lost causes, and that the key thing now is to protect the Kerry campaign. It looks as if the campaign that wants so desperately to go back on the offensive after weeks of being pounded may have to play some serious defense for a while longer."

John Podhoretz clearly understands what's up:

"From the lies of Ben Barnes to the apparent forgeries of who-knows-who-did-it — why has '60 Minutes' exposed itself in this way? We all know why. Its producers and others in the media think George Bush deserves to be beaten up now because of the beating administered to John Kerry in August. In some weird way, the editors and producers believe this is fairness at work. Instead, they have unmasked themselves. Or rather, they have been unmasked by ordinary people who can see what they and their hired experts evidently could not."

Excellent work has also been done by Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard. Steve asked three document experts to comb the files and they all suspect they're forgeries.

The key anachronisms are, according to the authorities cited in the above sources:

1. The use of Times Roman typeface, which was available to printers but not on typewriters.

2. The use of curly apostrophes, which typewriters don't use.

3. The use of proportional type spacing, which again typewriters don't do.

4. The use of superscript for "th" as in 7th.

Anyone who grew up using typewriters, and I used them through an M.A. thesis, knows all of this even if one hardly thinks of such things any longer. All of which makes it both remarkable and disgusting that CBS would go ahead with a story based on such flimsy evidence. But when your heart rules your head, anything can happen.

Following on the heals of the AP fabrications, the mendacity of the NYT report on Cheney's speech, and myriad other big media fiascos, it's difficult not to conclude that, as Wilfred McClay wrote here not long ago, we really are witnessing a new era in the history of American media. The old institutions are cracking up right before our eyes and, like the implosion of the Soviet empire, it's happening with astounding speed. Equally amazing is just how blind many in the elite media and chattering classes remain to these cataclysmic changes.