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The Weblog at The View from the Core - Thu. 09/09/04 10:23:56 PM
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What Did Dan Rather Know? And When Did He Know It? Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CCCLXXII CBS covers itself in shame. By now, Faithful Reader, you have surely heard about the infamous memos. I will briefly set forth some of the reasons I've come across for concluding that they are really, really bad, bad forgeries. None of this analysis is original to me. First, the documents (click each for a 100% image, which will open in a new window). So, how do we know and I do mean know, with certainty that these documents are forgeries?
I will merely note in passing that it occurs to me that the documents have been doctored to make them look as if they have been photocopied many times perhaps by actually photocopying them many times without any apparent reason for having to be photocopied many times other than to make them look old. FWIW, here is my personal experience. First, when I bought my first personal computer, in 1989, I bought with it an Epson dot-matrix printer. So new was the concept of superscripting and/or subscripting text, I specifically asked the salesman if the printer was capable of it. He said sure, but it's software that does that. And I said yes, I know that. Second, some of the documents have ordinals that are not superscripted; they are usually separated from the numerals by a space. That's how you get software to skip performing the automatic conversion to superscripting. Third, I have occasion at work to want to use a regular apostrophe (') sometimes instead of a curly apostrophe (’). You either have to set the software so it will not convert the regular to the curly, and then have to do something special to get the curly; or, you have to let the software convert from regular to curly and do something special to get the regular. Fourth, I am even (believe it or not) familiar with kerning. Having been a geek for a long time, I used to spend hours and hours with WordPerfect 5.1 and its 1,020 page manual, which I purchased on Feb. 23, 1990. In fact, I have it before me right now: so geeky am I, I've kept it as a souvenir of my early PC days. (I also still have the six 5.25" floppy disks the WordPerfect software came on.) Kerning is discussed on page 331. :-) Here are some of the more significant posts elsewhere, presenting all the evidence and analysis in more detail:
I think the person responsible for this incredibly botched forgery must possess several qualities: (1) remarkable deviousness, (2) breathtaking amorality, (3) an intellectual facility for generating possibilities rather than probabilities, and (4) a lack of solid experience with typewriters and word processors by which to verify the possibilities generated by his imagination. Do these documents, therefore, demonstrate that James Carville can type? Let's now get to the heart of the matter. The story here is not Bush's TANG service. The story is not these documents. The story is not even forged memos. The story is
ONE OF THE WORLD'S PREMIER NEWS ORGANIZATIONS Many questions are raised by this scenario: Who, precisely, actually forged the documents? How did CBS get them? What expert(s) did CBS have examine the documents for authenticity? Elmer Fudd? Daffy Duck? And, did anybody at CBS have any clue that the documents are forgeries? So, these are my most important questions: WHAT DID DAN RATHER KNOW? Lane Core Jr. CIW P Thu. 09/09/04 10:23:56 PM |
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