Pajama Pundits

Or: When you know you've done something really, really stupid, pretend it's everyone else who doesn't get it.

Dan Rather is still trying to figure out how bloggers mamaged to see through his story, (From Radio Blogger via lgf)
More to the point, he's still trying to divert attention from the real facts of the scenario.

It’s absolutely amazing to me that any rational human being could still give this paranoid, pathetic man credence when he claims the Bush Guard memos have not been proven to be fakes, and suggests that the blogosphere’s exposure of the fraud was some kind of sinister plot.

Still, Rather, sort of, ish, a little, maybe, accepts that there might be a teeny, tiny bit of what might, potentially, be considered 'journalism' in the blogs.

Some blogging, I think we would be guilty of over-generalizing...some blogging strikes me as at least a possible new form of journalism. Now in my own mind, and I'm not trying to get everybody else to do this, if the blogger is prepared to put his or her name on it, and be accountable for what they put on the blog, then it is a stretch, it would be a stretch for me, but keep in mind, I'm 73, soon to be 74 years old, and yesterday's man. In a stretch, I could see a person who wants to give information, wants to be an honest broker of information about the who, what, when, where, why of events, and attaches his name to it, that might be a new form of journalism. I'm not there yet, but it could be.

I know you weren't talking about me, Dan, but I'm almost, possibly, perhaps, maybe, thinking about potentially saying thank you on behalf of the sphere.
... ish.

Not to be outdone, Mary Mapes is still, very carefully, shocked, mostly, it seems, because bloggers were concentrating on the fact that the 'memos' she'd 'uncovered' were blatantly fake, instead of looking at the message those fake documents held.

Our work was being compared to that of Jayson Blair, the discredited New York Times reporter who had fabricated and plagiarized stories.

Hey, this isn't fair. At least Jayson Blair didn't fabricate actual evidence. And of course, given that they're "hard-core, politically angry, hyperconservatives," there's no need to pay any attention to what they say, right, even if they are smart lawyers, and that in the case of Charles Johnson, proprieter of Little Green Footballs and web site designer, he has forgotten more about typography than Mary is ever likely to learn or (on the available evidence) be able to comprehend?

My favourite bit is this one:

There was no analysis of what the documents actually said, no work done to look at the content, no comparison with the official record, no phone calls made to check the facts of the story...

Well, she's finally admitting it.

Oh, wait! She's talking about the bloggers! My irony meter just shattered the glass, and bent its needle into a pretzel.

... the more things change.

Update: From the comments section at the lgf piece, a very good point.

In response to Dan's comment regarding the lowering (can it get much lower?) 'esteem' in which modern 'journalists' are held, we get this:

I guess the "kind of esteem" that Dorothy and company had for the Wizard of OZ went down when Toto pulled the curtain back. The truth is though, that the Wizard never did deserve it; he just bluffed his way into acquiring it. As did Rather. Until Charles and other participants in the blogosphere pulled his curtain back. The difference is that the Wizard knew when the jig was up. [emphasis added]

Update again: Korlapundit has a kit you can use to create your own TANG memos!