REVENGE OF THE DAN

Fighting back.

D

an Rather has decided to massage his bruised ego by suing his former network for $70 million. Several of his colleagues who've commented seem to think he has "gone off the deep end."

It's been three years since he and others used incompetently forged documents to swing a presidential election -- and it failed fabulously. Conclusively proven within hours to be of Microsoft Word default style (lgf), the Kinko's faxes would later be cited in his public apology for bad reporting.

In a four-suspender session with Larry King yesterday (I haven't seen any video clips yet but it was described to me), Gunga Dan declared the independent commission of inquiry into the mess "a fraud." (Dan, you could be sued by Richard Thornburgh for saying that!). He still believes his documents are real. He sorta meant the apology, but he sorta didn't, but since he "played team" he read the mea culpa on-air -- and now says the network wrote it for him.

All this mistreatment, and losing his place in the stratosphere, * is worth $70 mil to the delicate flower. How could they do this to a man who counts himself among the "Dalai Lamas of journalism?" *

The transcript is peppered with brainfarts like this:

Larry, I think about it, and I hope you forgive me for saying this, I've thought about filing this lawsuit, when I was 18, 19-years- old just getting into journalism, my first reporter job, how idealistic I was, how much I wanted -- news had been tabled.

Somebody should grab a clip of that. He thought about filing this lawsuit half a century ago? Decades before George Bush even flew those fighter jets? Mystical. I wonder if Dalai Lama could do that.

* In a hard-hitting September 2005 interview in which he was grilled by Marvin ("Dan you are marvelous, you are no ordinary work-a-day journalist.") Kalb, Rather bubbled...

"You know it's very hard when you get, what I call 'up above the treeline,' in journalism; up where the air is thin, up where you think the Dalai Lamas of journalism..... run. It's very hard to keep it in perspective. But it's very important to do so."

UPDATE: As promised, Allah provides about 4 minutes of clips from the show. Larry plays the apology for him to respond to, including "It was a mistake"  and the "personally and directly" expressed "I'm sorry" -- which aired exactly three years ago yesterday. See the Dan of now watching himself saying it, and explaining why it doesn't negate his legal claim today.

Labels: Moonbats

- posted by Agam @ 10:25 PM 0 comments

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