Get your barf bucket ready before you read this USA Today tribute to Dan Rather:

The recent “Memogate” scandal has made Rather a “piata (sic), with people lining up to whack him with a big stick,” says 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft. “Good journalists always make powerful enemies, and Dan’s are more zealous than most. People who’ve never liked him want him portrayed as having been disgraced. That’s hogwash….”

[Rather] rejects the notion that he is biased, even if his biggest run-ins have been with conservative presidents from Richard Nixon to both President Bushes….

Judging Rather’s body of work by [the memogate fiasco] “would be a gross disservice to a very brave journalist,” says Harvard media analyst Alex Jones. “The errors that Dan made were not of moral turpitude but of human fallibility. It shouldn’t have happened, but it doesn’t diminish his decades-long career of distinguished broadcast journalism.”

Biased? Dan Rather? Heaven forfend!

Update: More battiness regarding RatherGate from St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Sylvester Brown Jr.:

Dan Rather, a real newsman, damaged his reputation and almost lost his job under such accusations. Rather produced documents critical of Bush’s military record shortly before the election last year. OOPS! He didn’t bother to validate the authenticity of the documents and was accused (mainly by conservatives) of a partisan attack against Bush.

No one knows definitively if the documents were forged. We do know, however, that media attention shifted away from Bush’s dubious military record to the origination of dubious documents.

Some wonder whether Rove somehow leaked dummied documents to CBS? Hmmmm.

(Hat tip: Gateway Pundit.)