Just happen to be on sick baby overnight shift and caught The David Letterman Show, which I never usually watch. MSM relic Dan Rather is on his farewell tour and bloviated for a few segments about his 1968 Democratic National Convention scuffles in Chicago, his Deep Thoughts on Iraq, and, yes, the little “error” (too bad he doesn’t read the Wall Street Journal editorial page…”kerfuffle” would have really come in handy) that we have all come to know and love as Ra^thergate/Memogate/The Bogus Documents Thing.

The quick typers at Ratherbiased.com have an instant transcript already up here. (Update 1:25am: Ratherbiased.com has the video as well.)

Some of the CYA soundbites that jumped out at me while watching:

–Rather mumbling that “for whatever reason rightly or wrongly the focus became the documents.”

–His insistence that “George W. Bush was destined to be reelected regardless of what happened in August or September.”

–Letterman’s weird, repeated use of the word “evaporated” in asserting that the Thornburgh report absolved Rather and company of political bias. (Too bad the Late Night producers didn’t include Paul Mirengoff’s devastating analysis on this matter in Letterman’s show prep.)

–Rather’s anemically self-serving defense: “Nobody broke the law. Nobody lied…Depending on your point of view, it was a mistake…and who hasn’t made a mistake?

–Both men’s unreality-based implication that the bogus documents have not been proven to be the the laughing-stock forgeries that they are, and Rather’s insistence that “given more time, perhaps we could have” authenticated the documents.

Bwah-hah-hah-hah!

Letterman seemed uncomfortable. Rather seemed ill at ease. (Before Letterman launched into the Memogate stuff, Rather warbled a bit of “Everything is Beautiful” to poke fun of supporters of the war in Iraq and no one laughed.) Things got really hairy when Letterman needled Rather about Les Moonves’ role.

There was, of course, complete silence on the role of blogs in exposing the scandal. And there were no questions from Letterman on the absolute p.r. disaster that CBS and Rather engaged in after the blogosphere blew the whistle on the funny papers. Letterman could have done a great public service by replacing his top ten list and recapping for the audience the top ten defects of CBS/Rather’s handling of the story identified by the investigative panel. Drumroll please…

1. The failure to obtain clear authentication of any of the Killian documents from any document examiner;

2. The false statement in the September 8 Segment that an expert had authenticated the Killian documents when all he had done was authenticate one signature from one document used in the Segment;

3. The failure of 60 Minutes Wednesday management to scrutinize the publicly
available, and at times controversial, background of the source of the documents, retired Texas Army National Guard Lieutenant Colonel Bill Burkett;

4. The failure to find and interview the individual who was understood at the outset to be Lieutenant Colonel Burkett’s source of the Killian documents, and thus to establish the chain of custody;

5. The failure to establish a basis for the statement in the Segment that the documents “were taken from Colonel Killian’s personal files”;

6. The failure to develop adequate corroboration to support the statements in the Killian documents and to carefully compare the Killian documents to official TexANG records, which would have identified, at a minimum, notable inconsistencies in content and format;

7. The failure to interview a range of former National Guardsmen who served with Lieutenant Colonel Killian and who had different perspectives about the documents;

8. The misleading impression conveyed in the Segment that Lieutenant Strong had authenticated the content of the documents when he did not have the personal knowledge to do so;

9. The failure to have a vetting process capable of dealing effectively with the
production speed, significance and sensitivity of the Segment; and

10. The telephone call prior to the Segment’s airing by the producer of the Segment to a senior campaign official of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry - a clear conflict of interest - that created the appearance of a political bias.

Farewell, Mr. Rather. And good riddance. Based on the icky awkwardness of the interview, I imagine David Letterman feels the very same way.

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