Monday, September 13, 2004
The gossip rags are notorious for going out, finding a person who's willing to tell them something juicy and then reporting on it. Never mind vetting too deeply, it's the story the readers want, and it's the story the readers get. If it turns out not to be true...eh, 'that's what we were told,' they can always say. Now, one might expect such standards from sources like the Enquirer or The Star, but the big guys, like say...CBS, one expects better from. Take a look at these two entries at Power Line to see how the standards of the vintage media have slipped. The first comes off as something directly out of the Enquirer playbook, the second concerns how poorly the documents CBS has relied on would fair in a court of law.
Power Line: The Real Robert Strong
(As a side note on the power and usefullness of the blogosphere, see this comment at Roger L. Simon's blog posted by the father of the Power Line source.)
Powerline:Since you're lawyers, I have a, perhaps trivial, side issue question about the memos. What admissibility hurdles would you have to overcome to get copies of documents entered as evidence?
Martin Vaala
Martin:
Good question. Based on what CBS has released so far, they're not even in the ballpark. You'd have to authenticate them and overcome any hearsay obstacles contained within them. CBS hasn't attempted to do any of this.
CBS is trying to use these forgeries to influence a Presidential election, but they could never get them into evidence in a $10,000 civil case.
John H.
Which kind of puts CBS's stonewalling into perspective.
Update: OceanGuy says:
Exactly, which is why Bush's lead continues strong, in spite of these silly attacks. Sometimes I suspect the Democrats of either willfull incompetence or some of the worst delusional group-think I've ever seen. Do they really think this is an effective line of attack? And this is it for them, because at the same time these attacks are happening, their man is still busy hiding from the media.
Hiding from the media, nad from the voters is probably John Kerry's only hope. The more people see of him, the less they like him.
The Dems picked the wrong guy, because the Dems don't know who they are anymore. Are they Al Gore or Joe Lieberman? Because they don't know who they are, Kerry is the perfect candidate to reflect that lack of identity.
The danger is going to be in how Bush interprets the landslide win. Watching the Democrats rebuild will be interesting to watch.
Well said, especially about Kerry perfectly reflecting the Dems' lack of identity.
What's particularly sad, is watching the WAY they're going down. They/he could have picked a platform and stuck to it - you want to make an anti-Iraq plank part of the policy? OK. How about adding in a few domestic social issues, the Dem specialty? OK. They could stake out a territory, defend it and use it to launch attacks. They may still be losing issues, but at least it would be a principled stand...and something that will leave them with at least some territory to stand on to build for the next time.
Instead, what do they choose to fight about? Where do they make their stand and continue their attack? The one thing they manage to be consistent on? Bush's GUARD RECORD! Sad.