Rathergate; Edward Gibbon; Rome/ U.S. parallels

Today is the fifth anniversary of Rathergate. Click here for the four year anniversary post.

I celebrate this year with a quote from Edward Gibbon:

"Every channel of communication was stopped or corrupted."











The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon, Vol II, p. 226.

Rathergate - four years later

Four years after the blogosphere exposed the forgeries that CBS used in its story about George W. Bush and the Texas Air National Guard, the MSM/DNC is no less relentless in its lies about Republicans.

The MSM/DNC has spread so many smears about Sarah Palin in little more than a week, it is almost impossible to keep track.

But we have countered every attack and will counter even more. Because Rathergate was about much more than Dan Rather, George Bush or John Kerry. Rathergate had less to do with typesetting, kinkos, superscript "th", or a "failure to authenticate" than it had to do with the future of information.

• Rathergate was about the ability of the old media to control the discussion (no matter what the issue).


• Rathergate was about the old media monopoly.


• Rathergate was about alternative sources of information.


• Rathergate was about the truth vs. the power of the old media.


• Rathergate was about a long term revolution.

Within months of Rathergate, Dan Rather was out of a job, and so was the President of CNN over an entirely different scandal exposed by conservative blogs.

During and after Rathergate, CBS News was discredited, and so was Newsweek over a different scandal in which bloggers presented the truth to the public.

Numerous other major news outlets would be discredited over lies in 2005 (and later).

The point is, Rathergate provided a boost that helped the blogosphere counter MSM/DNC lies from that point forward. Rathergate is a major milepost in the new media revolution. Rathergate is as important as Drudge's exposure of Monicagate.

We make a mistake if we think of Rathergate as merely a pleasant memory that serves no purpose today. Rathergate is a battle that must be refought every time that the MSM/DNC tells a lie.

The left continuously celebrates (and misinterprets) the anniversaries of its greatest victories - Watergate and Vietnam. We will hear about those events nonstop until the MSM/DNC disappears. We must celebrate our victories also, or the left will reinterpret history and remove Rathergate and other milestones from our collective memory.

As we fight the anti-Palin smears, Rathergate must be our weapon. Just as the left opposes our efforts in the war by linking all such efforts to Vietnam, we must remind the world that the MSM/DNC has no credibility because of Rathergate. We must serve notice that we will not allow the equivalent of forged documents to smear our candidates. We will not stand by as anonymous Rather-wannabes spread lies.

Only by building on the victories of the past will we enable those victories to mean something in the future.

previous -

Three year anniversary - personal recollections.

Two year anniversary - Rathergate legacy

One year anniversary - "shot heard 'round the world."

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Update - Rathergate in light of September's events.

Rathergate three year anniversary

Today is the three year anniversary of Rathergate.

Click here for last year's anniversary post and here for the one year anniversary in 2005.

This post contains numerous links to posts from Powerline and Little Green Footballs that explain the history of the scandal and how it unfolded.

Without recounting the history of the scandal, remember only that CBS broadcast the report based on the forged memos on September 8, 2004. Free Republic picked up the forgery almost immediately:

After 12 days of stonewalling CBS would grudgingly backtrack on the documents.

Within a few months, Rather would retire, the blogosphere would force out Eason Jordan from CNN, Newsweek would be exposed as having published lies about Korans in the toilet at Gitmo and the MSM/DNC would continue its long, slow tailspin. The final chapter on the whole MSM/DNC media monopoly has yet to be concluded. But the opening paragraph of that final chapter was written on September 8, 2004.

2005 anniversary post

My own observations from the first days of the scandal provide an example of how the world really changed at that time. I first began reading about the possibility that the memos were forged on Thursday, September 9, 2004 (the day after the broadcast). That evening (while driving to a dinner appointment), I heard Sean Hannity on the radio. In discussing the broadcast, he appeared agitated and angry. He did not raise the issue of the memos being forged. He seemed unaware of the discussion from Powerline and LGF (as linked by Drudge). He seemed to be handicapped by his lack of knowledge of the blog discussions.

When I arrived at my dinner, my leftist dinner companions seemed overjoyed by the previous night's CBS report. When I pointed out that the memos were forgeries, they merely laughed. They had not heard this accusation in the few hours since the story first aired. The idea of a "60 Minutes" document being forged was beyond their experience.



Within two days, the situation had changed completely. On Saturday, September 11, 2004, I attended a large outdoor picnic at which one of my dinner companions (from Thursday) was also present. By this time, the accusations of forgery had forced themselves into the mainstream. The dinner companion from two days earlier approached me and apologized for having snickered at my accusation. When I asked what had changed her attitude, she reported having seen the forgery story on some mainstream news program. I had read the initial reports regarding the forgery, but I was unaware that those reports had gotten to the point where mainstream viewers would see them. But apparently the two days between the 9th and the 11th had made a tremendous difference. Judging from my friend's change in awareness, it appears to me that those two days were the crucial days in the scandal. When average leftists become aware of a MSM/DNC outlet's perfidy, the result becomes almost inevitable.

One never knows when a few posts on one's blog can impact the opinions of those who pay little attention to blogs or media bias issues.