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In reply to the discussion: Nancy Pelosi: 'It Is A Fact' That Somebody Told Harry Reid About Romney Not Paying Taxes [View all]leveymg
(36,418 posts)A trick is a ruse is getting snookered or whatever regionalism you want to call it.
The problem with the whole Rathergate thing was CBS. The network suits wanted rid of Rather and to downsize and change the orientation of the entire News Division. The network had just been taken over by Sumner Redstone, owner of Viacom, who ended up downsizing CBS News and publicly backing Bush.
When challenges to the authenticity if the TANG documents was first heard, the CBS suits went along with Pajama Media and agreed that the issue was whether or not these were xerox copies of Shrub's file. Anything else, Redstone's network suits agreed, was proof that Rather was unfairly accusing Bush, proving Rather was a "librul-biased" mainstream media who had to be sacked to keep CBS' hands clean.
But, that's not the way it was or should have been handled. The real story was Karl Rove's sanitization of Bush's military records and the effort to keep the media (as it still was back then) off the story. Why weren't Bush's records where they were supposed to be, and how did these reproductions (or whatever they were) get put into the hands of CBS producers? That was the real story, that if CBS had simply stuck to and focused on, would have likely revealed Bush for what he was -- a flake and a fraud -- and spared the damn country everything that followed.