September 13, 2015

Dan Rather loves the movie about Rathergate that stars Robert Redford as Rather.

"This is the best film I've seen on the big screen that takes you inside the craft of journalism, and demonstrates how it works, as opposed to how people feel journalism works."

Did you forget about Rathergate? Prepare to be reminded!

The name of the movie is "Fake But Accurate."

Just kidding. It's "Truth." Not kidding. That's it, thuddingly, "Truth."

119 comments:

Sharc said...

They missed an opportunity. Should have been named "Myopic Zeal."

tim maguire said...

If Rather likes it, then I can guess where the "truth" lies.

rcommal said...

Did you forget about Rathergate?

No.

The name of the movie is "Fake But Accurate."

Yeah, I got the joke before you delivered the punchline (k-thud).

Just kidding. It's "Truth." Not kidding. That's it, thuddingly, "Truth."

As opposed to "Truthiness"! Remember that 2006 Word of the Year? I do, along with its various fans and defenders. ...

... including ...

rcommal said...

...and not including ...

me, for example; I despised that notion/philosophy then, for specific reasons, and I despise that notion/philosophy now (without glee, by the way) on account of how it's played out since, pretty much as I thought it would.

jr565 said...

The true Rathergate is that they tried to make an issue out of Bush serving in the National Guard. If military service is issue lets talk about Bernie Sanders applying for conscientous objector status during the Vietnam War. Couldn't he have gone to the national guard like Bush?

SomeoneHasToSayIt said...

From wiki:

On September 11, 1987, Rather walked off the set in anger just before a remote Evening News broadcast from Miami, where Pope John Paul II had begun a rare U.S. tour, when a U.S. Open tennis match was being broadcast into the time scheduled for the newscast. He was upset that the news was being cut into to make room for sports and discussed it with the sports department. The Steffi Graf-Lori McNeil tennis match coverage then ended sooner than expected at 6:32 p.m., but Rather had disappeared. (CBS Sports had finally agreed to break away immediately after the match without commentary.) Over 100 affiliates broadcast six minutes of dead air.[81] The next day, Rather apologized for leaving the anchor desk.

Journalism.

Wilbur said...

I'd Rather not see the film.

Redford and Rather. They both to need to go sit down.

Original Mike said...

I knew Redford was a nutter, but crikey.

Humperdink said...

I am old enough to remember the self-described "Texan" grilling Nixon during the White House press conferences. Irreverent, in your face questions. As a brain full-of-mush college student, I loved it.

Fast for forward to the Bill and Hilma Clintstone years, I was foolishly expecting the big Texan to seek the truth with these two characters.

Now we have have the movie Truth. The irony is not lost.

David Begley said...

Can anyone imagine a comparable movie about a conservative incident?

Liberalism is built on lies and deception. See, e.g., global warming.

Tom from Virginia said...

From the very short book featuring George H.W. Bush's greatest zingers: "How would you like it if I judged your career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set?"

Curious George said...

Dan Rather is still alive? Huh.

hoyden said...

Liberals are suddenly animated by "truth"? A few years ago Liberals told us that there was no truth; only competing narratives.

hoyden said...

Curuious George, "Dan Rather is still alive? Huh."

Alive just like the animated head of Richard Nixon in Futurama.

Bob R said...

Of course, Redford was producer of The Motorcycle Diaries - a commie version of Springtime of Hitler - so I'd expect this from him.

Bob R said...

of = for.

Rusty said...

The communist left will do anything to reclaim the narrative.

Anonymous said...

Progressives changing history...to fit their narrative!!

Bill said...

Did Kenneth ever find out what the frequency was?

rehajm said...

We reported a true story. And there has never been any doubt the story was true

Simulating evidence created doubt.

Etienne said...

The funny thing today, is that most filmmakers use video.

Ah well, we can think about "film", but we can no longer touch it...

I checked out "Filmmakers Without Borders" and they have no "film", but send their charges little plastic video boxes. Harumph!

Known Unknown said...

"Of course, the 2004 media firestorm over the 60 Minutes report into President Bush during Vietnam cost the legendary newsman and his producer dearly. Some of the documents on which the report by Rather and Mapes was based were suspected of being forgeries."

Suspected? They're still doing this? Really?

Known Unknown said...

""Over the years, people suddenly realized that corporations that own and control the news can really make a profit, and things started to change," he argued. "Around 2004, when this happened, it was a tipping point, and now we're seeing an escalation of that today," Fischer added."

Brad Fischer (producer) doesn't get irony, I guess.

And someone should tell Carlos Slim that news can somehow make a profit.

PB said...

If it doesn't excoriate Rather and Mapes its not truth. I won't waste my money.

paminwi said...

Sometimes you go to movies just to holler out "that's a lie!" at appropriate times.

glenn said...

I suppose this means that 10 years or so from now we're going to have a big Hollywood production with a cast of thousands proving that the Rolling Stone UVA story actually happened.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

I suppose they left out the throbbing computer written memo that proves that the document Rather was trying to push was faked? No way it was from a type-writer.


Truth.

Etienne said...

"...were suspected of being forgeries"

No, actually, at least one document was proved to be a forgery. The letter from Bush's ex-commander was created with a modern word processor, obviously unavailable in the 60's.

Rather and Mapes didn't get fired for a fake story. They got fired for not knowing it was fake, and insisting that it wasn't fake long after the world stopped caring.

Even today, Mapes says she believes the documents and the person who brought them to her, are not fake.

Here's a Bloomberg story from 2014 after hearing that a Movie starring Robert Redford and Cate Blanchett was being made: Ex-'60 Minutes' Producer Is No Hollywood Hero

Bay Area Guy said...

Thwarting Rather's cowardly attempt to sway the election with that fake memo was the Internet at its finest.

mikee said...

Charles Johnson, of the blog Little Green Footballs, created a gif comparing the faked memo with the same text typed up using Word default settings. They matched exactly.

Only problem was, Word did not exist at the time of the memo's supposed creation.

This demonstration of the truth took place within mere hours of the release of the document to the public, yet the lie is still being peddled.

I, for one, think Rather can be damned and go to hell for his partisan lies.

Dagwood said...

Cate Blanchett to portray Mary Mapes? Was Harpo Marx unavailable? Or the curly-headed guy who was Larry's other brother Darrell?

Michael said...

This takes "delusional" to a entirely new level. Any vaguely attentive 14-year-old knew the memos were faked within 48 hours of the broadcast. There has never been any actual doubt about this - just CBS protecting its various and conflicting interests, and the Left trying to make hay.

Phil 314 said...

This from the Bloomberg piece says it all:

"The story of how Rather and Mapes and their CBS team were snookered by fake memos purporting to show that President George W. Bush had been absent without leave is a fascinating case study in how we can overlook the obvious and become wedded to dubious narratives."

Black Swan

Chuck said...

The comments in that Hollywood Reporter story are pretty hilarious. Do conservative doubters and critics of the America's left-leaning media regularly read The Hollywood Reporter? Or was it a Drudge Link?

YoungHegelian said...

Clearly, Dan Rather was never made privy as to what the frequency truly was.

n.n said...

Congruence. Rather will select a modulus.

Wince said...

Dan Rather can answer the question with that fake Texas accent of his:

"I wash myself with a rag on a stick."

Etienne said...

A good quote at one of the links has Dan Rather saying:

"But I at least know enough to recognize that having the Sundance Kid make a film about political and corporate interference of news can only help audiences understand why a truly independent press and strong investigative reporting are so important in a country such as ours."

Thank God for interference or CBS might have destroyed a candidate.

What if they got away with it? Like rounding up all the Japanese-Americans and putting them in concentration camps, like the Hearst papers wanted.

CWJ said...

AprilApple wrote,

"I suppose they left out the throbbing computer written memo that proves that the document Rather was trying to push was faked?"

The best thing would be to run the closing credits over the throbbing gif, and then have Redford come out Ferris Bueller style and say just kidding, it's over, go home.

Tyrone Slothrop said...

Apparently, everything is still Bush's fault.

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

I feel confident in believing that journalism works pretty much the same way that advertising works.

Etienne said...

I just had to go to IMDB and see the credits. Oh my God, there's 11 producers credited.

I wonder if that was 11 over the life of the production, or 11 at the same time.

It also has two stunt men, and a stunt woman, so I guess there must be violence or body double sexuality in it.

I'll have to wait for the TV release...

John henry said...

No, someone has to say it, it is not "journalism". That is not pretentious enough.

Get it right. Per Rather it is the "craft" of journalism.

Buncha pretentious douchebags. "what's the frequency, Kenneth?"

John Henry

pst314 said...

jr565 "If military service is issue lets talk about Bernie Sanders applying for conscientous objector status during the Vietnam War. Couldn't he have gone to the national guard like Bush?"
The only National Guard Bernie Sanders would ever consent to serve in would march under a flag displaying a hammer and sickle.

pst314 said...

Coupe "Rather and Mapes didn't get fired for a fake story. They got fired for not knowing it was fake, and insisting that it wasn't fake long after the world stopped caring."

Better: "...insisting that it wasn't fake after being presented with solid evidence that it was fake."

It's as if Rather were to insist that someone was guilty of bank robbery after being shown proof that the security camera evidence was Photoshopped.

But Rather's distress being fired for telling lies is understandable: Rather had been getting away with telling lies for his entire career, and he had come to think he was entitled and untouchable. Suddenly along comes the internet and nobodies in their pajamas are analyzing his evidence and posting proof that it is garbage.

mikee said...

Oh, yeah, Jeb Bush is running for president. Gotta slime the memories of potential voters with old lies to make sure Hillary wins.

Hillary will win.

Are any major stars making movies about her reported relationship with Huma, her reaction (as leader of the Bimbo Eruption Squad) to Bill's marriage-long adulteries, her lies to the Benghazi victims' families at the funerals?

Roughcoat said...

Was the author of the fake memos ever identified?

hombre said...

Hollywood leftist revisionism. In this case aka "WHITEWASH."

cubanbob said...

Let me guess: the film will take in about one tenth of the production costs. Who but a few progs is going to waste their time watching this vain truthy vanity project?

William said...

Hiss' supporters claimed that not only were the Pumpkin Papers forgeries, but that the typewriter that was used to type them on was also crafted to duplicate Alger's old typewriter. They refrained, however, from making a major motion picture to explicate this point. Our current leftists are made of sterner stuff.

William said...

This will resemble the truth in the way that Robert Redford resembles Dan Rather.

William said...

For true verisimilitude they should have hired Scarlet Johannson to play the role of Mary Mapes.

PB said...

Rather operates on his own secret frequency.

Big Mike said...

Let me know when any of them -- Rather, Mapes, or especially Redford -- understand what the word "truth" means.

Drago said...

Rather's only tactical mistake was not waiting until 48 hours before the election before peddling his obviously false story with obviously fabricated "evidence". 2 months was far too soon. Given the quality of the "evidence" even a week would be too long.

The left won't make that mistake again.

David said...

It's pronounced "twoof."

David said...

William said...
This will resemble the truth in the way that Robert Redford resembles Dan Rather.


Two pruned out pretty boys. And that's the twoof.

Gahrie said...

Rather makes Williams look like a class act.

David said...

Roughcoat said...
Was the author of the fake memos ever identified?


She's dead, Jim.

Anonymous said...

I always figured Burkett probably forged the memos himself, but no one really knows.

The plot summary at Rotten Tomatoes certainly explains a thing or two:

"In a response to the days following 9/11, a covert government agency funds a black book project to develop a live virus, Nano-Technology based truth serum. Veritas PVH 13 is developed and although it produces psychological anomalies in some subjects, overall it is successful, as it permanently removes a subject's ability to deceive. Large scale testing on detainees in a secure New Mexico research facility exceeds all expectations, but this time the virus mutates, killing both prisoners and researchers. Ten years later, a group of college film students stumble upon the facility and break in. In doing, they open the door to a plague that will threaten the very existence of all mankind."

Etienne said...

Umm, there's a "Truth" 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, and a "Truth" 2015 (I guess)??

I think this one is 2015.

HoodlumDoodlum said...

And yet Republicans still act surprised when the Media treats them unfairly. Invertebrates can be trained to respond to repeated stimulus, but apparently the Rs can't.

cubanbob said...

I'm not sure what Rather and See BS were trying to accomplish. They had no problem with Clinton dodging the draft. Johnson found an excuse not serve. Gore didn't serve. And Kerry's medals were rather fishy and 11 years on he never disclosed his discharge records. W risk his neck in the service of the country more than Clinton or Gore ever did. Yet somehow Bush is the coward. By the way Obama has never served either incase Rather and Redford haven't noticed and neither has Sanders or Hillary!

Mid-Life Lawyer said...

Sounds like Redford is ruining the hell out of another great movie opportunity. He's on a roll.

Michael K said...

The problem is that the present ahistorical generation, which thinks the Constitution is "100 years old," is likely to believe this fake story.

Fabi said...

Remember when asked about the provenance of the original document, the source told them that he made a copy and burned the original. Burned the original. No red flags there, I guess.

Rather needs to be kicked squarely in his shriveled up sack.

Beldar said...

I needed a trigger warning for this post. This is seriously microaggressive.

Wasn't Dan Rather banished, along with Colonel Zod, to the Phantom Zone?

kcom said...

"The plot summary at Rotten Tomatoes certainly explains a thing or two:"

Wow, how did that happen? As they say in NASA talk, obviously a major malfunction.

Gusty Winds said...

New Times Roman.

They got duped by the default font in Microsoft Word. And then when the overlay of the text was published within a day, they dug in their heals and made bigger fools of themselves. It made Dan Rather finally look outdated, and he had to go.

Some professor on the left coast faked a study "proving" the letter could have been typed, then left the computer image of the apostrophe up on line in his image notes. Remember this comedy?

Redford just feeds audiences who are predisposed to his insulated bullshit.


Clyde said...

Neither Dan Rather nor Robert Redford would know Truth if it came up and bit them on the posterior.

furious_a said...

1.Forget that CBS' source used copies of documents xeroxed at an Abilene, TX Kinko's.
2.Forget that those documents were produced in a proportional font then not yet in existence.
3.Forget that two members of Free Republic debunked the documents' authenticity within 90 mins of the 60 Minutes segment airing.

Remember that CBS News devoted five years of salary and staff resources to Mapes' and Rather's forgerized, obessive debacle. Nobody in those layers and layers of fact-checking and editing journalism professionals smelled a rat.

Probably because they didn't want to.

furious_a said...

Bay Area Guy said...

Thwarting Rather's cowardly attempt to sway the election with that fake memo was the Internet at its finest.


Word.

Laslo Spatula said...

Redford is trying to give Rather a better Epitath than Senile Fool.

All said, Rather should accept it and die.

I am Laslo.

furious_a said...

Doesn't Pres. Bush already have "reckless disregard" grounds for a libel suit against any/all connected with broadcasting this interrupted-liberal-wet-dream? Redford's deep pockets add a couple of zeros to the settlement check.

Skipper said...

Produced by Mythology Entertainment, really.

William said...

Many here have not seen The Conspirator. This was Redford's take on Mary Surratt and her involvement in the Lincoln assassination conspiracy. Redford believed her innocent and a victim of the hysteria of that time. He makes an anology between her rough treatment and those poor souls at Gutanamo. I don't know that much about it, but there are reputable historians who are convinced of her guilt. What's interesting to me is that what with all the fanciful theories about the Kennedy assassination, Redford chooses to debunk what was, in fact, an actual assassination conspiracy. The liberal mind at work. Bobby Kennedy was a victim of America's gun culture and not a Palestinian terrorist. Mary Surratt was a poor lamb led to slaughter by right wing fanatics.....,Redford is dependable. You can always count on him for an annoying insight into how the dynamics of the world work.

Beldar said...

@ furious_a, re whether Pres. Bush has a viable defamation case: One would have to see the film, to review its script and surrounding content & context, to begin to guess about that. But I can tell you this: George W. Bush will never sue anyone for defamation, ever. It's not his style, and he's already been targeted with so many systematic, defamatory slurs in the past, he's not going to give 10 seconds' thought to suing Redford now, no more than he did to suing Rather then.

Not gonna do it. Wouldn't be prudent at this juncture. (In the words of Dana Carvey doing his impersonation of Dubya's pop.)

John henry said...

Cuban Bob: LBJ did serve. He was in the Navy Reserves. He spent a whopping 8 weeks on active duty. Much of that was spent in Hollywood chasing starlets and giving "Big Boy" a workout. A week or so was spent in the South Pacific where he may or may not have ridden on a combat mission as an observer. If he did ride on the mission, it may or may not have come under fire. It all depends on whose "truth" you believe.

In any event, he did receive a Silver Star direct from McArthur. Although Johnson said on numerous occasions that he did nothing to earn it, he wore the civilian version on his suitcoat label for the rest of his life. Nor was he ever shy about grabbing someone by the neck and giving them an upclose and personal look.

Perhaps our slimiest president ever.

John Henry

Dagwood said...

Some claim that Rove was the architect of RatherGate, knowing that the sheared lambs as CBS would throw caution to the winds. I think it more likely that the scheme was cooked up by a Kerry campaign operative, in order to lessen the negative impact of dozens of vets who had served honorably in Viet Nam, who were coming forward to explain that Kerry hadn't.

madAsHell said...

It's going straight to DVD.

kcom said...

As others have said above, the big mistake Rather made was not the story, but the refusal to accept the need to retract it. He just doubled down, and doubled down again. That's what got him removed. He was delusional.

The story came out on Wednesday and he came back on the evening news the next two nights and defended it. Even as it got pounded. I was sure, sure, sure that after he had two long days over the weekend to really think about what he was doing that he'd come back on Monday with a mea culpa and some circumspection. But instead he came back with that typewriter repair "expert" he'd scrounged up somewhere (who looked like a deer in the headlights) to claim that some typewriters could do some of the things that were questioned in the memo. Of course, no typewriter could do all of those things exactly the way they were done (i.e. just because it can do a superscript doesn't mean it's a matching superscript). But, hey, MS Word could do all of those things. Dan never mentioned that. In fact, some of the online commentary was from the people who designed those computer fonts and type systems and knew in excruciating detail how they worked. They weren't random typewriter repairmen loitering about the back alleys of New York City.

Mark said...

Never the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, our Dan.

Unknown said...

-----A week or so was spent in the South Pacific where he may or may not have ridden on a combat mission as an observer. If he did ride on the mission, it may or may not have come under fire. It all depends on whose "truth" you believe. ----

As a kid I tried to read lots of WWII books. I recently found one in the house that I bought that was the story of Johnson’s air combat mission. Even as a kid I was stupefied at how little action there was. I didn’t know then whatt puffery and spin meant.

sinz52 said...

mikee: "Charles Johnson, of the blog Little Green Footballs, created a gif comparing the faked memo with the same text typed up using Word default settings. They matched exactly."

The proportional spacing and the modernistic Times New Roman (I believe it was) font were a dead giveaway.

Since then, as a copyeditor, I've worked with authors to format realistic-looking images of old, supposedly typewritten letters as plot elements in their novels. (Such as a mystery novel where the hero discovers a clue: an old, tattered, typewritten letter from World War II.)

I always take care to use monospaced fonts that are based on the characters of real old-style Remington and Hermes and Olivetti typewriters of the pre-PC era.

Plus a background that looks like an old, folded, tattered piece of paper.

Christopher said...

I'm trying to remember the last time a major biographical film actually starred an actor/actress that was not better looking than the person being portrayed. Natalie Portman as RBG? Really, we're supposed to take that seriously?

The only times I think that filmmakers actually try for accuracy in appearance are when they hate the person they're portraying. I suppose this is just the natural result of the propagandistic nature of biopics, but it's still irritating.

Bilwick said...

"Truth." Heh. Like "liberals" (and by "liberals" I mean of course tax-happy, coercion-addicted, power-tripping State fellators" know what that is.

rcocean said...

I despise LBJ but.. I thought LBJ actually did go on a mission to bomb Rabaul and few planes in the group were shot down. Plus, flying out to South pacific in the Spring of 1942 was somewhat dangerous. Plenty of people died in WW2 in flying accidents.

In any case, as a very intelligent 34 y/o married man with Kids - LBJ would've spent the war behind a desk. He certainly wasn't going to go down in a sub or hit the beach with the Marines.

rcocean said...

Big Dan the reporter man has always been famous for his chutzpah and able to lie with a straight face.

I'll never forget CBS' farewell special. It started with Big Dan telling us how he "Spoke truth to power". Then we saw clips of him being nasty and abusive toward Nixon and Ford. Carter was skipped. Then it was more nasty jibs at Reagan and the infamous Bush-Rather shouting match. Then clips from a powder puff interview with Hillary.

Yep, speaking "truth" to Republican "Power".

Dr Weevil said...

It wasn't just the proportional spacing and the Times New Roman font and the superscripts: the header lines were perfectly centered, which is easy on a word processor (just press center-justify) and pretty much impossible on a typewriter, where the typist has to guess where to put the first letter and inevitably guesses at least a little off. I believe there were half a dozen other things that showed it was word-processed, but don't remember them all. I think one was that the font, font size, and margins were all Word defaults - easy to do in Word (impossible not to do without paying attention) but a huge effort to reproduce or simulate on an actual typewriter.

sinz52:
My housemate collects old typewriters - 15 or so so far - and I'm sure she's not the only one. Such a person would probably be glad to make a few bucks producing an actual typed letter for a novel more quickly and precisely than you probably can with a word processor.

SukieTawdry said...

Gore served. He enlisted in the Army in 1969 and served in Vietnam. He was a journalist and had a bodyguard, but he served. He probably couldn't have gone into combat even if he had wanted to. The last thing the brass wanted was a Senator's son getting shot up.

Mid-Life Lawyer said...

They can make all the movies that want, but what I'll remember is, "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" I was in NYC this summer and I wandered up on CBS HQ and that's exactly the first thing that came to mind.

Beldar said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Beldar said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
rcocean said...

"It wasn't just the proportional spacing and the Times New Roman font and the superscripts: the header lines were perfectly centered, which is easy on a word processor (just press center-justify) and pretty much impossible on a typewriter,"

It was proved that given the brand of Typewriters being used by Air national guard, it was impossible to produce the documents used by Rather and CBS.

rcocean said...

The independent report also showed that Rather just read whatever his producer gave him, even the talking points for the press, once the fraud was discovered.

Now we know why Big Dan always had an earpiece.

Unknown said...

----Gore served. He enlisted in the Army in 1969 and served in Vietnam.

He sure did.

http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/camp/071100wh-gore.html

furious_a said...

Natalie Portman as RBG?

I hear that Fran Liebowitz was a available.

furious_a said...

I thought LBJ actually did go on a mission to bomb Rabaul and few planes in the group were shot down.

LBJ flew back-seat in a B-26 out of Port Moresby, New Guinea. Story was that a Colonel on his survey team had taken Johnson's seat on another B-26 that was shot down on the raid. Martin Caidin mentioned Johnson's ride-along in a chapter about the 22d Bombardment Group in The Rugged, Ragged Warriors.

Jim S. said...

They're just calling the film "Truth" eh? When people make such a blatant attempt to identify their position with truth (think of the whole "9/11 truth movement"), I tend to think that they know the truth is not on their side, and they're trying to convince people through assertion and emphasis rather than reason and argumentation.

Reminds me of a quote from the beginning of a book: "To me truth is precious. I love it. I embrace it at every opportunity. I do not stop to inquire, Is it popular? ere I embrace it. I inquire only, Is it truth? If my judgment is convinced my conscience approves and my will enforces my acceptance. I want truth for truth's sake, and not for the applaud or approval of men. I would not reject truth because it is unpopular, nor accept error because it is popular. I should rather be right and stand alone than to run with the multitude and be wrong."

The book is A Reparation: Universal Gravitation a Universal Fake by C.S. DeFord, published in 1931. It defends the claim that the earth is flat. Yes, I collect flat earth literature. I'm weird.

Real American said...

in the book, Roy Hobbs struck out at the end.

Robert Cook said...

"The true Rathergate is that they tried to make an issue out of Bush serving in the National Guard. If military service is issue lets talk about Bernie Sanders applying for conscientous objector status during the Vietnam War. Couldn't he have gone to the national guard like Bush?"

There is nothing dishonorable about applying for conscientious objector status. Military service is at issue in this case only because of the controversy as to whether Bush did or did not complete his service, or did or did not go AWOL. I don't know whether all the particulars of the story 60 MINUTES presented are accurate, and it seems obvious that some of the "evidence" they presented was faked--my own guess is that Rove or someone else in the Bush camp had it done--but I think there's enough evidence to suggest Bush did not complete his service as he should have. This story had been an albatross around Bush's neck for years, and they decided they had to quash it once and for all.

Robert Cook said...

As for this film, I'm sure the title TRUTH is meant to convey layers of irony, as, what is "truth?" This is a question artists and philosophers have dealt with forever.

Robert Cook said...

"When people make such a blatant attempt to identify their position with truth (think of the whole '9/11 truth movement'), I tend to think that they know the truth is not on their side...."

Oh, no...the 9/11 truthers could not be more convinced they are correct. Those who claim they know the truth are not wavering in their claim, but are implacably convinced they are right.

Robert Cook said...

"I am old enough to remember the self-described 'Texan' grilling Nixon during the White House press conferences. Irreverent, in your face questions."

Should this not be the default approach of all journalists questioning the man or woman we have placed in office to "lead" our country and make decisions that will affect all of us, not just in this country but throughout the world?

If the so-called "leader of the free world" cannot take challenging, even blunt questions as to his competence, veracity, success or failure of his policies, etc., should he even be in the office? He or she is not royalty, and no deference is owed them, or should be extended to them. When a corporate board of directors hires someone to be their CEO, you can be sure they rake the person over the coals if his/her performance is not satisfactory.

Robert Cook said...

"Doesn't Pres. Bush already have 'reckless disregard' grounds for a libel suit against any/all connected with broadcasting this interrupted-liberal-wet-dream? Redford's deep pockets add a couple of zeros to the settlement check."

Maybe Bush doesn't want to sue for libel because he knows he couldn't win and inconvenient truths might be uncovered.

Michael K said...

"This story had been an albatross around Bush's neck for years, and they decided they had to quash it once and for all."

Do you have any idea how mendacious and stupid you sound ?

Kevin Drum, a more responsible leftist than you are researched this back in 2004 when he blogged at Calpundit and he concluded there was was no scandal and the facts did not reflect badly on Bush.

Matt Sablan said...

"I don't know whether all the particulars of the story 60 MINUTES presented are accurate, and it seems obvious that some of the "evidence" they presented was faked--my own guess is that Rove or someone else in the Bush camp had it done--"

-- That's the stupidest theory. If there weren't people obsessively fact checking Rather [something that was unique and strange to happen to a network news person at the time], people would have believed it true. In fact, a lot of people STILL believe that the story is true, despite being debunked in a few days time.

They were doing fine enough to not need to try and double bluff the opposition, not only that, but their double bluff ONLY had downsides. They gained NOTHING by making Rather look like a fool.

Anyone who thinks Rove did it is, honestly, kind of politically naive and has an agenda. Or just stupid.

Peter said...

"The name of the movie is "Fake But Accurate."

Hollywood is our new Ministry of Truth?

Peter V. Bella said...

Rather is a has been, dumped on the trash heap of history. He does not matter. Neither do his opinions. Anyone can make a fake movie. Michael Moore did and does it all the time.

SeanF said...

Christopher: I'm trying to remember the last time a major biographical film actually starred an actor/actress that was not better looking than the person being portrayed.

The guy who played Audie Murphy in "To Hell and Back" wasn't better looking than the real Audie Murphy.

The guy who played Howard Stern in "Private Parts" wasn't better looking than the real Howard Stern, either, which is kind of surprising - very few people in the world aren't better looking than Howard Stern.

:)

Francisco D said...

Cookie,

You may be as delusional, in your extraordinarily partisan way, as Rather.

Unbelievable!!

Known Unknown said...

Cook, dude, Occam's Razor. Really.

Known Unknown said...

"Christopher: I'm trying to remember the last time a major biographical film actually starred an actor/actress that was not better looking than the person being portrayed."

Charlize Theron in Monster.

tim in vermont said...

Maybe Bush doesn't want to sue for libel because he knows he couldn't win and inconvenient truths might be uncovered.

Because God knows people haven't looked hard enough!

Maybe he doesn't waste his time thinking about what shit-house bat crazy old men think? Naaah!

Henry said...

Robert Cook wrote: As for this film, I'm sure the title TRUTH is meant to convey layers of irony, as, what is "truth?" This is a question artists and philosophers have dealt with forever.

It is not, however, a question Dan Rather appears to ask himself. From the article:

"We reported a true story. And there has never been any doubt the story was true..."

Back to Robert: Those who claim they know the truth are not wavering in their claim, but are implacably convinced they are right.

In other words, incapable of journalism.

Unknown said...

Will Kenneth finally disclose what the frequency was? Watch and find out!

luagha said...

To answer the earlier question about who created the forgeries, Lt. Col Bill Burkett is the obvious choice. He was known to have some kind of psychotic grudge against Bush long before this, and that rounds out the means (a modern word processor and repeated photocopying at Kinko's), motive (political grudge) and opportunity (presidential campaign, fool like Rather willing to listen to a crank offering something too good to be true).

Abdul Abulbul Amir said...

Reality based community! Hahahaha, Hahahahahahaha, Hahahahaha, Hahahahahahahaha.

Rick said...

Bush couldn't win a libel suit because he wouldn't be able to show damages. The entire affair served then and now to discredit Democratic partisans, even those who pretend to be left of Democrats so they can disclaim the negative aspects of Democratic polices from their own views.