Friday, November 7, 2008

CBS Proposed Wingers Review Rather

I knew CBS screwed Dan Rather royally but I didn't know it was this bad.

Rather is suing CBS for a cool $70 million over the circumstances of his "Rathergate" dismissal. The NY Observer dug through papers Rather's legal team submitted last week. It learned that CBS' shortlist for Rather's "independent review panel" featured a long list of right-wing partisans. Some of them are even journalists:
William Buckley (TNR), Robert Novak, Kate O’Beirne (TNR & then @CNN!), Tucker Carlson (I'm starting to feel dirty here), Pat Buchanan (OK, I'm officially dirty), George Will (What? Pol Pot wasn't available?), Lou Dobbs (WTF? Right wing CNN anchor reviews CBS anchor?), Matt Drudge (Puh-leeze), Robert Kagan (PNAC + Papa do not make one worthy), Fred Barnes (Does anyone even read WS or watch FoxNews?), William Kristol (another Murdoch trust fund baby), John Podhoretz (Mama's Boy is to journalism what cinder blocks are to swimming), David Brooks (Soon-to-be banished to the farthest corner of the realm), William Safire (Wordsmythe, Nixonite & "libertarian conservative" whatever the fuck that is), Bernard Goldberg (FoxNews crank then@CBS News), Ann Coulter (don't even go there -- I said don't), Andrew Sullivan (Why, oh why?), Christopher Hitchens (depends on what he's drinking & for how long), PJ O’Rourke (depends on which PJ shows up & for how long), Christopher Caldwell ("No, my father-in-law did not get me this gig"), Elliot Abrams (like a cockroach, he'll never go away), Charles Krauthammer (a sad, delusional man), William Bennett (nicotine-addict/ex-Drug Czar/ homophobe/degenerate gamber), Rush Limbaugh (not qualified to fucking mowing Rather's lawn) and, written at the bottom, FoxNews' Dark Lord Roger Ailes (**shudder**).

Considering these stalwart wingers for their Rather “independent review panel” is sorta like Frank Perdue announcing plans to have foxes guard his hen house. Had CBS been truly interested in getting to the bottom of how Rather's report was sourced and erred aired, they wouldn't have considered a veritable murder's row of neo-con hacks and competitors! Shortly thereafter the Grand PooBah himself, lifelong Dem Sumner Redstone, conspicuously flipped Republican.

Please note that I chose to break two names out of the above pack as they have been unintentionally and undeservedly tarnished by association. One is NY Observer's own Nicholas Von Hoffman, who CBS fired for saying "Mr. Nixon is the dead mouse on the kitchen floor, and the American family, in slippers and bathrobe, is gathered around him arguing over who will pick him up by his tail and drop him in the trash" is as much a neo-con as you'd expect any friend of Gary Trudeau to be. The other is Robert (no relation to Gnarls or Charles) Barkley has been a tireless education reformer who penned the moving Grandfather's Apology two weeks ago.

-AF
(HT: ThinkProgress)

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