DAILY PLANET (METROPOLIS) – Dan Rather today said that he stands by a recent story reported by the ScrappleFace newswire about a 1972 e-mail raising doubts concerning President Bush’s national guard service.
Wearing a cowl that obscured most of his face, the veteran CBS anchorman–known to some of his colleagues as Darth Rather and Darth InCBS–spoke to reporters in front of the network’s Metropolis affiliate. “That story is true. That story is true,” he said to reporters. “I will make it true.”
Denizens of the blogosphere were quick to respond. “If Dan Rather says it’s true, then that’s good enough for us,” said Chirp Birdly of Little Red Power Cables Instablog, which served as a major clearing house for used auto parts and evidence of the falsity of the ScrappleFace story.
Birdly was contacted by the Daily Planet at his home at two o’clock in the afternoon. He came to the door wearing pajamas.
“We originally doubted the authenticity of the story because of concerns that were raised by some of our readers,” Birdly explained. “A close examination of the ScrappleFace logo suggests that it was originally produced on a computer.”
After the ScrappleFace story broke, Birdly says a number of his readers were able to duplicate it in modern word processing programs such as Microsoft Word.
“It appeared to be written in 50 point bolded Courier New font,” Birdly explained. “Some blogs even did side-by-side comparisons of ScrappleFace logo with MS Word-produced versions.”
Though an original copy of the ScrappleFace logo could not be obtained, unnamed sources at Little Red Power Cables Instablog provided to the Daily Planet a copy of one comparison, which appears below. Afterwards, unnamed experts testified to its authenticity.
Birdly did express concern that in his response Rather had not addressed all of the major points of evidence suggesting that the story was a fake.
“For example, look at the subtitle to the ScrappleFace logo,” Birdly suggested. “It’s clearly a reference to FOX News’s slogan, ‘News Fair and Balanced. We Report. You Decide.’ Yet Rather himelf is on record as saying that FOX News didn’t even exist at the time the ScrappleFace story appeared. In fact, he recently reiterated his claim that FOX News still does not exist. Yet he didn’t address this aspect of the story at all.”
Birdly stated that Rather’s failure to address the logo’s subtitle continues to cast grave doubts on the story’s authenticity. “Of course the subtitle doesn’t mean anything at all after a newsman of Rather’s gravitas has vouched for the story. If he says it’s true and that he’ll make it true, then you can be sure he will.”
When pressed on how he would make the 1972 e-mail story true, Rather brushed aside reporters’ questions while loading a couple of laptops and a wireless network router into his 1985 DeLorian. As some reporters pressed closer to get a glimpse of the vehichle’s flux capacitor, Rather shut the car’s hatch.
“I regret that I have but one professional reputation to give for my President!” he declared before screeching away.
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UPDATE: Chirp Birdly of Little Red Power Cables Instablog now claims that his comments were misrepresented by the Daily Planet. According to Birdly, he stated that Rather’s failure to address the ScrappleFace subtitle does not mean that it continues to cast grave doubts on the authenticity of the story, whereas the Daily Planet represented him as saying that it does. The Planet stands by its original story.
That was Rather funny, Jimmy.
The Curt Jestor has a really funny post about this.