Rather Shameful

[Valin]

The Weekly Standard:

Truth’ is out there somewhere

JOHN H. HINDERAKER and SCOTT W. JOHNSON

Oct 12, 2015, Vol. 21, No. 05

 

When CBS’s 60 Minutes Wednesday broadcast its lead story—reported by Dan Rather and produced by Mary Mapes—on the evening of September 8, 2004, it was given the anodyne title “For the Record,” as though it constituted little more than a disinterested historical footnote. In reality, the story was a bold fabrication about President George W. Bush’s long-ago service in the Texas National Guard, intended to damage him in his campaign for reelection against John Kerry.

 

(Snip)

 

The spin offered by the Times seems to have provided the idea behind the new film Truth, based on Mapes’s Rather-gate memoir, Truth and Duty. Starring Robert Redford as Rather and Cate Blanchett as Mapes, the film premiered to favorable reviews at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 12. The film opens in New York and Los Angeles on October 16. Unfortunately, the reviewers seem only vaguely aware of the material that CBS News, 11 years ago, twisted into “For the Record.” Students of the Hiss and Rosenberg cases have learned that the left simply does not relent in its efforts to rewrite history. Before the revisionist history peddled in Truth takes hold, let us review “For the Record” for the record, as it were.

 

(Snip)

Every good story needs a hero and a villain. Mapes is the hero of her own story, both the story told in the film and the memoir on which it is based. The film must get the old hate on for President Bush, of course, and it reserves some scorn for the blogs that helped expose her derelictions, but it serves up corporate CBS/Viacom as the villain. CBS/Viacom supposedly commissioned the Thornburgh-Boccardi investigation and fired Mapes in deference to the political powers that be (or were) for base commercial reasons. CBS terminated Mapes’s employment on January 10, 2005, following the submission of the Thornburgh-Boccardi report to management. Mapes quotes CBS News president Andrew Heyward telling her concisely: “[T]he report is out. It’s very bad. You’re being terminated.”

 

 

A reasonable person would conclude that Mapes was fired for appalling professional misconduct, which disgraced and betrayed her colleagues (including Rather) and the company for which she worked. If Mapes is the hero of Truth, we should note that Truth is a production of Mythology Entertainment. Truth—and the truth—are indeed out there somewhere.

 

[Valin]

The film “Truth” will be released commercially later this month to retell the Rathergate scandal from the perspective of Mary Mapes. The film is based on Mapes’s almost laughable 2005 Rathergate memoir. The left routinely seeks to rewrite even yesterday’s news; events eleven years ago, when Mapes committed her misconduct, have now attained the status of ancient history. John and I therefore sought to reiterate the basic facts of the Rathergate scandal in the Weekly Standard article “Rather shameful.”

Our article is intended to constitute Rathergate 101. Now comes Atlanta attorney Harry MacDougald — the pseudonymous “Buckhead” — to give us Rathergate 102. As we do in our article, Mr. MacDougald draws on the inexhaustibly rich Thornburgh-Boccardi report; the report is the necessary antidote to the lies of “Truth.” Mr. MacDougald writes:

(Snip)

There is no pravda in Truth.