Rather messy

Dan Rather wept.

That was the vivid image at last year's summer TV press tour – Rather, there to tout his impending newsmagazine show on Mark Cuban’s HDNet, choked with emotion when asked about his legacy and damning the corporate mentality’s influence on network news.

It’s obviously still gnawing away at the guy, as he has just filed a $70-million lawsuit against CBS for wrongful termination, kowtowing to the Bush Administration, torpedoing his own reputation and giving conspiracy theorists everywhere more grist for their paranoid mills.

There’re three avenues of thought in this sorry turn of affairs: 1) Dan’s lost it; 2) Dan has a case; 3) some combination of 1) and 2).

Rather was ignominiously bounced from the “CBS Evening News”’ anchor chair (for Katie Couric, whose ratings are even lower than Dan’s were, so that’s worked out well) after a 2004 “60 Minutes II: The Reckoning” story on just what George W. Bush may have been up to during the Vietnam war included a forged document as part of its reportage. The right argued that this proved the entire story was bunk rather than debate it on its merits; CBS held back another story critical of Bush until after that year’s Presidential election and now Bush is sitting in the White House, blatantly ignoring public sentiment and threatening to hold his breath and turn blue until Congress gives him everything he wants to maintain the quagmire that is Iraq.

CBS ordered an internal investigation that should’ve pleased no one: It exonerated CBS News of everything but being “zealous” in its reporting and utterly neglected to look into whether or not Rather’s report was true or not. Heads rolled, including Dan’s.

So Dan, in some last-ditch effort to restore his nominally good, if fairly eccentric, name, is suing CBS. CBS is responding by rolling its corporate eyes and saying, “See? This is what we had to put up with.”

Rather told the Washington Post, "I'm surprised someone in government hasn't said, 'We have a wartime president whose military records are missing, can't be found. Let's use the power of government to find out exactly what happened.'"

Fair point; can’t argue with that. But Rather’s also backpeddling from the amount of research he personally put into the story and, more bewilderingly, if amusingly so, the Post adds:

“Rather wades deep into the weeds, talking about how a private investigator he hired dug up information on a ‘mystery man’ – an ex-FBI agent retained by CBS to look into the story once it came under fire. Rather said the network ignored this consultant's allegedly supportive findings and more recently, accused the former anchor of ‘harassing’ the man.”

Needless to say, this behavior isn’t exactly winning Rather any new fans. MarketWatch’s Jon Friedman takes CBS’s side:

“I always suspected CBS was showing Rather respect by letting him continue to preside over a show that had apparently outlived its usefulness. Rather had too many wacky episodes to recount....

“When I contemplate Rather's lawsuit, I think of what he might've said if he were reporting on the story: … ‘It's as thin as turtle soup! It's shakier than Jell-O ... what the plaintiff needs at this point is the equivalent of Tom Brady coming off the bench to rescue him... I know you'd rather walk through a furnace in a gasoline suit than consider the possibility that this lawsuit is a mistake... This lawsuit would give an aspirin a headache.’”

Mary Mapes, the producer of the notorious piece (she was thrown under the bus far faster than Rather), seems like she’d like to wish the whole incident away but supports Dan.

She argues the main problem with the story is it aired a couple of years too early, that given what we know now, fewer wingnuts would’ve jumped at the chance to defend the President:

“Imagine that a report emerged today saying that President Bush and his enablers had unusual problems finding the most basic records, that key documents had disappeared from official files, that he and his supporters dissembled when asked direct questions. Yawn. The country wouldn't bat a collective eye. No one would be attacked for reporting that. That stuff is old hat now.”

Rather’s suit argues that CBS scapegoated him in order to make nice with the White House, with which it had had a rather (can’t decide if the pun is intended or not) contentious relationship. And around that time, CBS COO Les Moonves (who gets Rather in a lather, he hates him so much) got in a little hot water for rubbing elbows with Fidel Castro in Havana, so Moonves sort of needed to redirect his reputation as a commie-pinko Chief Operating Officer of a major corporation, so ameliorating this bit of unpleasantness with his Republican friends was a step in that direction.

Does Dan have any proof of such a conspiracy?

“Well, I'd like to gather more evidence. . . . One way to find out is to put people under oath,” Rather told the Post. Sounds like that would be a “No.”

Mapes thinks frivolous lawsuits are a good way of prying sinister secrets out of an internecine White House hellbent to cover up everything from why Alberto Gonzales was allowed into public service to why it lied for so long about Pat Tillman’s death (one of those scandals that just sort of went away because two or three new ones replaced it).

“A lawsuit also gives him that delicious power of discovery,” she writes. “Who knows what might shake loose?”

Yeah, if Congress can get nowhere with the White House Iron Curtain of concealment, Dan’ll finally reach the truth by suing CBS. To parrot Friedman, as Rather might say, that ride’s gonna be bumpier than a bullfrog on a rodeo steer.