Rather unemployable

Typical Friday. The news is slower than molasses in January, but we can still dig up the occasional story. And we can even laugh a little at it, too. Or, at least we can laugh at him -- Dan Rather. He has amended his lawsuit against CBS to include the fact that he's been turned down for numerous other jobs, and he can't find employment:

Veteran U.S. newsman Dan Rather says in his amended lawsuit against CBS that his recent past with the company means he can't get a job now elsewhere.

The New York Post reported Thursday that Rather filed papers in Manhattan Supreme Court claiming the network failed to follow through with promises it made to defend him after it made him the scapegoat for a controversial news report.

Rather, 76, said that since he and CBS parted ways, CNN, ABC, NBC, Fox, HBO, the History Channel, A&E and the Discovery and National Geographic channels have all declined to hire him.

"None of these networks were interested in hiring Mr. Rather, each of them ultimately indicating to his agent that he had 'too much baggage,' 'was too hot to handle,' 'there was too much controversy,' or words to that effect," the court papers allege.

But a CBS representative told the Post: "Mr. Rather is trying to put forth fraud complaints that the court has already determined to be legally unfounded. We believe he will fail a second time. We will file an appropriate motion to dismiss."

For those who forgot why he was canned (namely Mr. Rather himself) here is a reminder -- the "smoking memo" itself proving it's inauthenticity. He either forged them himself, or had accomplices that dd it for him. His crime was in presenting them to the nation as fact in an effort to influence a presidential election. Even liberals won't cite his reporting because they know it's as phony as a three-dollar bill. (And believe me, the Left can pull whoppers out of its collective butt most of the time.) But, they won't touch Rather with a ten-foot pole.

Why is there such sadistic amusement in this? Because Dan Rather isn't a respected newsman. He's not even a respectable human being, in our book. He knowingly and willfully lied to perpetuate his agenda journalism. He learned a valuable leson in the "Ra^thergate" scandal.that lesson was really quite simple.

Don't peddle a lie unless you know for certain you can't be caught. Ever since the "Ra^thergate" scandal, bloggers have dug up plenty of journalistic malfeasance, including the Reuters Fauxtography scandal back from 2006 during the Israeli/Hezbollah war. What's sad about both incidents is that despite the layers of fact-checkers in media outlets, they still missed both scandals. They didn't catch the superscripted "th" in the Killian memo, and they didn't see the photo-shopped images prevalent in the Reuters scandal. But bloggers did. And bloggers also spoke with experts who identified the mistakes the media had made. Did the media do that? Nope. Even after Rather was confronted with irrefutable proof, he stuck by his guns. "Fake, but accurate" became the rallying cry of the alternative media as he was beat into submission and eventually hounded out of his job.

So we don't shed a tear for the man because he can't find a job. Maybe he'll consider just retiring, and remind himself that it was his fault he lost his job in the first place. It wasn't ours. It wasn't the president's. He was fired because he lied, and he embarrassed the company he worked for, forever sullying the name of the news entity.

Publius II