There's Plenty of Blame to Go Around, Right?

I think we can now see the tack the MSM will be taking regarding Rathergate. Beginning now with the publication of rank distortions and character attacks on the bloggers by Corey Pein in the January/February 2005 issue of Columbia Journalism Review, they've launched into a "yeah, our side did bad, but your side did too" kind of "offsetting penalties" defense.

Pein's approach to the analysis of the forged documents is so laughable, its publication in what I've heard was once a distinguished publication is its own commentary on the left's desperation. Here's the crushing defense by one of the outfits Pein attacks, Little Green Footballs. Wizbang, another of the blogs attacked, also does a number on this ridiculous travesty here.

But this passage really takes the cake.

As Memogate progressed, certain talking points became conventional wisdom. Among them, that CBS’s producer, Mary Mapes, was a liberal stooge; that her source, Bill Burkett, was a lefty moonbat with an ax to grind. Both surely wanted to nail a story that Bush got preferential treatment in the National Guard. Still, there was a double standard at work. Liberals and their fellow travelers were outed like witches in Salem, while Bush’s defenders forged ahead, their affinities and possible motives largely unexamined.

Oh, that's right -- the fact that Mary Mapes spent five years trying to find some way of substantiating this story is proof of her evenhandedness! And Dan Rather's own attack, from his nightly news anchor chair, on the bloggers and others questioning his saintliness as "partisans" obviously doesn't count as a questioning of their motives.

What a pathetic joke.