Editor’s note: Michael Ackley’s columns may include satire and parody based on current events, and thus mix fact with fiction. He assumes informed readers will be able to tell which is which.
Fire him! Fire her! Fire them all!
These were the exclamations, accompanied by assorted imprecations, I would hurl at my television years ago when I attempted to watch – the old “Lou Grant” show.
I would try to watch it because it was about the colorful characters at a daily newspaper. As I worked at a newspaper with truly colorful characters, I wanted to see how TV writers portrayed my business. However, I found it impossible to sit through an entire episode.
Before the first commercial break, I would be yelling at the television, because – always – one character or another would do something stupid, unethical, unprofessional or all of the above. The writers seemed to have no idea how far off the mark they were.
“Lou Grant” comes to mind today because in one episode reporters came to possess a corporate memo that revealed the company was a knowing polluter. It was late in the day, the business was closed and nobody from the corporation could be reached for comment.
Lou, portrayed by Ed Asner, ordered, “Go with it!” and I jumped out of my chair, hollering, “Fire him!” No newspaper that didn’t want to be sued would “go with it” without stringent vetting.
The next day, the company proved the document was a fake and there was hell to pay, and I turned off the television in disgust. The next week, there was another “Lou Grant” episode, so I concluded the moron had kept his job.
Which brings us to CBS News’ Managing Editor Dan Rather and producer Mary Mapes, who are being chewed up by other “respected news professionals” for shoddy handling of the George W. Bush National Guard “documents.” (News sharks will go after anybody whose blood is in the water, even if it’s one of their brethren.)
We put the word “documents” in quotes, because just about everybody who “verified” them doubted or now doubts their veracity.
Yet somebody at the network said, “Go with it.”
In the real journalistic world, heads would roll – and quickly. But then, in the case of the Bush memos, we are dealing with television.
The vast, right-wing conspiracy: Rather has gone on the defensive offensive, telling the New York Observer that the important thing is not the provenance of the “documents,” but the need for the president to answer the questions they raise.
He also attributed the “documents” flap to “right-wing allies of the Bush administration.” (We have a document that says the news reader donned a blonde wig and pearl necklace, the better to look like Hillary Clinton. The document is likely a fake, but we think Rather should answer the questions it raises.)
We’re sure it’s only a coincidence that Rather’s guilty-until-proven-innocent approach parallels the tactic employed by Democratic National Committee head Terry McAuliffe in attacks on Bush’s National Guard service in Alabama, in which he said, in essence, “Prove you weren’t not there.”
Remember Lyndon Johnson’s campaign ploy, in which he spread the rumor that an opponent had carnal knowledge of barnyard animals. Of course, it wasn’t true, but Johnson was happy just to make the victim deny it.
CBS, correctly, has declined to identify of the source of the Bush “documents.” And despite our best efforts, we have been unable to discover it.
However, Howard Bashford, CBS submanaging editor for covering tails, revealed to us the source’s code name. It’s a moniker based on the nom de guerre of Woodward and Bernstein’s famed secret source in the Watergate scandal, “Deep Throat.”
After considering “Deep Esophagus” and “Deep Spleen,” says Bashford, the team settled on a truly appropriate appellation: “Deep Doodoo.”
