Slate Floats the Fake But Accurate Theory Again

Tue, Jan 31, 2006 at 7:24:06 pm PST

These guys just never stop trying to pull that wool back over our eyes.

The latest mainstream media mouthpiece to float the idea that the CBS Texas Air National Guard memos—shown conclusively to be obvious frauds—could possibly be genuine is Timothy Noah at Slate.

At issue, you may recall, was whether some “cover your ass” memos purportedly typed for the file by George W. Bush’s superior, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian—files expressing dissatisfaction with Dubya’s special treatment in the Guard—were genuine. Immediately after the 60 Minutes story aired, multiple bloggers produced evidence “showing” that the documents couldn’t have been genuine, for technical reasons. This was accepted as gospel truth by Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post and other mainstream reporters. In the end, however, the evidence was found to be specious. We still don’t know whether the documents were genuine.

Notice the scare quotes around “showing,” and the dismissive “for technical reasons.”

I guess Timothy Noah has never seen or laid hands on a typewriter. Because to this date, not a single person has found a typewriter, available in 1973 at a National Guard base, that could produce a document like this:

Microsoft Word did it in a few minutes with the default settings. But who are you going to believe, Timothy Noah or your lying eyes, “showing” you such specious technical evidence?