whodathunk.

[lapsedmodernist]

Oh the Rathergate memos were fake, were they?. The Interactive Media Research Laboratory does not think so.

CONCLUSIONS

Since current odds hold that the Bush memos are faked, the question of their authenticity turns to whether CBS should have known they were inauthentic – if, in fact, they are. In fact, there seems to be nothing in the memos that indicates they are faked. All evidence points toward a mechanical production process and away from a digital process.

Furthermore, the mechanical process seems to be consistent with typewriters used in the military at the time in question.
If I had been one of the experts advising CBS, I would have advised them that there is nothing physical in the memos implying they are not authentic. All indicators imply they are authentic. I would have told them that from my point of view, the memos are worthy of presenting to the public.

David E. Hailey, Jr., Ph.D.
Associate Professor and Director
Interactive Media Research Laboratory

Comments

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

I had a funny experience along these lines. They're breaking up the old card catalogs in the university library - it's all online now. Nicholson Baker would freak out...they're using the old cards as scrap paper. They're all beautifully typed, and were done in-house - lovely true-spaced fonts, multiple typeface sizes, two colors, and so on, all in the same card, all done on a typewriter forty or fifty years ago.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

yeah, the whole it was typed in Word thing is stupid. If they are fake, that's not how they were faked.

[twotoedsloth.livejournal.com]

I've just been assuming that they were fake and planted by Karl Rove. That, and that the whole scandal is aimed toward people too young to remember that we had those little th things before everybody had computers. Even if they can't suppress the student vote, it's pretty easy to manipulate.

[warpsmith.livejournal.com]

It's crossed my mind that it's a Republican plant also. Give the media something that really doesn't say anything new but still pertains to a majorly damaging campaign issue, then prove that this single document is false, thus poisoning the entire debate. Not that it wasn't poisonous to begin with...

That sound about right?

[twotoedsloth.livejournal.com]

Yup, that sounds about right to me.

I think I've gone beyond outrage fatigue into... well, back to that earlier post of anthrochica's about how it is no longer possible to dismiss anything as a conspiracy theory.

Have to start sputtering inarticulately now...

[mjmj.livejournal.com]

"outrage fatigue" -- never mind all of the things that shrub did getting out of the texas air nat'l guard. shrub was someone who avoided being drafted by hiding in the TANG while being in favor of the war. (can you say "dan quayle", "newt gingrich", et al.?) this is the very definition of lack of character. it demonstrates his cowardice (moral and physical), his hypocrisy, and his studied obliviousness. it also demonstrates the hypocrisy (or, if you prefer, the cognitive dissonance) of the repubs who excoriated clinton for his draft "dodging" (another of the repub myths).

add to this the mass media's giving shrub a pass on his behavior ("the voters already have made up their mind about this -- they don't need it to be reported that shrub was a coward and a hypocrite. this election is about the character of the candidates, not about what happened thirty years ago.")

no wonder you're fatigued.

[mjmj.livejournal.com]

too late. the "history" about the "forged" documents has been written, according to the mass media.

by the way, don't you know that reagan won the cold war, pretty much single-handedly.

oh, and gore said that he invented the internet. and repubs are against deficits because of their principles about fiscal conservatism. and they believe people should be held accountable for their actions.