Rather on the news
Just saw Dan Rather’s defense of the faked memos on the news. He employed a tactic many bloggers use. He found two allegations that may be disproven (superscript and the font) and addressed only those. He got an expert (Marcel Matley) to say the signatures matched. I looked at them and could tell they didn’t. He did not address the many other allegations about the documents.
They had Robert Strong on there who said the documents were compatible with the way business was done at the time. He didn’t say, on camera, that the documents were without a doubt real, even though he was asked.
I TiVoed the bit and watched the superscript segment again. They showed two different types of superscript and did not note they were different, only that superscript was possible. And some guy (Jim Moore) blamed the blogosphere for doing the dirty work of the administration. Blogs on the evening news? Who’d have thunk it?
And Rather hammered the message which is that the real story is Bush’s guard service record. And that blogs were on the attack to discredit the message.
Update: Reader Inge says:
Matley is a Librarian in San Francisco, and also studied Handwriting. He is NOT an expert on documents. I can’t see how Rather can justifiy him as an ‘Expert’.
Here’s some info on him. Here’s a place he works. I can’t say if he would qualify as an expert or not.
Rich has some good stuff on what CBS isn’t doing.
September 10th, 2004 at 9:03 pm
If you TiVo’d the entire broadcast could you list the commercials so that we may pressure the advertisers?
September 10th, 2004 at 9:06 pm
Once I watched it for the third time, i deleted it. Sorry. Poor planning on my part
September 10th, 2004 at 9:11 pm
Superscripts, yes. I had a typewriter that could do sub and superscripts in 1980. But, superscript of a smaller font size, as was the case in these memos? Nope. Not in 1972. Not in 1982. The resized font in the superscript is a dead giveaway. AS is the proportional spacing, and kerning.
As I said the other day, when you have to start making stuff up to make your point…
September 10th, 2004 at 9:27 pm
Even manual typewriters could do superscripts. The carriage clicked twice for each full line when you advanced it by turning the knob. If you turned it for only one click, you could do superscripts or subscripts. I did a lot of subscripts back in the days when I typed applications for chemical patents. The issue, as Rich correctly notes, is whether superscripts could be done so that individual characters were a different size from the rest of the text. There’s also the kerning issue; the y’s in the text have tails that curl below the characters to their left. That, as far as I know, has never been possible on any typewriter.
September 10th, 2004 at 9:28 pm
Matley is a Librarian in San Francisco, and also studied Handwriting. He is NOT an expert on documents. I can’t see how Rather can justifiy him as an ‘Expert’.
September 10th, 2004 at 10:00 pm
List of Sponsors and email addresses etc. for the Rather-Barnes interview are listed in the discussion forum of Swiftvets.com. Pass them on.
September 10th, 2004 at 10:30 pm
The superscript method of rolling the paper down a half line doesn’t give you a smaller ‘t’s and ‘h’s, as Rich notes. The new docs clearly have a ‘th’ that is up above the top of the numerals and smaller. The superscripted ‘th’ from the White House approved documents does not rise above the top of the numerals.
For a screenshot of the comparison, see my site:
http://www.murdoconline.net/archives/001564.html
Keep in mind that while this was on the screen, Dan Rather called these “the same superscript”. They think we’re idiots, and it’s not just because we don’t like Mrs. Kerry’s health plan.
September 10th, 2004 at 11:37 pm
Here is a list of CBS News Sponsors.
Thanks to Pat for pointing me in the right direction.
September 11th, 2004 at 12:52 am
Drudge is posting a link to a 1996 posting about the Vince Foster suicide note. Turns out Mr. Matley posed as an “expert” in stating the note was not a forgery for Unsolved Mysteries, while several other real handwriting experts said it was. Don’t have opinion on Vince Foster, but find it ironic that a simple Librarian would be tapped to support democrat postion in two major issues of national attention. Matley’s Foster case involvement article at: http://fennel.assumption.edu/~guest/view/1996/View0396.htm
September 11th, 2004 at 2:15 am
Here’s a look at the IBM Selectric typewriter (one of two that could’ve been used to write these documents) http://shapeofdays.typepad.com/the_shape_of_days/2004/09/the_ibm_selectr.html
September 11th, 2004 at 9:53 am
This whole fiasco reminds me of Floridas “hanging” chads in 2000…
September 11th, 2004 at 4:06 pm
Has anyone noticed the ultra-pristine “typewriter ribbon impressions?” After allowing for the obvious xerox’aging,’ there is no significant loss of character clarity, a common problem with typewriters equipped with special superscript keys in the sixties and seventies (I had a fifties-era Remington manual typewriter with such keys). These small characters typically became unreadable, due to build-up on the strike surface from dust, ink, etc. (see the CBS document cited to refute the superscript argument).
In the ctitical documents, there is no ribbon dirt on the elements/daisy wheels/strike faces (whatever they supposedly used thrity years ago). The Texas Air National Guard must have toothbrushed its typewriters daily!