Dan's grand retirement parade

Lots of CBS news today with Dan Rather declaring his early retirement as Anchor-Icon. Is it a victory? Well, less of Dan Rather is a good thing, so the short answer is yes. A more in-depth analysis gives one pause, however, as events in the Rather-gate aftermath have not run their course.

There is an old saying that if you are about to be run out of town on a rail, get out in front of the crowd and pretend it's a parade. From here it would appear that Rather's retirement in March '05, instead of March '06, is Rather's attempt to be the grand marshal of his own departure (to deny his "enemies" on the right, particularly in the blogosphere, a measure of satisfaction). Since the "investigation" is not complete ("weeks rather than months" being another CBS lie) we do not yet know how hard the axe will fall on the other deserving collaborators of the Texas Air National Guard documents fakery.

Our suggestion is that we demand Rather exit as well from 60 Minutes II, and continue to press for the firing of the news director and producer Mary Mapes. Let's not be placid until justice is delivered, however long that may take. Remember, this was an attempt to influence the outcome of a presidential election through the use of fraudulent military records. It may or may not have been a crime in fact, but it ought to have been. In a just world CBS would be forced to divest itself of its news assets for violations of law not permitted even under the broad scope of the 1st Amendment.

Yeah, that will never happen, but that's the mental standard from which we should carry on the fight for journalistic ethics. This fight isn't about scoring points for the Pajamahadeen. The successful fight to reveal the truth is generating the legitimacy of the new media. We do not need a head trophy to prove our worth, and we should not be satisfied with mere tokenism. The MSM will only be reformed when it is truly broken from its old habits of massaging the message. Right now that's the substance of the Rather semi-retirement: a token move meant to silence the critics.