Because of the early start to today's ride up to Kerry Spot In-Law World Headquarters outside Philadelphia, I didn't go through all the papers the way I usually do, and missed this excerpt from USA Today's coverage of Dan Rather's announcement.
Some of the bloggers, or Internet diarists, who raised the ruckus over the Guard story said they weren't celebrating Rather's departure. "There certainly will be people (in the blogging world) who feel vindicated," said Kevin Aylward, an information technology consultant in Virginia who writes a blog on Wizbangblog.com. "But the issue was always whether (the Guard story) was done ... to throw an election. So for me, the sense of relief came on Election Day. It didn't work. Bush was re-elected."
Said John Hinderaker, a Minneapolis lawyer and co-author of Power Line (powerlineblog.com): "I wouldn't say I feel vindicated. I never felt we were in need of vindication. But now that the episode is pretty much behind us, I think it's been a tribute to the power of the medium: the Internet."
The bloggers, starting just hours after the 60 Minutes report, raised doubts about the Guard documents. They questioned, for example, whether the papers could have been produced on a 1970s-era typewriter. "Within a matter of hours, millions of people had seen that information," Hinderaker said. "The biggest newspaper with the biggest resources and the biggest budget could not have done what we did that day."
Some anti-Rather bloggers viewed Tuesday's announcement with suspicion. "There's no way CBS will face the music and admit that the 60 Minutes story was a cheap-shot, amateur, sloppy, partisan, nasty, half-witted bit of hackery," Jim Geraghty wrote on Kerry Spot (at nationalreview.com).
In response, Rather said he was looking forward to report of the independent panel investigating the story: "The last line has not been written about what we did, how we did it and why we did it." He said many CBS viewers have encouraged him: "They understand."
It's nice to be quoted in USA Today, but it is even nicer that a major newspaper recognizes how central the bloggers were to the final chapter of Rather's career.
