Hold the Self-Congratulation

THE mainstream media have had a very rough few years. So rough, in fact, that we no longer use “mainstream media” as an innocuous phrase to describe conventional professional journalism. The Internet has succeeded in getting the mainstream media capitalized and abbreviated (MSM) in order to be singled out and scolded more easily-like a once-powerful apparatchik of the Chinese politburo forced to wear a dunce cap so that throngs of ideological zealots know whom to scorn and children can spot whom to throw old cabbage at.

That’s probably about how Dan Rather feels. He still doesn’t understand why he’s under the professional equivalent of house arrest. Just last month, Rather explained that he wants to reopen the Memogate investigation because he finds it “strange” and “mysterious” that people would doubt the veracity of a man like him. “The facts of the story were correct,” Rather insists. “To this day, no one has proven” otherwise. Unfortunately, Rather explains, the honchos at CBS have forbidden him to reopen the story and find the one-armed man to his Dr. Richard Kimble. (What does Karl Rove have up his sleeve? Indeed.)

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Jonah Goldberg

Jonah Goldberg is a National Review contributing editor.

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THE mainstream media have had a very rough few years. So rough, in fact, that we no longer use “mainstream media” as an innocuous phrase to describe conventional professional journalism. The Internet has succeeded in getting the mainstream media capitalized and abbreviated (MSM) in order to be singled out and scolded more easily-like a once-powerful apparatchik of the Chinese politburo forced to wear a dunce cap so that throngs of ideological zealots know whom to scorn and children can spot whom to throw old cabbage at.

That’s probably about how Dan Rather feels. He still doesn’t understand why he’s under the professional equivalent of house arrest. Just last month, Rather explained that he wants to reopen the Memogate investigation because he finds it “strange” and “mysterious” that people would doubt the veracity of a man like him. “The facts of the story were correct,” Rather insists. “To this day, no one has proven” otherwise. Unfortunately, Rather explains, the honchos at CBS have forbidden him to reopen the story and find the one-armed man to his Dr. Richard Kimble. (What does Karl Rove have up his sleeve? Indeed.)