WHAT'S THE FREQUENCY TED?

After Dan Rather was beaten like an ¢89 steak for his effort to pass off fake (using the word “forged” would give the perpetrator’s too much credit for their effort) documents that might as well have been written by a seven year old with a red crayon on a yellow tablet for all of their believability, you’d think the mainstream media might try to better hide its unvarnished support for John Kerry. If anything, it’s getting worse.

After airing Mary Mapes’ five year effort to break the Bush National Guard story, CBS’ five year effort was torpedoed in 30 seconds by a group of PJ wearing bloggers. Rather, Mapes and CBS were pummeled by the bloggers like that scene in the movie Scarface where Al Capone takes a baseball bat to some of the help for conspiring to take him out.
So while Dan is still recovering, he gets a call from Ted Koppel:

Ted: Dan this is Ted. How are you feeling?

Dan: Lower than snakes belly in a wagon rut. Lower than a well digger’s butt in Death Valley. Lower than whale excrement in the Marians trench. Lower than…

Ted: Ok, Ok I got it. Well, tune into Nightline on Thursday and I’ll show you how to pass bull excrement off as journalism.

Dan: First, in case you haven’t noticed, nobody watches Nightline, but don’t do it Ted. They’ll expose your obvious bias for what it is.

Ted: Who are “they”?

Dan: THEM!! You know!! The BLOGGERS ahhhrrrgggggg!

Ted: Hello, Dan? Dan? Are you there? Courage Dan, courage!

So undaunted, with Halperin memo in hand, Ted went forward with his, “What the Communist Vietnamese Think About the Swiftvets for Truth” piece on Nightline Thursday last week. The point of the rather pathetic story about Kerry’s Silver Star was to make John Kerry into a bigger a hero than even his over inflated opinion of himself already claims. So, Ted thought it would be a good idea in this effort to talk to bunch of communist in Vietnam. This strikes me as sort of like asking Mets fans what they think of Bill Buckner.

Had Ted just said, “Well there you have it ladies and gentlemen, communist prefer Kerry.” He might have escaped evisceration until the morning. But not only did he want to prop up Kerry with communist testimonials, he wanted to drag down the American Swiftvets. So he goofed and asked one on to the show. His bigger mistake was thinking that he could bully John O’Neill into saying that communist Vietnamese under the watchful eye communist party bosses were as reliable as American Vietnam vets on both sides of the Silver Star issue.

John O’Neill so successfully removed Ted’s entrails and fed them to him, that Ted and Nightline producers had to scramble for the last word without the pesky O’Neill introducing the truth into the story:

TED: One of our own producers, this morning, raised a question that I suspect a number of you may have on your mind. Why, just when the Presidential candidates are starting to focus on real, substantive issues devote yet another program to what John Kerry did or didn't do in Vietnam?

Here's why. Questions have been raised about John Kerry's character and honesty. We were offered the chance to set the record straight on one, discreet chapter in Mr. Kerry's war record. We didn't know what we were going to find when our crew went into Vietnam. You have the right to expect that we would have reported it, either way. And we would. Because not reporting something you know can be just as much of a political statement as reporting it. Imagine how outraged supporters of Mr. Kerry would have been if we had concealed what we found!

Our interviews don't prove that John Kerry deserved his Silver Star. But they are consistent with the after-action report and his citation for bravery. Finally, once we've checked things as thoroughly as we can, we're in the business of reporting what we learned, not concealing it.
That's our report for tonight. I'm Ted Koppel, in Washington. For all of us here at ABC News . . . good night.

Nice try. But like when Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall, all of ABC’s producers and all of ABC’s spinners couldn’t put Ted together again. If Ted had been placed into a triage line after O’Neill’s assault, he would have been dead last right behind a high school freshmen’s biology frog.