Tim Blair

Rumor has it that Viacom’s board of directors, which owns CBS, has sent Dan Rather silk pajamas, so Dan can spend his retirement in comfort.

Hey, pin it on Burkett. He's much more closely tied to the Kerry campaign than the Swift Boat Vets were to Bush. "Kerry Campaign Hoaxed CBS" is a great headline, no?

Well, when I let myself wallow in the conspiracy sauce I get the feeling that CBS convinced Burkett to fall on his sword so they won't have to reveal anything truly devestating, just horribly embarassing.

Now all they have to do is explain why they described Burkett as an "unimpeachable source" given his demonstrated instability and long-standing grudge against Bush.

But I doubt this is the end of it.

No matter how you cut it, Rather and Mapes were at best willfully deluded idiots for going with the story.

My prediction - Mapes takes the CBS fall, Dan apologizes and excuses himself, Burkett goes on his merry mad way and that's the end of the matter for them.

The best move for CBS is to go with physical comedy at this point. ``Appearing with his fly open, Andrew Heyward said ...''

Mark my words: CBS will come out of this mess as a "victim". Victimology has its benefits these days, unfortunately.

Remember when Nixon led the investigation of Watergate? That was awesome.

CBS explanation: "we were deceived by others"

CBS truth: " we are lying toads who couldn't wait to air this shit because it fit our agenda"

Burkett is obviously not an 'unimpeachable' source. Who did he pass these inept forgeries to, who in turn passed them along to Hurricane Dan? Robin Rather? Ben Barnes? Max Clelland?

Interesting times...

According to Burkett's attorney, David Van Os, Burkett "no longer trusts any possible outcome of speaking to the press on any issue regarding George W. Bush."

Interesting that while Burkett will not speak to the press, he has no problem speaking to Rather and CBS.

CBS should say:

"The documents are fake, we should have known. Then we let those documents lend creedence to our star witness, Ben Barnes, who it turns out is also full of shit. We should have known better when Mary Mapes, who has obsessed about this story for 5 years, came up with a smoking gun two months before this whole thing became moot. We screwed up royally."

What CBS will say:

"The documents are probably fake and we should have known it. But George Bush is still an asshole. We give ourselves a C+, maybe a B- on this one."

I will be surprised if they don't try to blame Republicans for a stich-up.

Andy Rooney's next piece on 60 Minutes:

Andy Rooney: There's been a lot of talk these days about forged memos and fonts and proportional spacing and superscripts. All that kind of stuff just confuses me. I tried to use a computer once but it made a strange whirring sound when I turned it on so I went back to my old 1948 Underwood. The keys stick a lot and the "s" key hasn't worked in a couple of decades but that's okay since I don't type much anymore. They just prop me up here at a desk in front of a camera and I just say whatever comes into my mind.

And have you ever noticed that the number of paperclips on your desk seems to multiply rather than diminish? How does that happen? I haven't had to buy new paperclips since covering the Korean War. And I wonder who makes these things anyway. Is there someone whose job is to bend these things into the right shape or is there a machine that does it? If it's a machine I wonder who it was who invented it.