The Opinionated Bastard

Judging by my lefty commenters, they all seem to think I'm some sort of neo-conservative who's out for Rather's blood. That's not true, I've always been conservative. Or as I like to put it these days, small-l libertarian.

To be honest, about RatherGate, I couldn't care less. Dan Rather is just the pretty boy talking head. He doesn't research the stories, he comes in at the last minute and says the words someone else has typed. So if anyone deserves to be fired, it would be Mary Mapes.

Except I don't want to fire her either. Lets be brutally honest here. No one has ever watched 60 Minutes because they think its a bastion of objective journalism, because it never has been. It's always been a hatchet job, with facts twisted to match the story, interviews cut and spliced to make the person interviewed look as good (or bad) as possible, and just an overall atmosphere of slime.

We watch 60 Minutes because its the network TV news equivalent of the old American Gladiator TV show. Remember that show? You'd have these people wearing spandex in giant hamster balls trying to run into each other. The only difference between being in one of those giant hamster balls and being interviewed by Dan Rather is that there's less blood involved in being in a hamster ball.

Why fire Dan Rather or Mary Mapes? They we just doing their job, providing us not with news, but news entertainment. That isn't anything any different then what they've always done.