J&P Extra! Matt Drudge speaks out on the Kerry campaign, Dan Rather's humiliation, a Secret Service manhunt, and more.

From The Drudge Report radio edition, September 19 2004:

Did you know the guy who is producing the Emmy Awards is the same guy who produced the Democrat convention? Mischner, the guy who was screaming balloons, balooons, give me more balloons! And we were lectured tonight by Jon Stewart, mocking the Swift Boat Veterans. And we were lectured by Shaindling. Sarah Jessica Parker just won for spreading her legs on Sex in the City. Oh the excitement, I can’t even breathe.

A lot of the Air America airheads with their thongs a little too tight are going, oh Bush is hiding, he’s not playing by the rules. Well the Commission on Presidential Debates has proposed three Presidential debates, and lo and behold Bush has accepted. I think it’s being clever, because many would predict Bush would not want to risk this. But I don’t think Kerry is that strong to begin with. I think the more we’re going to see of Kerry, the less we’re going to like him. And he’s going to be everywhere this week. He’s going on Letterman, he’s going on Dr Phil, he’s going on Regis and whatever her name is. We’re going to be so sick of Kerry by the time these debates come around.

Just for history again, Jimmy Carter only gave Reagan one debate; Clinton only gave Bob Dole two debates. So what are you going to say about Bush who is now granting Kerry three debates. Maybe they can devote one debate to the National Guard, one debate to the Swift Boat Veterans...oh please. The people running these debates, do you expect any sparks there? Jim Lehrer? Bob Schieffer? Why doesn’t Bob Schieffer step down and let Dan Rather moderate one of these debates? That would be it; what a way to go out into retirement there, Dan.

Kerry was going to be advertising in 19 states, but now it shows he’s just running ads in 12. He had pulled back in 7 states he tried to make competitive, but it’s not happening there. Is it really going to come down to one square block in West Virginia that Kerry is pinning all of his hopes on?

So the woman who disrupted the Bush visit, now she’s playing the victim and she wants apologies from people for what happened to her there. But she’s sitting there saying, “If I had Bush in front of me, I’d shoot him in the groin area, let him suffer, and just keep continue shooting him there. Put him through misery”. I’m not taking this woman’s words out of context and adding salt and pepper to it. They’re going to say the woman has an absolute right to threaten the President, they’re going to defend her. Do you think her son would want her saying that? Let us not go around threatening candidates with their lives. Regardless of what you think of this President or Kerry, they deserve to live, don’t you think? In the coming days you will hear quite a disturbing story. I’m not at liberty to tell you all the details tonight. The Secret Service are on the trail of specific individuals who are planning to do harm to this President. People in the know, know exactly what I’m talking about. Bear with me on this, it is not my story. And it will become a larger story as we head into this campaign, as we see one side, I believe it is the Kerry side, become more and more desperate. I’ll stop it there.

CBS to air an interview with its source for the Bush Guard memos. Isn’t that something? Now they’re already fighting over was this guy a Bush hater? Yeah, he already compared Bush to Hitler and Mussolini or Napoleon on the internet. So CBS’s own source was comparing Bush to Hitler. Oh no, they had no reason to doubt these documents. Dan Rather says [to a Fox reporter] do you feel like you were duped working at Fox? Omigosh. What a way to go out, Dan. The last time I checked in, I don’t think Fox was doing faked documents. It’s long past retirement for that whole Dan Rather production unit. As Elton John said, “sorry” seems to be the hardest word, and at some point Dan is going to have to say, “Sorry”. Sooner or later, it’s coming, before there’s no ticking left over there.

The Kerry campaign lost a week on this. That’s what they’ll get for calling CBS. I do think it must have come from the Kerry campaign, because they were jiving with it, they were waiting for it. Somebody was given a heads-up on something. So should Dan Rather now be removed from the coverage because he’s part of the story? Dan Rather would walk, he’d walk, like the time he walked off because of the tennis coverage. Somebody else should moderate this, maybe it should be John Roberts. But Cronkite who was in this Outfoxed movie, lecturing about how we’ve got to be very careful about our sources in this new media atmosphere--somebody poke Cronkite, somebody wake him up.

I still think that Rather deserves props. The highs were high and the lows were low this year--I think leash girl is probably going to be the top story of the year. But remember the goofy interview he gave at the height of the terror war to the Europeans, this was an interview you were not supposed to hear stateside, but thanks to the internet we captured it:

[Dan Rather]: There has never been an American war, small or large, in which access has been so limited as this one. For God’s sake, and for the sake of the war effort, let’s don’t turn the war into entertainment. It’s an obscene comparison, but there was a time in South Africa when people would put flaming tires around peoples’ necks. In some ways the fear is you’ll be necklaced here, you’ll have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck. Now, it’s that fear that keeps journalists from asking the toughest of the tough questions, and to continue to bore in on the tough questions.

War is real mud and real blood, real screams of dying and real death. That’s war. What you see in a Hollywood movie or a made for television movie or reality series is not war; it’s somebody’s glamorized view of war. It’s baloney. And even, let me say this and we’re going to tell it like it really is, what you have is a miniature version of what you have in totalitarian states, where the news runs about and say how great the Great Leader is, and how he’s getting greater in every way every day. Let us take Operation Anaconda, which was presented to the American people and remains portrayed to the American people, as an outstanding victory. But there are some serious questions, particularly in the early hours of Operation Anaconda. Somebody sent some of America’s best into a trap.

What’s being done practically, in real terms, is in direct variance with what the Pentagon’s stated policy is. The Pentagon’s stated policy is maximum access, maximum information, consistent with national security. But what’s going on to a very large extent, I’m sorry to say, is a belief that the public doesn’t need to know. Limiting access, limiting information, to cover the backsides of those in charge of the war, is extremely dangerous, and cannot be accepted. Now I’m sorry to say that up to and including the moment of this interview, that overwhelmingly it has been accepted by the American people. And the current administration revels in that, they relish that, and they take refuge in that. The belief runs so strong in both the political and military leadership of the current war effort that those who control the images will control public opinion. They realize what an entertainment oriented society ours has become. Therefore, in one way of looking at it, it is quite natural they would say to themselves, hey, you’ve had the Hollywoodization of news, you’ve had the Hollywoodization of practically everything else in society, why not the Hollywoodization of the war? I want to say quietly, but as forcefully as I can, that I hope this doesn’t go any further. It’s gone too far already. I’m appalled by it. I do think it is an outrage.

Do you see why he may have been inclined to believe phony documents about Bush?

They are going to throw themselves on the satellite dish, asking God for forgiveness. Rather had hoped to retire as soon as Tom Brokaw left the stage this fall, and now all that has been spoiled. How about we do that: the punishment for Dan Rather should be another 10 years in the anchor chair, hard time. After expressing confidence about the documents for days and days CBS now says they were deceived, there’s something stinky coming out of that Kinko’s in Texas. They’re going to get the bottom of it; when the sun comes up, when the rooster crows there on West 57th street, they will come clean. We’ll see no pointing at the right-wing crazy conservative media, will we? We’ll see no pointing at those bloggers, will we? Nobody made you do it, Dan. You’re operating on free will. You put it to the air, you rushed it to beat that dastardly Kitty Kelley. And now it’s payback time. There will be some pain, no doubt about it. But Dan Rather will fight this, you know damn sure. Because there’s nobody there to fire him. They spent the entire last week trying to figure out who to blame. They’re going to have a find a scapegoat here--is it going to be this gentleman from Texas, is that going to be enough?

What happens if it did come from the DNC? Someone should ask John Kerry immediately. Is he on Imus tomorrow? Is he doing Dr Phil tomorrow? Is he doing Regis tomorrow? Is he doing Letterman tomorrow? All these serious hard-hitting investigations on John Kerry, yeah right. No wonder those swift-boaties are selling 80,000 a week, 100,000 a week.

Even more than having to eat crow this week is going to be the humiliation of Nielsen in the end, that more viewers are opting to watch off-network reruns of King of Queens than the all-important Rather from World Headquarters. Oh yeah, they’ll blame the ignorance, as Walter Cronkite did, of the audience, the educational level of the audience as Cronkite said: they need to be a little smarter about what they’re watching. Well, their wish is our command.

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