ORDINAL SINS

Have I really said nothing about the CBS memos yet? I haven't, which is odd considering that in my capacity as a professional writer I've been working almost nothing but. Perhaps I'm tired of it. At the very least I do hope Dan Rather throws in the towel before much longer. Expert analysis seems to be running 5 to 1 or more against the documents' authenticity, and considering not only that all but a few who knew the supposed author think they are false, but that some of them even warned CBS about exactly that.

Then we have some rather basic errors on CBS' part, which have me further convinced that Rather and his producers are in way over their heads. I need not run down all the old ones, because I'm a week late to the story and you can find out pretty much everything else, plus links to the other bloggers leading the charge at RatherGate.

Instead I'll point out a few things I haven't seen anyone else mention.

First: When Dan Rather made his first defense of the story on Friday's Evening News, he referred to the typeface Times New Roman as "New Times Roman." It's a little hard to take seriously a "debunking" of the charges of negligent reporting against you when the follow-up reporting is slipshod as well.

Second: Much of the debate is over fairly arcane issues of proportional fonts, superscript and kerning (the space between lines characters). Having once edited a magazine, all of these things are pretty elementary for me, but I find it strange that everyone keeps talking about how the superscript is an unavoidable fact of using Word. To their credit, CBS notes this in their latest version of the story:

Katz, the software expert, pointed out that the documents have both the so-called "superscript" th (where the letters are slightly higher than the rest of the sentence, such as 6^th) and a regular-sized "th". That would be common on a typewriter, not a computer.

"There's one document from May 1972 that contains a normal "th" on the top. To produce that in Microsoft Word, you would have to go out of your way to type the letters and then turn the "th" setting off, or back up and then type it again," said Katz.

Or type out "111th" and when the superscript happens automatically, immediately hit Ctrl-Z (PC) or Option-Z (Mac). But in general, this is rarely mentioned. If you ask me, it's further evidence of the likelihood of these being forgeries. Why a typist would switch back and forth I'm not sure; especially in light of news that the late (alleged) author's secretary came forward to say she typed everything he wrote, but she never typed such a thing. But when both superscripts and "111 th" show up in the document? That sounds to me like someone who was mindful of incurring unwanted superscript, but also careless -- or possibly so incompetent with Word as to get frustrated and leave it as is. I suppose this is pretty weak argumentation, but it's not as weak as CBS' lame excuses.