470 The Forgeries--Who Dunnit?

I used to write my library's newsletter in the mid-80s with an old IBM Selectric (possibly early 70s?) and was pretty good at it--had correctible type (a white ribbon) and balls for changing type fonts. It was tricky changing the font, but I learned. Reading this story about the IBM Selectric Composer which may be the only typewriter in the early 70s that could have come close to creating those forged Bush Guard memos, really brought back memories, and reminded me of how grateful I am for word processing and for the 70-80 wpm speed I learned on a typewriter. Even so, no researcher, not even a librarian, could have pulled this together so quickly before Google.

The web site of the Selectric History page has this message:

"Sorry, but due to excessive hits, this page is temporarily out of service.

Please check back after the election.

For those who want my opinion...the documents appear to be done in Word, and then copied repeatedly to make them "fuzzy". They use features that were not available on office typewriters the 1970s, specifically the combination of proportional spacing with superscript font. The IBM Executive has proportional spacing, but used fixed type bars. The Selectric has changeable type elements, but fixed spacing (some models could be selected at 10 or 12 pitch, but that's all). The Selectric Composer was not an office typewriter, but apparently did use proportional spacing. These were very expensive machines, used by printing offices, not administrative offices."

If you are too young to remember electric typewriters or had secretaries to do your typing, you would not want to use even the office model Selectric typewriter today . Photo of type balls in e-bay.

Who created and planted the forgeries? I'm leaning toward the Clinton camp as pulling a scam on CBS. The Republicans wouldn't want to put anything out there that kept up the discussion, even misinformation, about the guard service. Especially the way the media covers things--sometimes when I've heard this story on the radio, the majority of it deals not with the possible scam of CBS, but the content of the memo, even though the report claims to be about the forgery. Some commentators (Juan Williams, for instance) seem to think it is the message, not the forgery, that is important.

The Clintons have apparently successfully unloaded James Carville, a CNN employee, on the Kerry-Edwards campaign, which sets them up for all sorts of problems. Carville is married to Mary Matalin, a Bush advisor, so I suppose he could be just posing as a Kedwards supporter, but it sets the Democrats up for even more accusations of media bias than they already have. Plus, Carville regularly makes a fool of himself in front of millions as a loud mouth, news analyst (entertainer) on cable. He can make Rush Limbaugh look and sound like a mild mannered Episcopalian priest.

The Old Media has tried to disparage the bloggers who uncovered the forgeries. Jonathan Klein of CBS looks down on bloggers: "A guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas." Amy Ridenour says, “Let make sure some of these jammies are pink nighties, so when people in jammies are running rings around his well-dressed ace reporters, Jonny will receive a reminder that not all bloggers are guys." Amy is on my blogroll.