I have to admit - the TANG-gate story never really resonated with me.
Kevin Drum can sometimes be a little too....sissy... for my taste, but I think he's right.
Most voters won't care, the ones that do generally knew the truth, memo or no memo. Sure- it'd be great to see Bush squirm, but hey, if they can get away with Iraq to the extent they have....
Then, we all got to learn a LOT more about fonts, typewriters, and the like than we ever thought possible. At first glance - it might be disappointing to see the story turn into another tired SCLM bedtime story freepers tell their children.
Now... I'm not so sure.
Remember the Swifties? Remember the valuable time -- whether it be surrogates on TV or dedicated bloggers -- spent debunking the lies since the media was on auto-pilot "he said/she said" mode? That was time that could have been spent talking about a million jobs lost, a thousand lives lost, American respect lost, the momentum from the convention lost; OPPORTUNITIES lost.
No doubt - it was the classic rock and hard place. We had bad field position and little choice but to play on their side of the 50.
I'd say our field position is better this time around.
If you can stomach it - take a gander at your local freeper website.
One of my favorites for a chuckle is Jonah Goldberg's Lucianne.com.
For those without the sado-masochistic streak, Lucianne is sort of like a poor man's RSS - "news" stories are posted constantly, with comment sections available. As you might expect - a lot of the posts are columns from various vacuums of critical thought like The American Spectator, TownHall.com, RushLimbaugh.com, etc.
The staff usually posts 6-10 "must reads" at the top of the page.
Of the 9 currently up, 4 are about memo-gate; hit pieces against CBS, Dan Rather, etc.
Scroll through the articles posted, and pay extra attention to the ones with bylines from the places you love to hate -- it seems every entry from the usual freeper suspects is a Rather rant.
If I wasn't enjoying them wasting so much time and energy on something that won't win them a single vote, I'd probably tell them that Dan Rather isn't running for any office I'm aware of.
They're RE-acting, not ACTING - and given a choice between these bozos working on their next smear, and them smearing Dan Rather... well...
Dan's a big boy - he can take care of himself.