The Kid and an All Night Kinkos

I just blew an hour reading the blogs and papers for info about the CBS typeface fiasco, the Rather matter, the empty scoop, the smokeless gun. It seems that everyone pretty much agrees that the documents were falsified. There is some disagreement about whether or not the blogs can take credit for exposing this forgery or the mainstream press, like the Post, did the grunt work.

My dad has been really into this story forwarding me this column from John Podhoretz and another one from Newsday. He also called to tell me to put on CNN to watch Glenn Reynolds and Wonkette talk about the blogs. Now that he is retired, Dad is my personal information gatherer. Everyone should have one.

I turned on the CBS news tonight just to look into Dan Rather’s eyes to look for the panic. The “Oh, Crap. My Career is in the Toilet” look. But he robotically read the news as usual.

I’m also very curious about the guy who did this. Dad speculated that it was some 22 year old kid just out of college. Someone young enough to have never typed up high school papers on an IBM Selectric. I agree.

It was probably some kid who got this plum internship because his dad played golf with a CBS executive. The kid wanted to impress his dad who never really paid attention to him. Dad was always more interested in golf and highballs at the club. The kid cooked up this plan with his friends at a bar over on Third Avenue. It seemed like a good idea after the third round of jello shots. The kid and two of his friends printed out the notorious paragraph, taped it onto Bush’s old files, and copied it at an all night Kinkos. The next day, he put the paperwork in his bag and, still red eyed from the night before, dropped the reconstructed files on his editor’s desk. His therapist has speculated that the kid did this as a cry for help, as part of unresolved feelings towards his sister, and as part of his recurrant fear of success; the therapist has recommended increasing the kid’s sessions to five times a week. The kid has avoided being fired by simply not showing up for work for three days and instead shopping for an Interrail pass on the internet.

[links and sanity will happen tomorrow…}