Mary Mapes

Mary Mapes, former CBS producer, has written a book about her attempt to influence the 2004 US Presidential Election using a set of laughably amateur forged papers and sparking the incident colloquially know as Rathergate. The title of the book? Truth and Duty (audio CD). I'm sure lots of fun can be had with that title.

Most of you know the story, so I won’t bore you with it. I simply have a question for the women (and the men, I guess). Regarding this reported reaction from Ms. Mapes when the jig was up and various website analyses were exposing the CBS papers on President Bush's Texas Air National Guard service as frauds:

“And right now, on the Internet, it appeared everything was falling apart. I had a real physical reaction as I read the angry online accounts. It was something between a panic attack, a heart attack, and a nervous breakdown. My palms were sweaty; I gulped and tried to breathe. . . . The little girl in me wanted to crouch and hide behind the door and cry my eyes out."

Since you’ve been an adult, have you ever felt like the part emphasized? Have you ever gone all little-girl in a crisis? Maybe it’s me, but, that is just weird.

But I suppose that I would indeed have a cow if I had attempted to pass phony papers about the president and was outted instantly in front of millions.

Welcome to the 21st century, Ms. Mapes.

People like Ms. Mapes are some of the most frightening of all. Anything can be justified in the name of a "righteous" cause. She still doesn't think that she did anything wrong and getting a book deal--accruing profit--from the scandal she helped create only re-inforces that willful blindness. Kinda helps to make a person cynical, no?

Cheer up. God is in control.

(Thanks to LGF)

Comments

[teal marie]

When the second plane hit the WTC and I knew it wasn't an accident, I wished with all my heart I could go back to sleep and not wake up til all was made right again. I couldn't, as it turned out.

Mary Mapes is quite beyond my ken. I have no idea how she twists her brain to justify any of that crap. It's evil, I'll say that.

OT The news out of Pakistan is horrifying. 18,000 dead? Heaven help those poor people. I wish I could quit wondering if the epicenter was directly under Bin Laden.

[Fred Schoeneman]

Here's the blurb from amazon:

"A riveting account of how the public’s right to know is being attacked by an unholy alliance among politicians, news organizations and corporate America, from the producer at the heart of the 60 Minutes/George Bush National Guard controversy."

Ah well. What did I expect?

[Peggy]

Baldilocks, you picked out the excerpt that also blew me away. It is precisely that kind of empty, meaningless emotionalism that liberals indulge in to 'validate' each other. Rational response to it only infuriates the blubberer and invites the scorn of her head patters.

[Impacted Wisdom Truth]

God is, and all is well.

--John Greenleaf Whittier

[Francis W. Porretto]

But does Mapes maintain that the Killian memos were genuine, or has she taken the position that their authenticity has no relevance to her use of them to assail President Bush? In the first case, she might just be deluded. In the latter...well, Rosemary Esmay might have to give up that "Queen Of All Evil" tiara to someone who genuinely deserves it.

[Tully]

Don't know about Mapes, but Rather still maintains that the story was true even if the documents were fake. IOW, even though all the supporting evidence the story is based on is bogus....

[Evon]

Peggy, It seems to be some subdivision of the PC mentality that if the other person in a discussion/argument gets emotional, you are a cold, evil-hearted meanie to bring up anything so irrelevant as facts. In the Hitchens - Galloway debate on the Iraq war it was, for the most part, cold hard facts countered by hysterical adjectives. The ignorance of facts Mapes reveals in this book is astounding, considering she is a "news person."

[Synova]

Oh well, if we're psychoanalyzing her...

In my experience, if I'm right it doesn't matter what people think because I'm secure. If I'm wrong but not admitting it to myself, I get upset and defensive and maybe even a little sick to my stomach. If I offend someone by accident, and I really did do something wrong, I do feel sick.

In my experience, my kids handle set backs fairly well *unless* their actions were promted by an emotional need to do well and were therefore expecting praise. If, instead, they get in trouble, they are devistated. It's the disconnect between expectations and result. If they were trying to be a "good person", they react to the set-back as if it proves they are a "bad person." If they weren't feeling excessively proud of themselves to begin with the blow doesn't hurt anywhere near as much.

[torchy]

Is the blogosphere the unholiest member of that "unholy alliance", so unholy they dare not speak its name? Mmmmm, sacre-licious.

It seems like Mapes isn't that masculinized female feared might be the product of women in the workplace. I guess the maternal prowess slipped in under the radar. She's not trying to justify her efforts but just pushing the empathy buttons. O, wretched female child, frightened into a darkened corner, on the verge of tears, how can we torment her?

[Steve Skubinna]

I guess I can't complain about Mapes slipping into her inner child, but it's just too bad the outer adult is such a willful idiot.

[Tully]

If we're going to play psychoanalyst, let's note that Mapes is a Texan who has been obsessed with Bush for years, beginning with her involvement with the Texas Democrats and the Ann Richards gang. The whupping that Bush put on Richards still stings, I guess.

[Steve]

The title of her book has these 5 words: "and the Privilege of Power".

"Privilege" and "power" are used mysteriously in the title of the book. Whose "privilege"? Whose "power"? In reality it would/should be hers she is refering too? The news media's?

And those references to "privilege" and "power" are a compliment or an insult, to whom?

Is "privilege" and/or "power" even the issue at all in this case? If I were to ask them these questions would they even know what I was asking and why?

I've seen a lot of mysterious use of language like this among the people who are called "liberal" and although I cannot right now bring any to mind I do remember getting this same frustration over and over again in the 1990s from words spoken by Bill and Hillary Clinton and many others in their administration as well as their MSM news press.

[Tony]

The title of the book should be: "lawlessness and irrelevance" :)