Ironically attacking his own reputation, Dan Rather sues CBS for ruining his reputation.

What a mind-boggling legal theory! Dan Rather's reputation had to do with the appearance that he was vouching for the stories he read on the air, that he was taking personal responsibility for their truth. He's suing CBS for allowing him to report a phony story:

By his own rendering, Mr. Rather was little more than a narrator of the disputed broadcast, which was shown on Sept. 8, 2004, on the midweek edition of “60 Minutes” and which purported to offer new evidence of preferential treatment given to Mr. Bush when he was a lieutenant in the Air National Guard.

Instead of directly vetting the script he would read for the Guard segment, Mr. Rather says, he acceded to pressure from Mr. Heyward to focus instead on his reporting from Florida on Hurricane Frances, and on Bill Clinton’s heart surgery.

Mr. Rather says in the filing that he allowed himself to be reduced to little more than a patsy in the furor that followed, after CBS concluded that the report had been based on documents that could not be authenticated.

So, his own actions, as he describes them, warrant the diminishment of his reputation. In which case, in asserting the basis for his lawsuit, he's diminishing his own reputation. Why then is he filing the lawsuit? You may say: for $70 million. But he has to win the lawsuit to get the money. And he has to pay his lawyers out of that recovery. Very expensive lawyers, too. Sullivan & Cromwell. (I used to work there.) And he's already dumped a lot of his own money into investigating the matter.

So, if it's not about getting money, what's it about? Well, there's this:

“I’d like to know what really happened,” he said, his eyes red and watering. “Let’s get under oath. Let’s get e-mails. Let’s get who said what to whom, when and for what purpose.”

Who, what, when, and why... I get it. It's like reporting. Except you use the judicial process to force people to talk to you and produce documents.

(Hilarious photograph at the link.)

ADDED: A lawyer from Sullivan & Cromwell is quoted in the linked article, but that firm doesn't represent Rather. His lawyers are Sonnenshein Nath & Rosenthal, and here's the complaint -- courtesy of Beldar, who's writing about that case. On one point, he says:

.... I'm sorry, but that's so badly wrong as a matter of law that every one of the Sonnenschien lawyers whose name appears on this complaint ought to be sanctioned for making it...

Also:

[I]fCBS has the guts to fight it — and that is an open question — CBS will win it. You can bet the ranch on it.

Dan Rather takes a shot at Katie Couric... and the "tarted up" evening news.

On "Morning Joe":

I want to make clear that I have nothing against Katie Couric at all. She’s a very nice person and I have a lot of friends at CBS News. However, it was clear at the time and I think it has become even clearer that the mistake was to try to bring the ‘Today’ ethos to the evening news and to dumb it down, tart it up, in hopes of attracting a younger audience. And I just don't think that people at 6:30, or seven o’clock at night or even 5:30 in the central time zone , six o’clock when it’s seen, that that is what they want.... [T]he belief runs strong in the corporate towers of almost every news organization, print or over the airwaves these days, that if you go to celebrities, uh, it increases your audience.

I don't like the dumbing down of the news, but I see two important feminist issues:

1. Is Rather insinuating that having a female newscaster is part of the process of "tarting up" the news? I know he doesn't precisely make that connection, but, to me, it's just glaring that the word "tart" means prostitute.

2. Why on earth does it matter what time the news is on? If something is wrong for the evening news, why isn't it just as wrong for the morning news? I think what is unstated is that only women are watching those morning shows, so the standards are lower. We don't even call the evening news a "show," do we? It's not a show, it's a program!

If Rather is so concerned about seriousness, why doesn't he see the serious undertones of sexism in his remarks? And, hint to Dan Rather: Saying she's "a very nice person" is not going to immunize you from this suspicion.

UPDATE: Les Moonves picks up the Rather-is-sexist meme.

''He still didn't put the butter up... I was like, 'You're just asking for it, you know I'm giving a speech. Why don't you just put the butter up?''

What's the deal with Michelle Obama saying things like that to the crowd?

DePaul University marketing professor Bruce Newman, who has written several books on political marketing, sees the teasing as a strategy for Obama, through his wife, to appeal to professional women who might otherwise vote for one of his chief rivals for the nomination, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

By joking about his domestic foibles, Michelle Obama is showing herself as a woman who doesn't kowtow to her husband, he said.

''It's a clever strategy. I think it's very wise,'' Newman said.

It might even earn him some points with men, said Harvard University's Thomas Patterson, a professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government.

''Men in a strange sort of way understand leaving butter out and socks laying around. It humanizes the guy,'' Patterson said.

So is this a good way to use the candidate's spouse? I think it depends on how good the delivery is. It could be tiresome and phony. We need some video:



Pretty good, I think. It could get old, but it's kind of charming for now.

IN THE COMMENTS: This is very smart, from Dan:

I think the unstated premise behind such playfulness, that is to say the implicit contrast it provides to the Clinton's something other than intimate and endearing relationship, allows it to work better than normal. A strong comparison is being drawn. I can't help but think in the back of her mind such a contrast is the conscious goal of what would otherwise be insignficant filler. If so, fairly subtle and thoughtful rhetoric, and perhaps part of the reason as to why the delivery was pretty good. These aren't throw-away comments by Mrs. Obama. Rather a great use of innuendo--i.e. the Clinton's are bad, not like us in this room. Laura Bush has also been very successful with this kind of humor directed at "George". John Kerry and Theresa Heinz Kerry being the latest and last foil. Anyway, Barack doesn't screw around, he's at home with me, but I still haven't gotten him to put away his socks.

Another take, from BJK:

I see the strategy: vote for the nagging spouse

-or-

vote for the candidate with the nagging spouse: Obama '08!

Very subtle...

From Susan:

I liked her body language. Very open. And when she put her hands on her hips, which can be an aggressive, dominant stance, it came across to me as just confident. I had never seen her speak before and I don't think I could ever vote for someone as liberal as Obama, but I was impressed with the way she came across.

Yes, she has a nice, natural, youthful manner. Quite unusual for a political wife, and I do think that modern women who believe in egalitarian relationships will get a much better vibe from the Obamas than from the Clintons. And I love the dress. [CORRECTION: It's not a dress, but a pants outfit. Looks like a dress when you don't see the full view.]

BlogHer... and plotting the trip to San Jose.

Are you going to the BlogHer convention next week? I'm on a panel on day two, which is described like this on the website:

Political Blogging:

Same shit, different day? What did political blogs accomplish in 2004, besides bringing down Dan Rather and selling tickets to Farenheit 911? Will poli-blogs and hyper-local citizen journalism sites really make a difference in 2006 and 2008? Are bloggers better off trying to influence their own communities or sway the masses? Lisa Williams talks with Jarah Euston and Kety Esquivel, Courtney Hollands, Lindsay Beyerstein and Ann Althouse...bloggers representing all types of blogs, and with a range of opinions on what they expect to achieve with those blogs.

Any advice? I've got to say that if I weren't on this panel, I'd be more interested in one of the other panels going on at the same time. I'm really not that interested in politics, and I usually like to keep it at arm's length. But that will kind of be my topic. Political blogging is not just for politicos, and being not the political type is an angle on politics that can work in blogging. It drives the really political people to distraction.

This is going to force me to leave Madison, which I've been avoiding for the longest time. I've spent a lot of time looking at maps. Yes, of course I'm driving. I love my car and I love to drive across the western landscape. It's a long way to San Jose, and please don't mention that song, which is hard enough not to think about when you're going to San Jose. And the person in the song is just trying to get to San Jose from L.A. How hard is that? What a loser!

Plotting my route, I kept my eye on two things: the green dotted lines representing the scenic drives and the one motel chain that made it absolutely clear that they have wireless internet in every room at every location. Do you know how many chains brag that they have high-speed access ... in the lobby? My favorite example was one that showed a beautiful woman in a bathrobe sprawled across her bed, smiling with delight at her laptop. Some lobby that must be.

In the past, I've driven long distances and just figured out where to stop as I was traveling, which can cause some trouble, like the day I drove all the way from Madison to Salt Lake City and then thought I might as well go on to the next town. If you don't know how stupid that is, look at a map. [ADDED: Speaking of being driven to distraction!]

So, I've picked my stops, which I hope will keep me from doing foolish things and free my mind for the true aesthetic and spiritual experience of crossing the landscape. I'm taking three days to get to the destination and somewhat longer driving back, which will include a stay at a very posh resort. So I'm driving a big loop, for a total of well over 4,000 miles, with stopping points in two places on the way to San Jose and three places on the way back to Madison.

About that plinth.

Lionel Shriver bemoans an art world occurrence:

In this year's summer show at London's Royal Academy of Arts, "Exhibit 1201" is a large rectangular tablet of slate with a tiny barbell-shaped bit of boxwood on top. Its creator, David Hensel, must be pleased to have been selected from among some 9,000 applicants for the world's largest open-submission exhibit of contemporary art. Nevertheless, he was bemused to discover that in transit his sculpture had gotten separated from its base. Judging the two components as different submissions, the Royal Academy had rejected his artwork proper--a finely wrought laughing head in jesmonite--and selected the plinth.

Moreover, the Royal Academy denies having made an error, for the plinth and hastily carved wooden support were, according to an official statement, "thought to have merit."

That's just classic. It's sort of a reverse of that story from a few years back about the janitor who threw out some art display that looked like a bag of trash.

You know, I can't look at the word "plinth" and not think of the old Dan Aykroyd character, Leonard Pinth-Garnell. Remember him? He'd be all pretentious and tuxedo-clad, he'd introduce "Bad Conceptual Theater," "Bad Playhouse," "Bad Cinema," "Bad Opera," "Bad Ballet," "Bad Red Chinese Ballet," or "Bad Cabaret for Children," and then he'd inform us how terribly bad that was. I can't visualize the sketches well enough to remember why they amused us so much, but I think it was that the art was so blatantly bad that it was ridiculous to have a fancy expert explain the badness. Or were we laughing at the way art critics are so damned narcissistically pleased with their ability to perceive badness and he was showing things that were so bad and so pornographically pleasurable to him?

But about that plinth....

What more is there to say? I saw this news story a while back and thought about doing a blog post, but decided against it. It's too obvious. Yeah, yeah, there's that. That happened. If someone were making up fake stories to get people to blog them, that would have been one. But it really happened. Shouldn't you take note of something that perfectly bad when it happens?

So Lionel Shriver -- a novelist -- has decided to take on the too-easy topic, so let's see how she -- if she -- manages to make the story her own:

For those who despair that artists these days seem to have lost the skill of fashioning meticulously crafted objects, don't blame Mr. Hensel. While the slate base took only four hours to hack from a mortuary slab, and the little boxwood prop less than an hour, he had painstakingly carved and polished that laughing head for two months. But alas, the sculpture itself has--shudder--emotional content. It was originally christened "One Day Closer to Paradise," a far too expressive title; Mr. Hensel would have been better off with the portentously enigmatic "Exhibit 1201." His laughing head is not only fatally well rendered, but exudes a sense of joy and hilarity, and the overtly evocative is declassé. How much more sophisticated, a stoic square of slate that speaks of--well, ask the viewers.

Well described, don't you think?

But why should the amount of time spent making an object be a good test of the value of art? "A finely wrought laughing head in jesmonite" sounds perfectly awful. Oh, oh, but it's jesmonite. And it's finely wrought. I haven't seen this acrylic resin laughing head, but it sounds rather stunningly bad, monumentally ill-advised, and exquisitely awful. I'm guessing the Royal Academy got it right when they rejected that.

But they fell for the plinth. Hey, unlike the oversized noggin, it was made of a traditional material: stone.

[T]he Royal Academy's exaltation of that plinth recalls many a misapprehension in galleries, where visitors are wont to coo over the fire hydrants, ventilation grates and trash cans, all of which are more durably and fastidiously crafted than the works on display. For that matter, one gift that contemporary art seems to have given us viewers is a way of seeing every object in our surround--as I look about my study now, the powerful yet precarious piles of paperbacks, the airy, ephemeral flutter of bank statements--as art. But in that event, we not only don't need commentators; we don't need artists, do we?

Ah, so there's my question. Did we need a novelist to tsk over the Royal Academy's gaffe, or was the story already too complete in itself? Well, go read the whole thing. I think Shriver performed a nice riff -- enough to make me pick up her novel and give it a glance the next time I'm in a bookstore.

***

And let me just add that I love the internet. Writing this post, I decided to make a very perfunctory attempt to find a link for the old story about the janitor who threw out the art. I googled "janitor throws out art," and the top hit was exactly the story I wanted, in precisely the best form: the BBC.com report of the incident (which took place in London):

The bag filled with discarded paper and cardboard was part of a work by Gustav Metzger, said to demonstrate the "finite existence" of art.

It was thrown away by a cleaner at the London gallery, which subsequently retrieved the damaged bag.

The 78-year-old artist replaced it with a new bag. The gallery would not reveal whether he would be compensated.

Hmmm.... I see that this happened back in August 2004. I was blogging then. So did I blog about it (or did that fall afoul or my too-obvious rule)? I search my blog. No, I skipped it at the time, but I mention it here, after a commenter prompts me, in an update to a post about... a plinth!

"The Rove Must Resign blog swarm is gathering momentum quickly."

I was just trying to get a picture of the blog swarm around Karl Rove. Googling, I found this, from the Swing State Project, from back on June 23, predating the connection of Rove's name to the Plame story. What was happening back then? Rove said something that supposedly "us[ed] September 11th as a political wedge issue." The Hotline Barometer thought this was going to be really big. The Swing State Project enthused: "The Rove Must Resign blog swarm is gathering momentum quickly."

Way back in February, Polipundit wondered "Will a Blog Swarm Follow?" a Little Green Footballs story about the theory that "the fake CBS memos were planted by Karl Rove to discredit Dan Rather, and divert attention from President Bush’s 'draft dodging.'" Since bloggers of the right formed a successful swarm that brought down Rather, it's understandable that the left would want to do a good swarm of its own. How elegant it would have been if the swarm-worthy evidence had come from the fake CBS memos.

Then there was an actual physical "swarm" of people -- WaPo used that word in a headline -- around Rove's house back in March, 2004. Remember that? People were banging on his windows and chanting "Karl Rove ain't got no soul." What was that about? Not Valerie Plame, of course.

What comes first, the evidence warranting swarming, or the person you want to swarm? And how many times can you try to get up a swarm that fails and then believably call for a swarm when some entirely new story breaks? At some point, you're the boy who cried "wolf" -- or should I say the blog-hemisphere that cried "swarm"?

We don't need your code of ethics.

Adam Cohen has a long-winded, flat-footed piece on the NYT editorial page about bloggers and ethics. He wants more rules -- a code -- to bind bloggers to the same ethical standards that bind journalists. Eason Jordan and Dan Rather got into a lot of trouble when they violated the journalistic code of ethics, but their "misdeeds would most likely not have landed them in trouble in the world of bloggers, where few rules apply."

Please. The journalistic code didn't keep Jordan and Rather in line. It was the bloggers, invoking their own standards -- not a code but an evolving culture -- that called them to account. Any bloggers with any kind of high profile will be similarly called to account if they violate the blogosphere's cultural norms. And Jordan and Rather can take up blogging any minute they want. Our practice is open to anyone who wants to join.

The difference is, there's no pedestal to jump right on top of and have an instant readership as there is when you're hired on by mainstream media. We only have the readership we can attract with the strength of our own writing. We have to build that readership and keep it with constant writing. No one would ever be in a position to invoke a rule and fire us. It's all a matter of whether the readers stay or go. In a sense, we're constantly getting hired and fired in tiny increments as individuals decide whether or not to click to our sites one more time. We're living on the edge. Mainstream journalists can whine and look on with jealousy over the things that bind them and not us, but they've got their pedestal and their paycheck, and we don't. We deserve to be different.

And the great value of the blogosphere is that, in this difference, we are constantly engaged in creating something new. Is that hard for MSM to adapt to, to get a grip on? Good!

UPDATE: Citizen Z gives Cohen the tweak he so richly deserves for claiming that the call for a code of ethics is coming from the blogosphere.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Larry Ribstein has the most pro-code piece I've seen. Mindles H. Dreck says there is no institution -- no Bloggers Guild -- to adopt and enforce a code, so the whole idea makes no sense. Steven Taylor knocks Cohen about corrections: we're much better than MSM at making corrections.

YET MORE: Christine Hurt asks: "What is a 'code of ethics'? Sarbanes-Oxley requires reporting companies to have one posted on their website, and apparently journalists have one, too. The Pink Ladies and the T-Birds had a 'code' in Grease 2."

AND: I love Jeff Jarvis's comprehensive attack (especially the part where he quotes Cohen, interlaced with his own retorts in brackets).

So what do you think: is Cohen reading all the bloggers who are responding to him? Is he enjoying all the linkage?