Letters to the Editor
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The letters weren't moved around.
They likely were simply typed in MS Word, printed, and then faxed. The faxing process introduced distortions and blurring.
When you retype the documents in MS Word, the letters line up above and below, exactly as they do in the disputed documents. Try it. Some of the documents have a centered headings: the letters above and below still line up. Try that, too.
With a different font, the letters won't line up. They won't line up using differnt fonts in MS Word--you have to use Times New Roman. And they very probably won't line using the famous IMB Selectric Composer, because the fonts are different. MS created its own version of Times New Roman.
But if anyone could show me documents from the 70s that also line up in MS Word using the default settings, I will be convinced that the documents could be real. However no one has done this to my knowledge.
Btw, it is extremely easy to make minute adjustments to letters in MS Word, so the poster below who claims to be an 'expert' is the one who doesn't know what he is talking about.
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How to adjust letter spacing to the 'nth' degree in MS Word (Office 2000)
Select text, go to "Format/Font/Character Spacing." Adjust letter spacing, position, and kerning as much as you like.
But you don't have to do any of this to recreate the disputed documents. You can just type it and the letters will line up.
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the IBM Composer
Gang, I'm old enough that my first post-college job had me laying out a small trade newsletter with text I "typeset" on an IBM Composer (though the person who trained me called it the "compositor"). Typed in the text, printed out proportional-font, right-justified columns (with sub- and supertexts as needed--it required changing the Selectric-style ball out and back again, which the machine knew to stop for; more commonly I had to swap font balls back and forth for italics). Cut out the columns and pasted up the pages using a light board, hot wax, and a roller, and sent it to the printer to photoengrave the plates and print the newsletter, but that's just because it was a newsletter.
Because I also printed out some pretty darn fancy-looking regular old letters with the thing. Didn't take much longer than just typing them and the bosses loved that print-style look. Justified what they'd spent on the Composer.
This was 1980. The company had had the machine for years. Per this link, IBM introduced its first Composer in 1966.
http://www.mallasch.com/journalism/article.php?sid=1480
They were spendy, but if you had the budget and you wanted the pretty, you had one. The output looked pretty much EXACTLY like CBS's memos.
But a couple of people saying "I think it looks like a Word document" keeps trumping everyone who says we used to do it with stone knives and bearskins. But--we did. You could do things with that primitive, expensive, but perfectly mainstream equipment. (And in my high-school job I sold Imsais and Altairs! I remember the thrill when we first got the 64K expansion boards! Damn I'm old!)
AND all of this is a ridiculous diversion from the merits of the Bush National Guard story, which is sourced up the wazoo. I'm amazed at the right-wing blogosphere's ability to derail stories by saying "Hey, somebody said she had blue eyes, not brown, so you better stop reporting I had an affair with her." Because that's pretty much how this went, and now we're recapitulating it in this letter column.
I'd love to see a trial that laid out in public all the source material they had for this story. Bush has done so much worse than skip out on Guard duty by now, but, still. The way CBS dumped this story out of sheer--cowardice?--pandering?--remains disgraceful.
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See the Greg Palast BBC on YouTube
Here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=gyFdZqWDn3c
Stop the typewriter bullshit and see the original BBC report.
peace,
st john
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I found a very discussion here of what I'm talking about:
With illustrations:
http://theshapeofdays.com/2004/09/10/the-ibm-selectric-composer.html
The REALLY hard thing to do isn't the superscript, it's the perfectly centered headings. Remember, this is in proportional fonts, so you can't simply count letters as you do with a monospaced typewriter.
And btw the only way to think about any of this is to FORGET THE POLITICS. Reality doesn't have a polticial bias.
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as a Brit I don't really know what the true merits of Rather...
as a journalist or anchor, are. I support him in his aims though. I hope this proves to be some kind of turning point.
On another note...you take a look at the republicans especially over the last 30 years and you have to laugh, at what miserable sonofabitches they are...they try to hard to fight dirty, to squash every rumour [even when it purports to the truth] to spread vicious lies about people, they must be in the grip of some mass psychosis. and what for in the end?
for the most unedifying example of presidential leadership in Bush...and for a collapse of America's standing in the world, not to mention a collapse in the dollar and a coming economic crash. It's not a pretty sight, and yet they plotted and schemed for this for 30 years.
They are like Bush jnr himself, people with little competence and low self esteem struggling mightily to gain the approval of their daddies...[the corporations] and the American people caught in the middle of this, form one large dysfunctional family, albeit with a few sane members...
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how about Moonves
What do you think Moonves will have to say as Personality of the Year at the world´s largest tv market, the Mipcom in Cannes (Oct 10-13)? We will find out hearing his
keynote address on Monday. On Wednesday Moonves will give a press conference no doubt assured by the market´s organizer the Reed Midem that this will embarrass noone or it would not be arranged.
As it is I will be there and I have read Blumenthal.
You bet.
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Ok. One more time:
1) I am an evil political operative
2) There is a real story about my guy about how he dodged the ANG during the Vietnam war.
3) Hmm. How do I destroy that story?
4) Oh yeah, feed the press a patently bogus letter that supports the very real story, perhaps even reproducing a letter that I once had possession of, but had destroyed
5) When that letter comes to light, suddenly, within two hours, all my minions are miracle font experts, as though any of those troglodytes would have given a crap about words'n'shit otherwise.
6) Profit!
C'mon. The letter was a poison pill. The story is true. The letter likely once DID exist in good old Selectric script.
Go Dan go. Somewhere, someone knows something. Find it.
But next time? DO YOUR GODDAMNED HOMEWORK.