I caught Mary Mapes on the Neal Cavuto Show last night and this is one angry woman. She was out there flogging her new book – Truth and Duty: the Press, the President and the Privilege of Power – which I noticed is at #536 on Amazon, although that’s already down from #475 yesterday. It’s hard to believe anybody is actually buying this thing, unless it’s as a practical joke for friends, but evidently they are. A few anyway. Ms. Mapes still insists the Rather/National Guard forgery was not proven. I guess she means in the sense that OJ was not convicted or, more exactly, no bomb ever fell on Hiroshima.
Still Mapes was out there in denial mode, blaming “conservative bloggers” through clenched teeth. Her body language was rigid and hostile. I imagined she was giving her publicist at St. Martin’s Press nightmares. You wouldn’t want to spend five minutes with this woman, let alone alone the time it would take to read
384 pages. Still, they had to put her out there to earn back her advance. My prediction is that’s not going to happen anyway, but I admire Mapes for trying. If I had done what she had, I wouldn’t have the courage to show my face in public again. [You're always looking for an excuse to move to San Miguel de Allende.-ed. That would have been it.]





PJM Home




Pajamas Media appreciates your comments that abide by the following guidelines:
1. Avoid profanities or foul language unless it is contained in a necessary quote or is relevant to the comment.
2. Stay on topic.
3. Disagree, but avoid ad hominem attacks.
4. Threats are treated seriously and reported to law enforcement.
5. Spam and advertising are not permitted in the comments area.
The clause regarding "hate speech" has been deleted because readers criticized it as being too loosely defined. We agreed.
These guidelines are very general and cannot cover every possible situation. Please don't assume that Pajamas Media management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment. We reserve the right to filter or delete comments or to deny posting privileges entirely at our discretion. If you feel your comment was filtered inappropriately, please email us at story@pajamasmedia.com.
23 Comments
1. heather:What is completely astounding is the Lies that these people are willing to spread.
This Mapes woman has lost her mind. And that is the truth of it. But then, why are we seeing glamo pix of the Wilson-Plame couple?? In VANITY FAIR, which costs MILLIONS OF AMERICAN DOLLARS to produce very month?
Why does Seymour Hersh continue to publish his “articles” in the NEW YORKER?
We really need an alternative, one that will really balance the outrageous LIES that are being propounded by the “MSM’: and I truly hope that the Pajamas Media makes such a mark.
Have your seen the cover of Harper’s??? All about the end of America’s Honour”" Honestly this is a crazy house we are looking at….
Nov 12, 2005 - 7:22 pm 2. quickrob:She serves her purpose: another useful idiot.
Nov 12, 2005 - 7:25 pm 3. Ed Poinsett:Mary is holding back her secret weapon. Like Kerry, she has a plan. She’ll produce Lucy Ramirez and the original 1972 documents. Er…um… you mean there is no Lucy Ramirez and there are no original 1972 documents?
Nov 12, 2005 - 11:38 pm 4. Terrye:I have to agree with heather.
The tone deafness and outright pathology of people like Mapes is astounding.
They preach incessantly about things like honor and truth and yet when did they ever display these traits themselves?
As for Harpers..who reads that?
The audience gets smaller and smaller but in the process they leave behind more and more disillusioned and detached people.
Nov 13, 2005 - 4:17 am 5. syn:Mary Mapes is experiencing Big Brother nervous breakdown.
Nov 13, 2005 - 4:26 am 6. HA:With Wilson and now Mapes, it is becoming a sure bet that books with the word “truth” in the title betray it in the contents.
Nov 13, 2005 - 5:03 am 7. Richard Nieporent:Roger, I don’t really think she is trying to convince anyone. Rather (pun intended) she is trying to get the word out to the true believers. You don’t have to sell a book to everyone to make a profit. After all there are 59,000,000 potential buyers of her book.
Nov 13, 2005 - 5:13 am 8. moneyrunner:“…it is becoming a sure bet that books with the word “truth” in the title betray it in the contents.”
Hah! Just as countires that are named “People’s Republics” are not.
Nov 13, 2005 - 5:33 am 9. tefta:There must be a fund set up to purchase these lefty books so the author makes a couple of bucks and the liberal position isn’t humiliated. It’s just a way of laundering money.
Nov 13, 2005 - 6:15 am 10. triticale:I finally checked out the “Mother’s Day” smoking gun, and it was only a wisp. It wasn’t that he failed to show up for a medical exam on a day TANG wouldn’t have given one, merely that he was ordered to report for scheduling no later than a day no scheduling would have been done. This could be brushed off as minor error.
There is, however, no denying that the “CYA” memo as posted by CBS was created in MS Word.
Nov 13, 2005 - 6:27 am 11. Silicon valley Jim:It’s hard to believe anybody is actually buying this thing
I think, rather, that it is hard to believe that anybody who believes in objective truth is buying it. I think that Richard Nieporent has it right; there were 59 million people who voted for John Kerry, who is either a pathological liar or delusional (having an experience SEARED into his memory of being in Cambodia when Nixon was President, although Nixon wasn’t President on the date in question, Kerry was clearly hundreds of miles away, there is no evidence that Kerry was ever in Cambodia, etc., not to mention all the other occurrences).
Nov 13, 2005 - 7:12 am 12. exguru:With just a fraction of the effort CBS and Mary have expended on this since 2004, they could have exposed the forger by now. That should be the question bothering everyone: Who dunnit? Prime suspects would be Mary Mapes and Joe Lockwood, or their allies. Will somebody talk some day? The forgery M.O. brings to mind a certain medal citation which former Navy Secretary John Lehman says he never signed.
Nov 13, 2005 - 7:38 am 13. Fenrisulven:“It’s hard to believe anybody is actually buying this thing, unless it’s as a practical joke for friends”
Her ignorance & arrogance is amusing. And also incredible. To think that this woman’s peers consider her “brilliant”… She still has no concept of the arguments or forces that drove her out of CBS.
So Yes. I’m from Free Republic, many of us are buying it as a souvenir from the day the MSM monopoly came down. I’m placing it next to a brick from the Berlin Wall.
Nov 13, 2005 - 7:41 am 14. brian:tefta is not too far off. former speaker of the house wrote an idiotic book that was required reading for union members. a great way to funnel money to wright by them buying his book.
Nov 13, 2005 - 7:50 am 15. brian:sorry, i should have previewed my post. jim wright was the speaker of the house.
Nov 13, 2005 - 7:51 am 16. Old Dad:Mapes seems to suffer from a toxic combination of mental illness and bitter cynicism.
And now for some wishful thinking–there can’t possibly be 59,000,000 Americans like her.
Nov 13, 2005 - 8:11 am 17. maria horvath:Chris Muir, as usual, has a great take on this:
http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/cartoons/11-12-2005.gif
Nov 13, 2005 - 8:33 am 18. Bill M:As of 10:15 AM, Pacific Time, 13 Nov, it was #723 on amazon.com.
Someone at St Martin’s Press is in big trouble!
Nov 13, 2005 - 10:17 am 19. Mark_Belt:I tuned in to CNN’s Reliable Sources to see what I believed would be an exchange between Mary Mapes and Scott Johnson of Powerline. Instead, Howard Kurtz gave the first two segments to Mapes. Then in the third segment, He brought on Scott Johnson AND Eric Boehlert of Huffington’s Post. CNN’s idea of fairness: two against one.
Nov 13, 2005 - 10:50 am 20. Curmudgeon:I’m placing it next to a brick from the Berlin Wall.
You’ll need another copy to place along side OJ’s tome.
Nov 13, 2005 - 4:32 pm 21. Neo:I suppose she believes this story too.
Nov 13, 2005 - 6:31 pm 22. The Malcontent:I offered some friendly advice to Mapes here:
http://malcontent.typepad.com/malcontent/2005/11/mary_mapes_gets.html
Nov 15, 2005 - 11:57 am 23. ForNow:Over the years I watched quite a few Dan Rather reports and tended to largely believe them, including his reports some years ago about WMD-guarding problems in Russia.
Now I don’t know what to think about all that stuff. But Dan Rather’s CBS News propaganda cult still delenda est.
If a judge or prosecutor is convicted of doing something rotten in judging or prosecuting, then their old cases get questioned.
What about all the reports done by Dan Rather and Mary Mapes? Why has CBS failed to set up an investigation of previous reports? Instead of trying to clean up their record, they just want people to forget it.
Nov 15, 2005 - 4:55 pm