September 12, 2004
Crippled by history
Belmont Club invokes a brilliant historical analogy to explain the deeper significance of the blogosphere's swarming takedown of CBS News last week.
The CBS attempt to escape the kill zone and regain the offensive on the Bush National Guard story appears to have failed. By clutching the faked documents closer to the center of their story they may have effectively destroyed their own expose.The real catastrophe for CBS is that Killian incident is probably not an isolated setback so much as proof that maneuvers which worked in the past can no longer be attempted with impunity. The equivalent of the longbow had arrived on the media scene. When the longbow was first deployed on the European battlefield, it was obviously a formidable weapon.
But it was long years before it was taken seriously. After all, mounted cavalry was the aristocratic weapon and the longbow that of the despised yeomen, the medieval equivalent of bloggers in their pajamas.
(Read the whole thing.)
At least the French at Agincourt recognized when they were defeated by Henry V's archers. CBS News increasingly resembles something more absurd: the crippled Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Armless, legless, and flailing, he continued to erupt with bravado while the world rode on by him.
