Daddy, who was Mary Mapes?

How to Get a Head in Journalism

Mary Mapes, who lost her job at "60 Minutes" for relying on fraudulent documents in an inept hit piece against President Bush last year, is back in the news, flogging a book. ABC News reports:

Mapes maintains that her controversial "60 Minutes II" story on President Bush's National Guard service was "true" and that "no one has proved that the documents were not authentic." . . .

In her interview with ABC News chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross, to be broadcast Wednesday morning on "Good Morning America," Mapes says she is unrepentant about her role. "I don't think I committed bad journalism. I really don't," she says. . . .

Mapes rejects suggestions she had political motives. "I did not have it in for George Bush," she said.

Mapes also criticizes other reporters for spending too much time on her story and other flawed journalism. "I think the media's had more fun beating itself up in the last five years than it has asking hard questions of the administration or government officials, and I think that's wrong," she said.

The Washington Post has this astonishing quote from Mapes:

"I was extremely battered," she said in an interview yesterday. "I'd had months and months of having my head kicked around a soccer stadium by much of the Western world. I needed some time to regroup."

Are we crazy for thinking this assertion sounds suspicious? Note her vague language: "months and months," "much of the Western world." If even 1% of the Western world was involved in this, how come it's the first we've heard of it? How come she doesn't name the soccer stadium where this supposedly took place? Furthermore, the ABC Web site has a photo of Mapes that appears to have been taken this week, in which her head is attached to her body. This would make it awkward, if not physically impossible, to kick it around a soccer stadium.

Now, it could be that Mapes's head isn't really attached to her body and the ABC photo was doctored, perhaps by the same creative genius who came up with those memos. But here's another possibility: Perhaps when Mapes says much of the Western world kicked her head around a soccer stadium for months and months, she is guilty of stretching the truth. And isn't that what got her into trouble in the first place?
(Thanks to Best of the Web Today for the heads up.)