I have used typewriters. In 1972, when I was five years old, I used to bang on my dad’s old Underwood, use up the ribbon and get him all ticked off.
As much as I need to see George Bush run out of Washington on a rail, the recent case of CBS news producing this document and claiming that it was created in 1972, and therefore on a typewriter should never sway anybody’s opinion about the president’s military service. The document is a fraud. Shame on CBS news executives, editors and reporters for not resigning en masse over being duped so easily.
Even though it was enough to trick CBS News, this document is not even a skillful forgery. One look at the typeface is all it takes. Back in “the day” typewriters overwhelmingly used one of two basic typefaces, “pica” and “elite.” The one used in this document is neither. It looks instead like the font named Times New Roman, which is the default serif font used by Microsoft Word.
1972 had Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, Spiro Agnew, and other legendary Republican criminals walking the earth. It did not yet have Bill Gates.
I’m getting older and everybody’s getting dumber.
