Dan Blather was on Real Time tonight with Bill Maher. I took all the Maalox I could prior to watching it, but transcribing part of his intervew almost negated the purpose of that. I could only get through this small portion. In this interview, Maher compared Rather to Babe Ruth, and Rather says that his separation from CBS was a “puzzling time” for him. What? How can you say, if you are a true journalist, that you’re puzzled why you would have to leave a news organization for fabricating a false story? Geez-o-Petes!

Bill then started to light in to Fox News (natch), and the conversation turned into Conspiracy 101. Bill was referring to something he read on his “friend’s” blog, Huffington Post:

Bill: From Fox News, an internal memo: “Be on the lookout for any statements from the Iraqi insurgents thrilled at the prospect of a Democratic-controlled Congress.” That strikes me as the opposite of journalism, as looking for the end of the story before you find what the real truth is.

Dan: Well, I think it’s fair to say, Bill – in fact I know it is – that Fox News operates in at least a somewhat different way than every other news organization that I know. They have their talking points, in which somebody in the hierarchy, whether it’s Roger Ailes who runs the place or not; we know they get talking points from the White House. They can say ‘well, we don’t always take those talking points.’ But I can say that it’s pretty clear that they had wished the election had gone another way, and they sought to position their programming which would raise as many questions about it as possible. They may consider that unfair, but I think that’s, by any reasonable objectivity, what they were after; that they wanted to frame the news in a certain way, actually before the news happened. That’s not a crime, that’s not an indictable offense. This is America, they can do what they want to do, but I think that’s the perspective through which one should view it.

Bill: But isn’t the Fourth Estate supposed to be adversarial to the people in power, rather than serving their needs? You saw that show “Path to 9/11,” I think, that ABC ran.

Dan: Well that, speaking of puzzles, that was pretty mysterious of how that came to be and how they handled it. But questioning power and being skeptical of power, whether it’s Democrat, Republican, mudwhamp or what have you, is my kind of journalism. American journalism is wide and deep, and there are a lot of different opinions on how it should be handled, but ideally I haven’t always done this. I can be subjected to criticism myself, on this score, but journalism needs guts, or to the metaphoric, needs “spine.”

Spine, Mr. Rather? Spine is when you admit you screwed up and had your producers make up a story to slam the President just weeks prior to an election. And you are “puzzled” why you had to leave CBS? Somebody with gray hair seriously needs a reality check. Will I be watching Rather on HDNews? Don’t think so. I already have the Sci-Fi Channel for that kind of nonsense.

This is real Twilight Zone times, folks… very scary.

Watch the unbelievable worship-at-the-alter-of-Dan-Rather here.