DRUDGE REPORT FLASH

CRONKITE: KARL ROVE BEHIND BIN LADEN TAPE?: "Former CBSNEWS anchorman Walter Cronkite believes Bush adviser Karl Rove is possibly behind the new Bin Laden tape."

You know, Drudge gets some things wrong and some things right. There was the John Kerry scandal thing that backfired so spectacularly earlier this year. This one.... I dunno.

I remember back in the 80s I went through a fairly long period of taking no news at face value. Every major story seemed to have a degree of "presentation" to it, of an element of "I told you so" in every comment from the government of the time. I became an enormous skeptic during that period. The problem is, after a while it becomes very difficult to maintain a reality that chimes with everybody else. I'm not entirely sure what I'm saying here, except that I empathise with the politically committed of either colour in the United States. That's not to say I endorse views: I just remember how I felt reading news and ending up as my own spin doctor.

And, as a kind of companion piece to the above, I bring you the inevitable "it's a fake" page. And you know, they could be right.