INDEED:

If CBS were a car company, Rather would be universally condemned as a business and moral failure, one who broke faith with his colleagues, his customers, and his shareholders. Fortunately for Rather, CBS is a media organization. So he will exit the scene hailed as an American legend and a hero for our time.

But nobody’s fooled.

MORE PROBLEMS FOR KOFI ANNAN:

Staff representatives adopted a resolution yesterday criticising senior management after a string of clashes during the past year with their bosses at UN headquarters. The rebellion is an embarrassment for Mr Annan, and comes as he faces intense criticism for corruption in the UN’s “Oil-for-Food” programme in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

The UN chief suffered another blow yesterday when he was forced to admit that civilian and peacekeeping personnel on UN duty in Congo had committed acts of gross misconduct.

Officials plan to make public on Monday the lurid results of their investigation into UN officials having sex with under-age local girls.

Oxblog’s Patrick Belton notes that this is part of an overall crisis of moral legitimacy at the U.N., brought about by a mixture of corruption, dishonesty, and anti-democratic behavior.

We need Vaclav Havel!

UPDATE: The Havel juggernaut is starting to roll!

“CHARLIE’S ANGELS” IN IRAQ: Lileks will be pleased that there’s a Fargo connection.

JOHN PODHORETZ: “Oliver Stone’s Alexander, which opens today, isn’t just bad. It’s Springtime for Hitler bad. I haven’t guffawed this hard since I saw Airplane for the first time 24 years ago. This is one of the colossal catastrophes of all time.”

Maybe it’ll be a sleeper hit — a Plan 9 for the 21st Century! Followed by an Oliver Stone biopic starring Johnny Depp!

IT’S NOT PLAGIARISM — they’re “managed books:” “Managed books, Professor Gardner said, are a recent phenomenon in which some academics rely on assistants to help them produce books, in some cases allowing the assistants to write first drafts.”

I don’t think that’s good.

PEACEFUL GUIDANCE IN A WORLD OF WAR: Austin Bay has a Thanksgiving column up:

The old saw that there are no atheists in a foxhole isn’t quite true. I’ve known two or three. These men were fine, reliable soldiers. One fellow in particular had a distinct, visceral disdain for religious faith, but all were thankful when a patrol or convoy returned to base with no one killed or wounded. Instead of thanking God or even thanking goodness, they chalked it up as “a good mission.”

For me, a good mission was great, but merely noting the success was never quite good enough.

Read the whole thing.

HERE’S ANOTHER BLOG reporting on Ukrainian events.

DAN KENNEDY:

You might think that basing a high-profile investigative report on phony documents would be a once-in-a-career event – mainly because afterwards you wouldn’t have a career to go back to. But it turns out that the fiasco over George W. Bush’s National Guard documents was not the first time Dan Rather had treaded into such troubled waters.

Read the whole thing.

DONALD SENSING has a very nice Thanksgiving photo essay.

UKRAINE UPDATE: “Europe Mumbles, Poland Shouts.”

Here’s a roundup of what happened overnight.

UPDATE: Here’s a new portal site devoted to Ukrainian democracy.

THE IDEA OF REPLACING KOFI ANNAN WITH VACLAV HAVEL seems to be picking up support: “This is a great, wonderful, humane, inspired idea.”

MARK WHITTINGTON looks at space policy in the Bush Administration — and likes it much better than space policy in the previous Bush Administration.

KARL ROVE’S PAYBACKS? Hollywood stars dis Bush, and now they’re being replaced by robots: Coincidence?

THE FINAL WORD ON RATHERGATE, I think, is found in this statement from Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) on Wolf Blitzer’s CNN program: “The media certainly is not in our hands any longer.”

Indeed.

THE TRANSATLANTIC INTELLIGENCER has much more on the Ivory Coast shooting incident involving French troops. “It does not require a very elaborate demonstration to be able to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that if it were not the French, but rather the American military that was caught on videotape firing into a crowd of civilians, it would be all over the airwaves 24/7.”

Read the whole thing.

BAGHDAD SHOEBLOGGING: Hmm. I think this might be a covert blog-op by these two.

HERE’S VACLAV HAVEL’S STATEMENT on the Ukrainian elections.

And here are more blog photos from Kiev.

UPDATE: Dan McLaughlin writes: “Is there any way to get Havel to come out of retirement to succeed Kofi Annan as head of the UN, please? I mean, if ever there were a guy with the guts and moral clarity to insist that the UN live up to its ideals, it’s Havel.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: The more I think about it, the more I like the Havel-for-S.G. idea. Here’s something Havel wrote recently in the Miami Herald:

Let’s not allow ourselves to be manipulated into believing that attempts to change the established order and objective laws do not make sense. Let’s try to build a global civil society that insist that politics is not just a technology of power, but must have a moral dimension.

At the same time, politicians in democratic countries need to think seriously about reforms of international institutions to make them capable of real global governance. We could start, for example, with the United Nations, which, in its current form, is a relic of the situation shortly after World War II. It does not reflect the influence of some new regional powers, while immorally equating countries whose representatives are democratically elected and those whose representatives speak only for themselves or their juntas, at best.

We Europeans have one specific task. Industrial civilization, which now spans the whole world, originated in Europe. All of its miracles, as well as its terrifying contradictions, can be explained as consequences of an ethos that is initially European. Therefore, unifying Europe should set an example for the rest of the world regarding how to face the various dangers and horrors that are engulfing us today.

Indeed, such a task, which is closely tied to the success of European integration, would be an authentic fulfillment of the European sense of global responsibility. And it would be a much-better strategy than cheaply blaming America for the contemporary world’s various problems.

He’s got my vote.

MORE: Perhaps it’s not too late for Democrats to take Russ Smith’s advice and push this idea:

In retrospect, John Kerry could have picked off hundreds of thousands of votes—maybe in Ohio!—from lukewarm Bush supporters if he’d demanded, perhaps at his Boston convention, that Kofi Annan resign as secretary general of the United Nations. It’s not a hard case to make, given the corruption Annan has shoved under the Persian rug in his well-appointed digs, but Kerry, afraid of alienating the world community, kept mum. So did Bush, for that matter, but he already had the upper hand on foreign policy. A smart Kerry adviser would’ve counseled the candidate to angrily tell his far-left supporters to leave the “No Blood for Oil!” posters at home and replace them with the words “No Food for Oil.”

The Wall Street Journal’s Claudia Rosett has been dogged on this issue, calling the scandal (Nov. 17) “the biggest fraud in the history of humanitarian relief,” and it’s only now that attention is being paid to the hearings led by GOP Sen. Norm Coleman and Rep. Henry Hyde, that will likely, even at a glacial pace, cause Annan to retire in disgrace before his term is up. His departure can’t come too soon: As the Chicago Tribune editorialized on Nov. 21, Annan was quick to call the U.S. invasion of Iraq “illegal,” and condemn the assault on Fallujah, but on the subject of Saddam Hussein funneling billions of dollars intended for humanitarian aid but instead diverted to his military and construction of palaces, the U.N. leader, who increasingly makes Al Sharpton look virtuous, looked the other way.

Kofi out, Havel in. It’s an idea whose time has come.

THE NEW Seinfeld DVD set is out. I was going to buy it, but then I looked at the several unwatched DVDs on the shelf already and decided to wait. I wish I could order up some free evenings as easily as I can order DVDs . . .

CLAY CALHOUN is posting messages from former Congressman Bob Schaffer, who has been in Ukraine as an election observer.

UPDATE: Schaffer reports here, too.

ANOTHER UPDATE: TulipGirl has more reports.

JOHAN NORBERG:

Right now in the freezing cold, almost 100 000 Ukranians are protesting against the stolen election in central Kiev, and a huge demonstration has also started in the city of Lviv. The municipal councils in both cities have said they only take orders from the liberal presidential candidate Yushchenko, the real winner of the election. At the same time, security forces have said that they are ready to put down the protests “quickly and firmly”.

Where are the concerned European politicians who should condemn the fraud, and who could be with these crowds to show their support? And where are the “human shields”? A lot of young westerners were willing to risk their lives to stop the war on Iraq. Aren’t they willing to risk some discomfort to stop one of Europe’s biggest countries from slipping back to dictatorship?

Not obviously. (Loads more Ukraine links here at this Ukrainian English news portal site.)

UPDATE: A Fistful of Euros is gathering reports of protests at Ukrainian embassies by Ukrainian expats.

PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE: Hard on Tom Delay, and on Tom Delay’s accusers.

THERE’S A WHITE HOUSE STATEMENT on the Ukraine elections:

The United States is deeply disturbed by extensive and credible indications of fraud committed in the Ukrainian presidential election. We strongly support efforts to review the conduct of the election and urge Ukrainian authorities not to certify results until investigations of organized fraud are resolved. We call on the Government of Ukraine to respect the will of the Ukrainian people, and we urge all Ukrainians to resolve the situation through peaceful means. The Government bears a special responsibility not to use or incite violence, and to allow free media to report accurately on the situation without intimidation or coercion. The United States stands with the Ukrainian people in this difficult time.

Stay tuned.

READERS MAY REMEMBER New York Times reporter Chris Hedges for having been booed off the stage when he delivered an anti-American commencement speech last year. Now he’s found a friendlier venue — the Association of Opinion Page Editors, for delivering remarks like this:

We’re absolutely reviled around the world, as we should be.

And, no, he wasn’t talking about the American press after Jayson Blair, Eason Jordan, and RatherGate.

THERE’S ANOTHER short Web-video film over at Amazon, this one starring Blair Underwood. They’re putting a lot of money and effort into these, I think. That’s good, because I think they’re one of the few organizations with the resources to make a difference with this stuff.

PEJMAN YOUSEFZADEH (now back at his regular site) observes: “I won’t cry for Rather. He still gets to work–ironically enough–on 60 Minutes, and he has more money than he knows what to do with. Shed a tear, however, for the cause of responsible journalism–which has suffered so mightily thanks to the lack of professionalism displayed by people like Dan Rather, and hope that there may be some kind of revival of standards in the near future–especially with blogs keeping the media’s feet to the fire.”