It will be entertaining to watch CBS attempt to wrap itself in the tattered remains of its dignity, after suffering a major blog storm over its pitiful handling of a clumsy forgery. An amusing sidenote will be to see whether Dan Rather will keep his job over this.

But perhaps more importantly, there is an in-depth tutorial going on (if you have enough clue to notice) in what not to do if you’re trying to create a believable forgery. And what that means is that the next one will be better: higher quality as a forgery, not as an ethical pursuit.

Of course, after the flame has burned out on this one, one might hope that the major media folks wouldn’t touch another one.

But then, you never know. We are dealing with a level of sky-is-falling panic on the part of the left that is without any precedent that I’m aware of. To a number of people in this country, the re-election of George W. Bush as president is something on the order of the Apocalypse.

Not in a Johnny Depp, move-to-Paris sort of way, but in an all-out we’re-all-gonna-die-so-might-as-well-try-anything wild-eyed frantic and violent desperation sort of way. The wounded, rabid, cornered animal sort of way. And it’s going to get worse – probably much worse – before November rolls around.

As Ed Gillespie said in this Chairman’s memo,

So brace yourselves. Any mention of John Kerry’s votes for higher taxes and against vital weapons programs will be met with the worst kind of personal attacks.

The hatred for George W. Bush is simply astonishing. It makes you wonder what sort of people could work up a frothing hatred so profound against a man that they claim to think is on the mental level of a child. The vitriol against him is agonized, the oozing pus of some kind of psychological wounds that it’s hard for me to fathom. I’m convinced that a lot of Bush-haters don’t enjoy bashing Bush, but are in intense emotional pain and turmoil over his very existence.

This is not a healthy thing. And it doesn’t lead to very healthy actions. It would be nice if we could seriously hope that a bit of forgery is the bottom of the barrel. But I fear that it’s the first layer of slime on the top, and the stench will just get worse before the Desperate Left has plumbed fully the depths of its capacity for dirty tricks.

UPDATE: Some related thoughts from Todd Gitlin.