Posted on 11/23/2004 11:05:03 PM PST by nickcarraway
So Dan would rather not anymore, and, really, who could blame him? Lately he had been feeling like a cockatoo on a cactus, anyway. Once you lose the hankerin' for anchorin', it's hard to keep showin' up every day. To make it work, you have to come in each morning with the passion of a fruit fly in a manure factory. Nope, the fire in the belly is gone. Time for new horizons, new adventures, like an orangutan in a bowling alley. Meet folks you haven't met afore.
Oh, he could linger if he wished. He could leave his anchor aweigh in the inertia of dotage. He could sag at the desk with yellowing calendar leaves wilting on the studio wall. Even if too old to ponder, you're never too old to be ponderous. He could sit there until he's a joke, until he's an old joke, until he's an off-color joke, until he's a joke where we forgot the punch line. But he faced reality like a hamster in a beehive. He tendered his resignation with resignation.
Now let's not worry about Dan as an individual. He'll be well taken care of in the Liberal Retirement System which includes a large margarine bar of flattery slathered on a crispy baguette of confiscatory lecture fees. Let us examine rather the implications for the larger culture. Concerning that, two points.
Number one, even if Dan was planning to do this anyway, the perception will remain that it was catalyzed by a single event, that he was turned away at the Guard Gate. His career may have had no more peaks and valleys than the average, but the battle most remembered will be the one at Valley Forge. The fact is that the last impression will be the strongest, and people will have the sense that he left in disgrace.
Whether or not that is accurate or whether it is fair to Rather, one very valuable side effect will be the solidification of the lesson of the forged National Guard documents. Reporters everywhere, journalists, pundits, golden-haired cubs and silver-haired veterans, will internalize this in a profound way.
The whole left-wing (or "sinister," which means the same thing) news world that was birthed by Cronkite and his ilk have been driving their coverage with a license for an entire generation. The news is their baby and they get to give it a name.
You see, news as it happens is an unfinished product in their eyes, a crude representation of reality. It's their job to trim it and prune it, to prime it and paint it, to buff it and puff it and fluff it, to brown it and crown it, to tan it and fan it, to hold it and mold it, to shape it and scrape it, to tamp it and stamp it, to dress it and press it.
The only sort-of limit had been: don't make it and fake it. Old Dan, desperate for relevance like a cockroach in a junkyard, crossed this line, whether through stupidity or malice. Now the whole enterprise is threatened. He is an establishment figure that cannot be dismissed and marginalized; he is no Janet Cooke or Stephen Glass or Jayson Blair.
Hopefully, some intimidation factor will be achieved, some deterrent value, some reigniting of the age-old principle of "Truth or Consequences." The next time Mary Mapes calls to report that she has an eyewitness placing George W. Bush on the grassy knoll in Dallas in 1963, perhaps they'll just let the answering machine pick up.
The second point worth considering is the fact that all this has transpired concurrently with the rise of new media, from talk radio all the way to the intrepid men in flannel building a bonfire with their blogs. Perhaps this confluence will serve to inspire a new generation of intrepid reporters of the Right, or at least the non-Left. Is it too much to hope that the corrupt path blazed by Walter Cronkite distorting the Tet Offensive, having gone around, will now come around?
Are we being unduly optimistic in noting that this setback for CBS is actually a window of opportunity, a chance to redefine the nature of the TV news report? Call me a fool or a naïf, but even Pollyanna wants a crack at it sometimes.
It would be a brilliant decision, a truly inspired one, if CBS replaced Rather with a person who eschews partiality in all its misshapen forms. We could see a brave new world where a plain Joe could go every Friday to get just the facts, ma'am. And CBS could drag other networks along this brave trail toward the truth.
As for me, just the joy of seeing the CBS logo over a head other than Dan's will have me dancing with joy, doing a jig, like a Chihuahua in an alfalfa patch.
Jay D. Homnick is a columnist for JewishWorldReview.
this one really had me a laughin!
When you see the Eye, expect the lie.
Me too, excellent doses of his own medicine.
ditto!
I guess that means we both felt like that "orangutan in a bowling alley"...so glad that we got to see the rooster finally got himself rained on pretty good.
Justice surely comes to those who wait and then it is so much sweeter.
Poor Mr Blather. Suppose he'll survive on Social Security and Medicare.
Where is Jack Kevorkian when you need him?
This guy does Ratherisms better than Rather. He also out Jesses Je$$e.
Not much makes me back away from my keyboard because I am spitting and choking with laughter, but this one did it in spades. The funniest piece I have read in a long, long time.
There is no turning back for Rather - - no possibility for redemption, and no amount of spin that can change anything. Rather will always be, first and foremost, the crooked newsman who tried to corrupt a Presidential election by using forged documents to support a one-sided hit-piece interview with a Kerry fundraiser just weeks before an election. THAT will be Rather's well-deserved epitath. I don't care when the scumbag retires.
By the way, insiders are saying that John Roberts has the inside track for the anchor chair at CBS. In case anybody doesn't know who John Roberts is, he is the reporter who asked Dubya at a news conference if he would "apologize" to the nation and the world for.... I forget....Iraq or something. Doesn't matter. John Roberts is a more brazenly liberal, less charismatic, equally "intelligent" version of Dan Rather.
CBS is done.
Yeh right. All the liberal lying talking heads are calling Rathergate just a mistake, Dan didn't know what he was doing. He was fooled. Bull!
Marvin Kalb and that Kurtz goon were on CNN tonight lying their liberal *sses off about Rather, just framing his memogate thing as "just a mistake -- let's hope his career won't be judged by this one mistake". More BULL!
Try 'The Wall Within' Danno!
Dan Rather began his career as an opportunistic jerk in Dallas on November 22, 1963. He ended as an old lying, ugly ghoul on a network that belongs on the ash heep of history.
Go away, Dan, you're a lying loser.
"When the going gets weird, anchor men punt."
Kick, Dan!
Or as the Klingons say, "Revenge is a dish best served cold."
Check these out....... LOL!
*******
"It's tighter than a prairie dog's butt in a dust bowl!"
"This race is tighter than a face lift on a 50 year old auditioning for 'Dawson's Creek'."
"Tonight we've seen more ups and downs than a Viagra conference."
"It's all about chads. Chads, chads, chads. Chad, chad, bo-bad, banana-fana, fo-fad. Chad."
. "This race is about as hard to call as a deaf hog up a sassafras tree."
"George W. Bush is like a whorehouse pianist -- he can see the prize, but he can't touch it."
"This election is bouncing around like Dolly Parton jumping rope on speed."
"The recount room is locked up tighter than an Iowa trailer park in tornado season."
"This one's tighter than Rush Limbaugh's bike shorts."
*"This one's a crotch-grabber, folks, and I'll bet a handful of nuts it won't be over any time soon."
"Tell grandma to take her teeth out of the glass, this'll be a nail biter."
"This race is stickier than a pine cone enema on a hot night in the bayou."
"This one is working out to be a hum-dinger, only the fat lady ate all the hums and is now eyeing the dingers."
But Roberts is pretty (barf alert).
Let's not forget that it was CBS that broadcast the "memo," purportedly from the Nixon White House, that supposedly detailed every step of how to break in to the office of Ellsberg's shrink.
Ellsberg, please recall, was the leaker of the Pentagon Papers. The burglary of Ellsberg's shrink was said by the press to be for Nixon to smear Ellsberg. The subsequent burglary of the Democratic Party office at the Watergate hotel was supposed to be to coverup the burglary of the office of Ellsberg's shrink.
Which is to say: CBS had already run with a questionable "memo" that brought down a President, in this case Nixon, long before they ran the forged "memos" that were supposed to be of GWB's National Guard service.
One wonders how many perversions of the truth were passed of as legitimate stories in the past 24 years by Rather. There are millions who quoted his pronouncements as the gospel. How much damage he has done will never be known. He violated his own country and countrymen. And now causght he skulks away with his millions obtained by his tongue painting lie after lie. The price of freedom is eternal vigilence. Thanks Buckhead. Thanks Free Republic.
"All glory is fleeting." Patton
Great post.
And it's not only Rather, but Cronkite and Jennings and Brokaw and the New York Times and all the rest of them as well. Rather has tainted (or exposed?) every one of them and never again can the American public accept their news reporting at face value. There will always be a nagging skepticism.
Congratulations, Dan Rather.
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