"The Education of Dan Rather"- Peggy Noonan captures Rather's rise, arrogance and dastardly fall

Opinion Journal ^ | 12-2-04 | Peggy Noonan

[STARWISE]

Excerpt .. balance at link

The Education of Dan Rather

From the golden age of network TV to the end of its hegemony.

Thursday, December 2, 2004 12:01 a.m. EST

Life is complicated, people are complicated, and most of us are a jumble of virtues, flaws and contradictions. I like to try to understand the past, try to put it together in a way that makes sense to me. This can involve judging not only your own actions and decisions but those of others, which can be hard. I have a friend who once said in the middle of a conversation, "Don't understand me too quickly." Don't categorize me; don't decide you broke the code. Sit back and watch; it's more interesting than you may know.

Which gets me to Dan Rather, who was once my boss, and who of course has announced his retirement from the anchor chair at CBS News. Everyone I know is asking me what I think of it. I think a lot of things.

I'm going to use the past tense in speaking of him because I'm speaking of his career, and speaking of when I knew him in the past.

My first thought: It is a hard world. We all know this in the abstract, but it can take you aback in the particular. In public life the entire body of your work--an entire career of almost 50 years--can now essentially be summed up and dismissed by the last headline on your career, which in this case is "Rather Retires Under Cloud After Forged Documents Story." If Dan had retired of his own volition a year ago, that would not be the headline. "Long Career Reflected Stunning Rise of U.S. Media" would be more like it.

[Talking_Mouse]

Uh, make that post #29.

No worries, I knew what you meant.

[Bonaparte]

Noonan is soft-peddling out of misplaced loyalty to a boss who was nice to her. Rather was a crude propagandist for the left. He sold out to jump start a career and soon believed his own propaganda. Enemies of America, whether communist dictators or islamofascists could always count on kid glove treatment from him. Conservatives could always depend on a hatchet job. He spent 25 years lying to his viewers.

[rcocean]

Peggy is a classy lady and her column on Rather and her column made me think - but it's just little too easy on DR.

DR was always a hard left partisan and a bit of joke. His kooky behavior and the partisanship increased over the years until it did him in.

I'll mourn his passing. He was so partisan and kooky he made it impossible for anyone in Middle America to think he was peddling good ol' American news instead of liberal snakeoil, made and bottled in NYC. Cronkite and Brinkley were much dangerous since they had credibililty and when they lied, we believed them.

[STARWISE]

[STARWISE]

With Rich Galen of Mullings.com

[capitan_refugio]

The article is an outstanding read. I urge everybody to follow the link and read the entire story. Thanks for posting it.

[STARWISE]

You're so welcome ;-)

[STARWISE]

Karmic BTTT!!

[I. M. Trenchant]

Linking Rather to the 'Nixon Crucifixion' was timely and justified. If Nixon had had a GOP House and Senate, he'd have served a full two terms and Watergate would never have become part of the language. Ted Kennedy inspired arch-segreagationist Sam Ervin to seek revenge for the Nixon adminstration's having managed to bring about full de-segregation of Southern schools after Ervin's fellow Democra, LBJ, only succeeded in getting 20% of the job done -- and Ervin never ceased to fester over Nixon's success in that area. As the late Stephen Ambrose put it in the final sentence of his trilogy of Nixon biography, the U.S. lost more than it gained when Nixon was forced to resign. Among other things, the Vietnam War would have ended in a Korea-type stalemate between North and South.

[lainde]

She really added perspective to his biography. How he crushed his Texas accent to fit in, the "yellow suit" comment was revealing and surprisingly humanizing. Darn...I just wanted to loath him.

[ThirstyMan]

I think it about it this way. Bush beat Kerry, he beat the democrats in the house and senate, and Bush made Tom Dasshole and Dan Rather lose their jobs.

And that my friend, I agree, is a rather satisfying way to think about it. It was tense but lets enjoy the accomplishments. Let's not forget to look back and savor just how wonderfully Bush fought and most of all, became victorious. Amazing!

[razorback-bert]

Ultimately this is what I think was true about Dan and his career. It's not very nice but I think it is true. He was a young, modestly educated Texas boy from nowhere, with no connections and a humble background. He had great gifts, though: physical strength, attractiveness, ambition, commitment and drive. He wanted to be a star. He was willing to learn and willing to pay his dues. He covered hurricanes and demonstrations, and when they got him to New York they let him know, as only an establishment can, what was the right way to think, the intelligent enlightened way, the Eastern way, the Ivy League way, the Murrow School of Social Justice way. They let him know his simple Texan American assumptions were not so much wrong as not fully thought through, not fully nuanced, not fully appreciative of the multilayered nature of international political realities. He swallowed it whole.

Having lived in NY and associated with such people, I know this to be true. If Dan hadn't changed, he would have been back in Houston reading the news with Marvin Zindler.

[snarks_when_bored]

You wrote:

Thief is to Fence, as Rather is to Forger.

I think you meant to write:

Fence is to Thief, as Rather is to Forger.

[q_an_a]

it is wonderful to read a great writer, they take you to places you may not like, but the ride gives you a reason to enjoy life. Peggy Noonan is in the driver seat again.

Thanks STARWISE for being first to post her article.

[Buckhead]

Fabulous article.

[larryjohnson]

link later

[Kay Syrah]

Peggy Noonan's prose as her thoughts is always clear, kind, elegant and lyrical. I'm not sure that Rather deserves such. But the point remains, Rather was done in by his own ambition, arrogance and meanness. That, regardless of how many flowers he sent was the fatal weakness.

Any also, Rather simply exemplifies what is so wrong about the main stream follow the leader type of thinking. It lacks the nuance of self doubt that all embrace when faced with certain moral clarity. We simply can't claim it for ourselves, cause we know how fallable we are. Dan didn't grasp this.

Most conservatives can at least respect a morally consistent opinion from a lefty, (thinking of Hentoff or Hitchens) while not accepting many of the premises, we can respect that kind of writing. Can't think that Dan could actually do a piece of the sort Peggy did for him, on Nixon. So meanness won Dan, and Peggy is wasting her verbal flowers on him. But life is tough.

[Happy2BMe]

Another one will just take his place.

The Sheeples expect nothing less. They will get nothing more.

[Sal]

Hmmm .. wonder what Mary Mapes is plotting these days.

Making diamonds?

One Freeper's tagline said something like: Give Mary Mapes a chunk of coal, tell her to shove it, two weeks later get a diamond. Wish I could remember which Freeper to give credit.

[shezza]

As I mentioned on the other thread:

Here's how it got done: When I had been doing the show for a few weeks I could see that my work was not good--uneven, without voice, without a clear point of view. I thought I knew the reason. I had become increasingly a political conservative. Dan, it was obvious to me, was a sort of establishment liberal--not a wild leftist and not an ideologue, but whatever smart liberals thought was more or less what he wound up thinking, and saying. I couldn't write his views well, because I didn't buy them and didn't fully understand them. I couldn't write my views, because the show had to reflect his thinking. So I went to him and told him my problem. He was great. He said: On any given issue that we discuss, give the liberal point of view fairly and give the conservative point of view fairly, and then we'll end it with my opinion, because it's my show. I thought that sounded good.

And it worked. "Dan Rather Reporting" actually got something of a conservative following, not because it was a conservative show--it wasn't--but because it actually put forward the conservative point of view in what might be called a fair and balanced way.

Aha! So Dan Rather owed his success to Peggy Noonan's brilliant writing, who made his show "fair and balanced" and drew a large conservative audience because of that. It was her words, her script, that made him a success. After she left, his looney liberal rantings took center stage and his ratings began to slip. I hope Dan sent YOU some flowers, Peggy, because you did the impossible: Made a silk purse out of a sow's ear.