Excellent... Peggy Noonan is such a class act.
Really? I don't think Peggy is at her best here, at all--wonder why she took this assignment...Her praise is hedged and her prose is occluded...murky. Doesn't even read like her...
While channel surfing one day a few years ago, I stopped in the middle of program showing a piece of a Rather "off-camera" tape.
I'm not sure, but the setting might have been Seattle, and it was prior to him doing an on-the-spot news segment, outside in the cold night air. When I stumbled across it he was in the middle of primping and posturing, trying to get his trenchcoat just right - "collar up, or down? How does this look? Belt on or off? Like this? If it's on, fastened or casual loose? Serious anchor-man image or just plain Joe in the street".
It was unintentionally hilarious (the program was some kind of comedy show) - here was this vain, pompous, star-man, preening in front of his staff trying to get "the look" just right. He was the essence of the Ted Baxter character in the old Mary Tyler Moore show.
The piece of the tape I saw must have lasted less than two minutes - but it was priceless. I never saw, or even heard of it again. Maybe Rather bought up all the known copies. If he didn't he should have. Anyone else see it? Does anyone out there in our vast Freeper conspiracy-land know of it? Or if and where and how it can be found?
It was one for the ages and in its candid camera style told as much about Rather as even a Peggy Noonan column.