Posted on 03/26/2003 6:46:08 PM PST by Slyfox
If you missed Andy Rooney on Sunday night, read on. Most that heard him couldn't believe their ears. They kept expecting CBS to cut him off. (CBS) A weekly commentary by CBS News correspondent Andy Rooney.
You can't beat the French when it comes to food, fashion, wine or perfume, but they lost their license to have an opinion on world affairs years ago. They may even be selling stuff to Iraq and don't want to hurt business.
The French are simply not reliable partners in a world where the good people in it ought to be working together. Americans may come off as international jerks sometimes but we're usually trying to do the right thing.
The French lost WW II to the Germans in about 20 minutes. Along with the British, we got into the war and had about 150,000 guys killed getting their country back for them. We fought all across France, and the Germans finally surrendered in a French schoolhouse. You'd think that school building in Reims would be a great tourist attraction but it isn't. The French seem embarrassed by it. They don't want to call attention to the fact that we freed them from German occupation.
I heard Steven Spielberg say the French wouldn't even let him film the D-Day scenes in "Saving Private Ryan" on the Normandy beaches. They want people to forget the price we paid getting their country back for them.
Americans have a right to protest going to war with Iraq. The French do not. They owe us the independence they flaunt in our face at the U.N.
I went into Paris with American troops the day we liberated it, Aug. 25, 1944. It was one of the great days in the history of the world. French women showered American soldiers with kisses, at the very least. The next day, the pompous Charles de Gaulle marched down the mile long Champs Elysee to the Place de la Concorde as if he had liberated France himself. I was there, squeezed in among a hundred tanks we'd given the Free French Army that we brought in with us. Suddenly there were sniper shots from the top of a building. Thousands of Frenchmen who had come to see de Gaulle scrambled to get under something. I got under an Army truck myself. The tank gunners opened fire on the building where the shots had come from, firing mindlessly at nothing. It was a wild scene that lasted, maybe, 10 minutes.
When we go to Paris every couple of years now, I rent a car. I drive around the Place de la Concorde and when some French driver blows his horn for me to get out of his way, I just smile and say to myself, "Go ahead, Pierre. Be my guest. I know something about this very place you'll never know."
The French have not earned their right to have an opinion about President Bush's plans to attack Iraq.
On the other hand, I have.
February 6, 2003
Larry LeSueur, one of the last surviving "Murrow Boys," the correspondents hired by Edward R. Murrow to cover the Second World War for CBS News, died Wednesday at his home in Washington after a long battle against Parkinson's disease. LeSueur was 93.
LeSueur's wife Dorothy said he was listening to Secretary of State Powell's U.N. appearance on the radio when he passed away quietly.
A memorial service will be held in Washington, probably next week.
LeSueur, born Laurence Edward LeSueur, was the author of the 1943 book "12 Months that Changed the World," about the critical battles of the Eastern front in 1941 and 1942. He covered the Soviet Union for CBS during those years.
According to the 1996 book "The Murrow Boys" by Stanley Cloud and Lynne Olson, LeSueur was hired by Murrow while freelancing in London in 1939. A third-generation newsman, LeSueur had been a wire service reporter for United Press.
In a series called "London After Dark," LeSueur, Murrow and Eric Sevareid reported on the nighttime sights and sounds of London during the Nazi Blitz.
During his CBS career he also covered D-Day, and the liberation of Paris. He also reported from the Dachau concentration camp as it was liberated.
On D-Day, in 1944, LeSueur landed on Normandy beach with U.S. troops and was the first correspondent to broadcast from the American beachhead. He was made an honorary member of the 4th Division of the 8th Infantry and awarded the Medal of Freedom.
LeSueur reported the first news of the liberation of Paris, for which he was cited by the War Department for "outstanding and conspicuous service" and awarded the French Legion of Honor. He also covered the liberation of the Dachau and Manthauson concentration camps.
"Larry LeSueur was one of a small number of reporters who gave the American people a better idea of what World War II was about than they have had about any war since," said CBS News 60 Minutes commentator Andy Rooney, who met LeSueur in Paris while on assignment himself for Stars and Stripes during the war.
"I had come into Paris with a French armored division from another direction. I met Larry on the street and he asked me if I would do a radio report for CBS," said Rooney. "I owe Larry the first job I ever had at CBS."
LeSueur later became CBS White House correspondent and covered the Paris Peace Conference. A year later, he began covering the United Nations. He won a Peabody Award in 1949 for his radio coverage of the U.N. session in Paris.
LeSueur left CBS News in 1963 and spent the next 20 years at the Voice of America.
"He was one of the greatest war reporters that there have ever been," said Stanley Cloud, who co-authored "The Murrow Boys" with his wife, Lynne Olson.
"He did remarkable things," Cloud said, adding that LeSueur was "a gentleman, soft-spoken and modest."
"He was a very happy man, full of fun," said Richard C. Hottelet, a former CBS News colleague who worked with LeSueur in London. "He always looked at the bright side of things."
LeSueur was last heard on CBS Radio in late 1999 when he joined former colleagues Hottelet, Howard K. Smith, Mary "Marvin" Breckinridge Patterson, Robert Trout and Ed Bliss in a "20th Century Roundup." All but Hottelet have since died.
The "Murrow Boys" were America's first broadcast journalists, covering the events in Europe for CBS Radio broadcasts, starting with the Nazi takeover of Austria.
Here in D.C. they say tourism at Arlington Cemetery is way up.
For many, when they hear "Have you forgotten", it doesn't just apply to 9-11.
Reforming liberal ping.
That is such a great point. I am speechless that I am hearing it from Rooney.
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