I've had my name since October 1997. Before that, I was calling myself Son Of Liberty but that name got taken by the requirement to log in. When was that? I didn't return from the states until January of 1997--that's when I started doing Free Republic, then called the Whitewater Archives. I found that through Drudge! We did cover Brinkley on This Week, but he stopped running it before that.
From Wiki:
David Brinkley's last broadcast as host of This Week was November 10, 1996, but he continued to provide short pieces of commentary for the show until September 28, 1997. He then fully retired from television.
Days before Brinkley announced his retirement from regular news coverage, Brinkley made a rare, on-air mistake during evening coverage of the 1996 United States presidential election at a moment when he thought he was on commercial break. One of his colleagues asked him what he thought of the prospects for Bill Clinton's re-election. He called Clinton "a bore" and added, "The next four years will be filled with pretty words and pretty music and a lot of goddamn nonsense!" Peter Jennings pointed out that they were still on the air. Brinkley said, "Really?! Well, I'm leaving anyway!". Brinkley would offer Clinton an apology during a one-on-one interview a week later. Brinkley's
Didn’t return *TO* the states in January 1997.
I had been overseas—Italy—Greece—UK—Germany—since 1991.
Great history ! I began lurking after one of our FR guys (Hinderaker) exposed Dan Rather’s fake Bush story in 1999 via typeset mismatch.
Lurking ended with the Torrecelli / Lautenberg switch, when I realized Ds don’t play by any rules. I joined to be able to vent.