[Speed Gibson,
Monday September 24, 2007 at 8:50pm]
Dan Rather
I've been thinking about Dan Rather ever since he filed his $70 million suit against CBS a few days ago. I've heard many a comment, insight, and explanation for this. I've heard a few recent quotes from Mr. Rather, and of course, some earlier ones that seem quite at odds with what he says now.
But I felt there something bigger, more profound going on here. The easy answer is self-deception, clinically so, perhaps understandable given his age. A caller to Bill O'Reilly found the angle I was searching for, that Dan is frustrated in his inability to remake the world in his image.
I'll go further to include a few others in a similar state, like Bill Moyers. They were truly going to change the world, like Woodward and Berstein, only they were a one hit wonder. They were going to expose us moss-backs that don't understand why government is good, capitalism is bad, and morals are relative. (Besides, you guys are such phonies!)
They never met a (publicly traded) corporation they didn't hate, even CBS now it seems. They loathe the military. They is no last word in what they call diplomacy, what we call appeasement. The were to be the wise "E. F. Hutton" sages: whenever they spoke, the rest of us listen.
About halfway on the way to Valhalla, they lost control. Cable TV and satellites appeared thirty years ago. Then came personal computers, the internet, talk radio, and (gasp!) Fox News. In fact, Rush Limbaugh was literally laughing at them three hours a day. One does not laugh at Dan Rather. Ask Bernie Goldberg.
Like the aging gunslinger in John Wayne's last film "The Shootist," cancer-stricken J. B. Books was dying and as somehow seemed appropriate, his rough and ready world was dying with him. A new world was moving in, with noisy horseless carriages, streetcars, and electric lights.
So it much be with people like Rather and Moyers, the last of a journalistic breed who take themselves much too seriously. Their world is dying, too, even among the once adoring leftist throngs who are now too impatient to listen to them develop an argument.
After they're gone (not immediately, let's hope), there will be no more - let's hope.
But I felt there something bigger, more profound going on here. The easy answer is self-deception, clinically so, perhaps understandable given his age. A caller to Bill O'Reilly found the angle I was searching for, that Dan is frustrated in his inability to remake the world in his image.
I'll go further to include a few others in a similar state, like Bill Moyers. They were truly going to change the world, like Woodward and Berstein, only they were a one hit wonder. They were going to expose us moss-backs that don't understand why government is good, capitalism is bad, and morals are relative. (Besides, you guys are such phonies!)
They never met a (publicly traded) corporation they didn't hate, even CBS now it seems. They loathe the military. They is no last word in what they call diplomacy, what we call appeasement. The were to be the wise "E. F. Hutton" sages: whenever they spoke, the rest of us listen.
About halfway on the way to Valhalla, they lost control. Cable TV and satellites appeared thirty years ago. Then came personal computers, the internet, talk radio, and (gasp!) Fox News. In fact, Rush Limbaugh was literally laughing at them three hours a day. One does not laugh at Dan Rather. Ask Bernie Goldberg.
Like the aging gunslinger in John Wayne's last film "The Shootist," cancer-stricken J. B. Books was dying and as somehow seemed appropriate, his rough and ready world was dying with him. A new world was moving in, with noisy horseless carriages, streetcars, and electric lights.
So it much be with people like Rather and Moyers, the last of a journalistic breed who take themselves much too seriously. Their world is dying, too, even among the once adoring leftist throngs who are now too impatient to listen to them develop an argument.
After they're gone (not immediately, let's hope), there will be no more - let's hope.