[speedgibson] Speed Gibson: Dan Rather

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Posted by Speed Gibson:
Dan Rather
http://speedgibson.powerblogs.com/posts/1190685028.shtml


   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.