Rather goes out in a blaze of … courage?
By
John Breneman
Ironic that Dan Rather, whose most colorful Ratherism involved
"walking through a furnace in a gasoline suit,"
saw his career end in a crackling hickory fire of self-immolation.
Rather goes down as a trailblazer in the age of media superstars
projecting themselves into the story, a shoot-from-the-hip
anchor who went gunning for his own version of Watergate and
wound up with Rathergate. The reporter who famously talked
trash with Nixon got burned when he dug for dirt on
Bush.
In retrospect, he didn’t need documents as phony as a Michael
Jackson’s nose to make the point that President Bush’s National
Guard record is lamer than a three-legged armadillo.
Rather survived his stint as a war correspondent in Vietnam
only to be done in decades later by friendly fire, his career
killed by his own carelessness. He took aim at the president,
but his bulletin missed its mark and buried itself deep in
his own foot.
This grave blunder left the anchorman with about as much
credibility as a president blowing hokum about weapons of
mass destruction.
When it became clear that the documentation behind his National
Guard story was shakier than cafeteria Jell-O, Rather forfeited
his status as one of the most powerful figures in the media
and became a lame-duck anchorman, as impotent as Bob Dole
without his Viagra. With the harsh glare of the media spotlight
now focused on him, Rather squirmed like a man wearing a too-small
bathing suit on a too-long car ride back from the beach.
The jam he created for himself was nasty enough to gag a
buzzard, but if you had to bet the double-wide you knew he’d
have some memorable words for the millions of viewers watching
his last broadcast of the CBS Evening News on Wednesday.
After all, this would be the final signoff from one of the
last of the old-time anchormen, those trusted figures welcomed
into America’s living room to deliver "the news"
before the news devolved into an infotainment byproduct distorted
by profit motives and political agendas.
Surely he wouldn’t use his pulpit to comment on the president’s
policy of spreading democracy like a boll weevil through a
cotton field. But perhaps we could expect some homespun words
of wisdom from the man who once observed — no one will ever
know why — that if a frog had side pockets he would carry
a handgun.
Instead, perhaps fitting in this age of short attention span
everything, Rather chose a one-word soundbite for his epitaph.
Courage.
And that’s the way it is: In a voice as earnest as Ted Baxter’s,
delivering a message more perplexing than profound, a once-revered
newsman hangs up the old gasoline suit and fades to black.
Related info:
Ratherbiased.com
Rathergate.com
Ratherisms
(compiled by Dan Kurtzman)
