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Danny |
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Once
again Dan Rather has been snookered.
The CBS News prima donna has found himself “Topic A” instead
of reporting on whatever else “Topic A” should have been.
Edward R Murrow and Fred Friendly are rolling over in their
grave- -separate graves, actually, but rolling over nonetheless.
I suppose Walter Cronkite must feel that old “Black Rock” has
been tarnished beyond repair, and that that uppity Texan should be
booted out. And so should
Rather. Karl Rove nearly
spilled the can of whipped cream he was inhaling all over his chin he
was laughing so hard. Republicans
pretty much hate Rather. He’s
given them cause for thirty years or more.
As the White House correspondent in the 70s he once had a famous
exchange with then President Nixon at a press conference concluding with
Nixon asking him if he were running for something, and Rather replying
flippantly, “No, Sir, are you?” When
Dan stormed off the set of his newscast because a tennis match had run
long and his show didn’t start on time, Grampa Bush used the incident
to dodge a question during his election campaign in 1988 by reminding
Rather of his “star spat” with CBS.
Rather
was once confronted on a New York City street by young men who insisted
that he tell them some special top secret piece of information by
demanding “What’s the frequency, Kenneth?” which the Georgia-based
rock band R E M turned into a hit song.
Dan didn’t know the frequency- -although the frequency with
which he is the news instead of reporting it has become way too common.
Is Tom Brokaw ever the story? Two-and-a-half
years ago, in May 2002, Rather had a public spat with Attorney General
John Ashcroft which led to these words in a column by yours truly titled
“Rather Knot”: “CBS
News Anchor Dan Rather has himself in a bit of a pickle this week as he
tries to explain just exactly what he meant in remarks he made about
Attorney General John Ashcroft on the nationally syndicated Imus
In The Morning radio program. Dan now says Ashcroft is out to get him and “sully up my reputation”. He’s as mad as a flooded-out gopher in a West Texas gully-wumper. He’s hotter than a naked chicken at pillow-stuffing time. He’s as het up as a jackrabbit in mating season. He’s as - -well, you get the idea. Dan’s rippin’ mad. See, Dan has this theory, call it a hunch,
that last summer, before 9-11, when John Ashcroft decided to stop flying
commercial airliners and take only government private jets at a cost of
$1600 an hour all based on some inside tips he got about his safety,
that there’s been a bit of a cloud covering up the real truth of what
may have happened. Rather
says Ashcroft knew more than he told the American public about the
threats to air travel, and should have told us it might not be safe to
fly. Ashcroft counters by
saying the threats were personal to him and had nothing to do with
terrorists. Maybe someone
had heard him sing. Ashcroft
has a CD singing with Senators Trent Lott (R-MS), Jim Jeffords (R [at
that time, now independent]-VT) and Larry Craig (R-ID) which is pretty
borderline awful, although its value as a humorous novelty should not be
underrated. Of
course, Dan Rather feels that Ashcroft is not only covering up his real
reasons for switching from the friendly skies to the Gulfstream, but
that because CBS News ran this story recently, Ashcroft has been out to
get Dan. Rather says the
AG’s people called around various newspapers to “try to plant some
negative stories” about him, although he didn’t say what they might
have been. Perhaps it was
about his musical performance
with R.E.M. on the David
Letterman Show a couple of years ago. Which
of course leads to the obvious resolution: Karaoke night.” This
time, of course, the deal is that Rather used “forged” documents to
do a story on 60 Minutes about
Junior Bush and his lack of attendance at his appointed National Guard
duty thirty years ago. It
seems as though the story is true, because Bushie cannot produce anyone
in his squadron that remembers him.
Senator John Kerry, on the other hand, has at least a couple of
hundred people who recall him in Vietnam. Even if these recollections
are not all favorable, no one is disputing the fact that he was there,
although some of these guys think he may not have been wounded enough.
The
real story of this election is THE WAR IN IRAQ- -immoral, unnecessary,
lied about, sold to Americans as a connection with al Qaeda and WMDs and
all the other nonsense the administration has put forward about making
the world safer for Haliburton and Brown and Root.
When
Flyboy Bush landed on that aircraft carrier to say “Mission
Accomplished” about one hundred American kids had been killed.
Now it’s a thousand. And
for what? This is not
Hitler and Tojo. This is
not making the world safe for democracy.
This is an Islamist-extremist recruiting poster.
This is making the world more dangerous for us and safer for
fanatics. But
as long as we worry whether Dan Rather and whoever tricked him used a
Word Processor or a typewriter to make these claims against Junior, and
dominate the airwaves with angry white men screaming about CBS-this and
Dan Rather-that, we are not talking about the war.
Now who would want to do that? More
whipped cream Mr Rove?
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