Rooting for Rather
I guess he’s rich, but poor Dan Rather.
Demoted, shoved aside, reviled by a hundred pontificating editorialists and columnists – gatekeepers of the fourth estate who took time out from toadying to Karl Rove and helping Bush/Cheney lie repeatedly and catastrophically to the American people – to condemn Dan for failing to make absolutely certain that his producers had made absolutely certain about the authenticity of a couple of documents.
None of the posturing pontificators even suggested that the documents did not exist – just that these were not the originals, which Bush and family and friends and politically sensitive commanders had taken pains to destroy. Meantime, a bloody war had been launched by the draft dodgers based on forged documents and twisted intelligence, aided and abetted by a docile, largely uncritical press corps.
No one seriously maintained that the story Dan reported was not true. Nor that the eye-witnesses to Bush’s draft evasion and kissing off Air National Guard duties were less than credible.
Clearly, the entire story was true.
But what has truth got to do with high-minded principles of journalism such as lab-testing documents and kissing ass to make sure you get access to interviews with high officials whom you know for a fact are cynically using you to spread more lies to readers or viewers who haven’t yet noticed that you are not to be trusted.
Poor Dan. He told the truth, and he lost his job — while many of lhis hypocritical colleagues were losing their souls.
It’s hard to see how he can win his $70 million suit, but I hope he wins it at least for a dollar, or that it gets far enough to get Bush on the stand and cross-examine him on every aspect of his sorry history that his family has thus far managed to hush up.
It could happen. The suit could easily go on until Bush leaves office and loses some of the stonewalling powers now baffling Congress.
Let’s help Bush flesh out his legacy, adding his early signs of corruption to the high crimes and misdemeanors for which historians will mainly remember him, even as they honor Dan Rather for being one of very few journalists who in those dark times were willing, despite the risks, to deal in realities.
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It would be nice to see Don Imus taking over as head of CBS, kicking out Les Moonves and re hiring Dan Rather.
Comment by Jack Rosen — October 11, 2007 @ 11:07 am
Perfect! And since Imus’s hair (last picture I saw) is grayinsh white instead of red, he’ll look every inch the network executive, though of course he won’t talk like one. It might even help the Board adjust to the new realities — a world without W. or Rove to suck up to.
Comment by Al — October 11, 2007 @ 9:02 pm