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November 24, 2004

More Blogosphere on Rather

More from the blogosphere on the departure of Dan Rather:

Mickey Kaus writes of Rather's fights with the George W's father (1988 on-air confrontation) and Richard Nixon.

Andrew Sullivan (yes, I still read him) asks why Rather is still at 60 Minutes.

Powerline references a Bob Dylan song. Hehe.

Shot In The Dark is skeptical that it had nothing to do with Memogate.

ScrappleFace has Dan Rather scrambling to confirm the story of his own retirement. LOL

Truth Laid Bear wonders if the results of CBS's Memogate investigation will be buried as a day-after-Thanksgiving Friday release.

Wizbang was talking with reporters yesterday.

Poliblog wonders if CBS might try and raid Fox News or CNN to replace Gunga Dan.

Betsy writes that while Dan Rather is in denial about Memogate hastening his departure, the New York Times can't even ignore the connection.

Protein Wisdom wonders what would have happened if Dan Rather had starred in "The Matrix."

And, of course, Lileks:

Hearing that Rather resigned is like reading an obit for the puppeteer who jerked around Topo Gigio; it brings back distant memories that don’t seem terribly relevant. I know, I know, Rather had great influence, inasmuch as there are people who still sidle up to the network news for the small ration of compressed ham loaf masquerading as a 12-course banquet. I stopped watching the network news when we left DC. Inside the Beltway, it was required watching, because it felt like closed-circuit information for the Inner Party regulars. Once you’re out of the loop, though, you wonder why anyone watched it. You get national news with the usual slant, a piece on the economy that always seemed to come from some place in Ohio where workers are Increasingly Concerned, a smattering of international news which always seemed to conclude with some meteorological anomaly in Europe, then a four-minute thumbsucker on granny drugs capped off with a gauzy tale of a sick girl, her horse, and the Community That Came Together to Help. Promo for the local news.

The local news was worse, since nothing much happens in Minneapolis. At least in DC you got the full measure of horror every day. (I once considered patenting a suit that contained fine white powder in its seams so you could leave your own chalk outline when you fell. Saved time for all concerned.) So I got out of the habit, and never missed it.

I expect the death of network news saddens those who viewed the Evening News as a pillar of the day. To people of my age, people in their 40s, the passing has the same impact as reading that Captain Kangaroo died. Sad but inevitable, and nothing you'd specifically miss tomorrow. The News was a venerable symbol of childhood’s World of Authority, like Life magazine and those boring but somehow important “White Paper” documentaries on TV. The news was handed down, not passed around. The news was bestowed, not shared.

The news wasn’t out there 24-7, swirling around, waiting for you to open a window; it came in predictable intervals in varying portions. The radio news in the morning came at eight, brought to us by Northwest Orient (gonnngggg) Airlines; nothing happened in the world for the rest of the day. Paul Harvey summed up the general pith of the global gist at noon, but he rarely broke news. (He will, nevertheless, outlast them all. Because he's radio.) The paper came at four. It was a careful, measured thing, having had all day to think about matters. Then came the evening news: black and white, bare sets, Authority Men in grey suits with black glasses and the sober look of judges who had left the robe at home for a day. Nothing happened for the rest of the night; the ten o’clock news managed to squeeze the entire world through the tiny aperture of All Things Fargo. The world, in general, kept its distance – thanks to Cronkite and the AP wire.

In this context, a Special Bulletin would make you soil your drawers. They didn’t break in for anything. When you heard the words “We interrupt this program,” the best you could hope for was an assassination.

The news was like oil – pumped from select locations, refined by a few big companies. Now it’s water – plentiful, ubiquitous, available in dozens of forms. Bottled, tap, precipitation, dew, spittle, you name it. Oh, but are we really better informed?

Well, yes.

Posted at 11:26 AM Pacific