You're the man, Dan
By DENNIS ROGERS, Staff Writer
Everyone else seems scared to say it, so I will: I liked Dan Rather, and I'm going to miss seeing him on the evening news.
I'm going to miss his soft heart. I'm going to miss that comfortable Texas twang that so irritated the East Coast intelligentsia. I'm going to miss his obvious delight at being in the middle of a big story instead of sitting safe in a New York studio. Nobody ever loved reporting from the eye of a hurricane more than Dan.
I think Dan was a great and worthy successor to Walter Cronkite. He brought passion to the job, something laid-back Tom Brokaw rarely displayed. And he had that beat-up old Southern face and ordinary-guy sensibility so lacking in perfectly precise Peter Jennings. I always thought Jennings was modeling the latest fashion in trench coats when he took to the field.
You probably feel differently.
Lord knows, the self-anointed media watchdogs have had a feeding frenzy over Dan's "retirement" this week. And the political right has been high-fiving his comeuppance like the sore winners they've too often been since Election Day.
Retirement? As Dan would say, let's shoot straight as a West Texas highway, partner: He was fired, canned, booted. Insert your own cliche here.
He was sent packing because staff members whose reporting he trusted betrayed him and his viewers. Dan was more than the anchorman at CBS News. He was also the managing editor, and it was his moral responsibility to take the shot when his people stepped in that big old cow pie over President Bush's National Guard service.
So be it. Stand-up leaders take the fall when the troops screw up. Or they should.
Was Dan biased?
Of course he was biased. You are, too, and so am I. Like Edward R. Murrow, the patron saint of broadcasters, Dan was biased against those who would exploit the poor and powerless. He was biased against political thugs and bullies, at home or abroad.
Good for him. Murrow would be proud. Ever see Murrow's "Harvest of Shame"?
And good for Dan for reminding us of the real cost of sending Americans to war. While other networks reported casualty numbers and showed horrific pictures of death in Iraq and Afghanistan, Dan took a moment in every newscast to introduce us to our fallen warriors and to those who loved them.
The casualties were not just numbers to Dan; they were hometown football players and cheerleaders and kids with silly grins who liked to party and work on old cars. They were our future, and Dan's tributes reminded us how much we are lessened by their deaths.
Dan did that every night, and and every night we stopped what we were doing at our house and joined him in a moment of silence to honor our brave neighbors from Fort Bragg and Camp Lejeune.
And how did his enemies respond to such heartfelt emotion? They claim he did it to embarrass the president.
I find it hilarious and hypocritical that Dan's most passionate critics claim with a straight face that Fox News is the epitome of unbiased reporting. Anybody who thinks that has a unique definition of objectivity.
You served us well, Dan.
Courage.
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