A history of RAthER treachery.
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Subject: Grim Reaper of the Network News
The Grim Reaper of the Network News
Carter L. Clews September 20, 2004
Dan Rather’s neurotic obsession with saving his own skin and salvaging his sinking career has now entered its final, fatal stages. And, as is almost always the case with a dying soul who cannot accept his own mortality, it has almost become pathetic. I say “almost” because even for the most forgiving among us, it’s grievously hard to feel genuinely sorry for a man who has devoted so much of his adult life to victimizing any and all he deems a threat to his own illusory existence.
For, here is a mean-spirited mortal who manufactured a myth -- and then desperately hid behind its façade. Here is the embodiment of the self-made man – who worships his own creation; the emperor who, having no spiritual clothes, demands that no one acknowledge his horribly disfigured soul. And now, as the shadows lengthen and the Jordan washes up on his receding shore, he flails about angrily seeking to devour those who would dare to survive his own demise.
Years ago, when I was a child watching an aging family member throw an embarrassing tantrum over an imagined sleight, I asked my father, “What makes Uncle Vito so mean?” He replied, “Mellow young men make mellow old men.” And that, in sum, is why the real Dan Rather has finally emerged – the brutal beast within the textured shell who, in the final analysis could no longer keep himself at bay.
For you see, this is a man who built his entire career upon the bloodied bodies and bleached bones of those who, even unintentionally, stood in the way of his willful ascent. There were the brave young soldiers in Vietnam whose very lives meant less to Dan than his coveted hour upon the stage. And so, if he had to reveal their positions to enemy fire … if he had to taunt and traumatize them on the eve of battle … if he had to show the angst in their eyes or the agony of their deaths to weeping wives and mothers at home – well that’s a price they just had to pay to further the career of Dan, the man on the move.
If Richard Nixon had to be openly ridiculed in front of the press and mocked before a watching world; well, he was only the President of the United States. And Dan was a would-be anchor who just needed a few more notches in his belt to overthrow the avuncular idiot who blocked his path. If George Bush, senior, had to be maligned and ambushed; well once again, he was only the President – and Dan, he was The Man. And if, Ronald Reagan had to be cut down to size, who better than the self-ordained Colossus of Columbia Broadcasting?
Then there was the avuncular idiot, himself: Walter Cronkite, the “Most Trusted Man in America.” To Dan Rather, he was nothing more than an aging impediment to Dan’s becoming the apple of The Eye. Dan would teach him to stand in the way while he was standing in the wings. And so, he plunged the knife so deeply into his mentor’s back that it would have taken the Jaws of Life to pry it lose.
But, even after Dan Rather stepped over the bodies of those he had slain to assume his seat at the desk, he still couldn’t hush the hubris that was part and parcel of his very being; the demons that roamed and ruled his soul. And the fact is, an entire generation of young CBS reporters fell victim to Dan Rather’s ruthless pogrom of those who might one day do what he had done. Pause for a moment and give it thought: Where have all the once-young flowers of CBS gone; gone to graveyards everyone… at the bloodstained hands of the Grim Reaper of the Network News.
Lest you doubt, ask the ghost of Connie Chung. Do you remember the unctuous love-in when poor, beguiled Connie was named co-anchor of the CBS Evening News? A gushing Dan Rather to Bill Clinton: “Well, I just hope that Connie and I can be half the team that you and the First Lady are.” It actually looked for a brief, shining moment like Dan would let that flower bloom, but then came the night of the long knives. And by the time Dan Rather finished with Connie Chung, the “Death of a Thousand Cuts” would have looked like a mercy killing.
And now, the end is near, and Dan Rather faces the final curtain. In one last display of brazen, brutal bravado – as if to prove he hasn’t lost the fatal touch – he reaches out with bared claws … and brings back a bloodied stump. Shocked and dazed, he lashes out in disbelief, screaming invectives at “pajamaed bloggers”, Fox network “losers,” and a defamed young President who just stands idly by and watches the self-declared icon self-destruct.
And, it has almost become pathetic … except that this time, the ultimate villain has finally become his own victim.
Carter L. Clews - Laptoplobbyist.com |
