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Last updated on March 6th, 2018 at 12:30 am
The San Francisco Chronicle’s Tim Goodman curses the murdering jackals who brought down Dan Rather:
The fetid amusement of killing Dan Rather ends tonight. And what a tired affair it was.
There’s no pride in watching the deconstruction of a man. You can take all your conservative pundits who rode down the warpaths of perceived biased and mute them forever now. You can take your navel-gazing journalists who believe Rather made A Big Mistake He Must Pay For and put them in a room, where their own self importance will choke them all to death. And you can take your CBS backstabbers who found in Rather’s last hours of weakness a chance to rise up and join the chorus of haters—becoming smaller themselves as the time of his career suicide drew near—and give them all a great big prize for bravery.
And yes, that includes Walter Cronkite.
Take them all away. Anybody who found joy in this deserves to rot in their own mean-spiritedness. Bravo, you threw stones at a 74-year-old careerist. You whispered sad stories about a weird man to a press corps all too willing to take him out. Dan Rather, who was by most accounts ambitious, polarizing, determined, a self-promoter, a tireless worker, a man who believed in his own ideals, a square peg in the proverbial round hole, the replacement for a myth, a flawed arbiter of history, a man less smooth than his peers and, lastly, a man complicit in a story that may have been inaccurate but not entirely wrong, is no longer the Dan Rather we knew …
And now his time is over—not merely part of an era ended, as when Brokaw retired, but a tortured anti-hero paying the price for indiscretions few can even remember.
Talk about grief-stricken; he’s griefier than a Hoboken mudcrab on Shrove Tuesday, as Dan himself might say. Goodman is right about Dan’s indiscretions being difficult to remember, however. I can barely recall why everybody’s been “throwing stones” or telling “sad stories”. What the hell was it all about?
Oh, that’s right. He presented fake documents in an attempt to destroy the President. No big deal.
(More on doomed Dan from Pundit Guy, RatherBiased, and Mark Steyn.)
- Great stuff. This outpouring of grief makes the schadenfreude even schadenfreuder.Posted by rexie on 03/09 at 08:02 AM • #
- Bravo, you threw stones at a 74-year-old careerist. You whispered sad stories about a weird man to a press corps all too willing to take him out
Sounds like he was beloved by all.
Posted by William Young on 03/09 at 08:29 AM • #
- All right, Tim Goodman has convinced me. I say we nail Dan Rather to a cross.Posted by Jim Geones on 03/09 at 08:43 AM • #
- August, 1974
The fetid amusement of killing Richard Nixon ends tonight. And what a tired affair it was.
There’s no pride in watching the deconstruction of a man. You can take all your liberal pundits who rode down the warpaths of hatred and mute them forever now. You can take your navel-gazing journalists who believe Nixon made A Big Mistake He Must Pay For and put them in a room, where their own self importance will choke them all to death. And you can take your Democratic backstabbers who found in Nixon’s last hours of weakness a chance to rise up and join the chorus of haters—becoming smaller themselves as the time of his career suicide drew near—and give them all a great big prize for bravery.
And yes, that includes DAN RATHER.
Take them all away. Anybody who found joy in this deserves to rot in their own mean-spiritedness. Bravo, you threw stones at a 74-year-old careerist. You whispered sad stories about a weird man to a press corps all too willing to take him out. Richard Nixon, who was by most accounts ambitious, polarizing, determined, a self-promoter, a tireless worker, a man who believed in his own ideals, a square peg in the proverbial round hole, the replacement for a myth, a flawed arbiter of history, a man less smooth than his peers and, lastly, a man complicit in a story that may have been inaccurate but not entirely wrong, is no longer the Dick Nixon we knew …
And now his time is over—not merely part of an era ended, as when Johnson retired, but a tortured anti-hero paying the price for indiscretions few will even remember at the end of the century.
—
Boo freakin’ hoo, Goodman. Funny when that worm turns, ain’t it?
- He’s misusing deconstruction .
Dan Rather is fine, but just more explicitly in the soap opera genre than journalism admits to, so far.
He does not notice that he’s doing soap opera, because he’s bitter.
A bitter soap opera writer is not going to attract women, the commercial audience. He will become more bitter yet, and perhaps have to take up painting houses to pay the bills at some point, as all losers do in the news media soap opera version of life.
The chief reason to get fake siding is to avoid former newsmen
- So many pikes… so few heads…Posted by richard mcenroe on 03/09 at 10:10 AM • #
- #9 RebeccaH: Quit wondering. If it was about politics, or their latest nanny-state cause, or anything remotely scientific, the answer is ZERO.
They were probably pretty accurate in their Hollywood reporting, though (unless they knew the personality in question was a Republican).
No need to thank me – glad to be of service. ;-p
Posted by Barbara Skolaut on 03/09 at 11:49 AM • #
- What is this mewling little snivel-story about, really? Oh, no – a journalist ought to have standards! He ought to tell the truth! He should actually be good at his job after 40 years in the business! The horror…
“…indiscretions few can even remember…” That’s so touchingly pathetic its funny. It’s also false, fittingly enough for the subject. But Our Man on the Street is strict party-line on the, er, indiscretion: “…a man complicit in a story that may have been inaccurate but not entirely wrong…”
And he complains about other people’s sense of self-righteousness… in fact, he says, in so many words, that we can choke to death on it. (Yeah, sweetness and light to you too, buddy.)
This is ironically the only thing approaching true in the entire tired, fetid column: unlike Gunga Dan, some people actually DO have an active sense of shame and accountability. It isn’t possible to get a guy like Dan Rather (or Tom Goodman) to notice the millstones ‘round their own necks, stooping their heads into the familiar nose-to-the-navel position. That’s why they leave sweaty, permanent finger indents on the anchor’s desk when they go.
This is so sophmoric and ill-considered it makes me nostalgic for Bryla. :::shudder:::
- The thing I love most about liberals is that they devour their own wounded!Posted by nofixedabode on 03/09 at 01:04 PM • #
- My favorite bit is the very last line: “This is a man’s life we’re talking about; gloating and glee are an indication of tiny minds.” I wonder… in a world without blogs, would Goodman have said that last November about the guy Rather was trying to oust?Posted by Jim Treacher on 03/09 at 03:28 PM • #
- Indiscretions few can remember? Sounds like Mr. Goodman has been enjoying the fine bud one can find in San Francisco a bit too much lately. To have your memory go so bad in less than half a year…
Hearing someone in San Francisco talk about the “destruction of a man” is rather amusing considering what that city’s reaction would have been had Kerry won.
