An Inside Look at Dan Rather

Each issue of Vanity Fair Magazine always brings me an extremely interesting tidbit. I get the feeling that VF honestly doesn't think anyone on the right reads this magazine. The Editor Graydon Carter's years of over the top anti-Bush, anti-Republican rants may have driven all those even leaning to the moderate right away, so perhaps I am the only one.

Michael Wolf has an article on the demise of the nightly network news. He describes this year's annual CBS holiday press party when Dan Rather suddenly appears in the room. Wolfe says he seemed "stoic, willfully dignified, his face set, almost immobile." As Rather headed toward him Wolf wondered how to tactfully deal with Rather's professional disgrace. Wolf finally manages, "Really....how.....I mean....do you think it is that you have become such a......buzzword.....for the right wing.? "You tell me." Rather replied. Wolf said Rather stood "like an old soldier, stiff, stuffed, painfully erect."

How did he become a buzzword? Hasn't Rather always been what we deemed on the right as bias? This isn't new. We have ranted about Rather for decades. But this time Rather tried to put a fake document on the air, run a story that was false, and he got caught. But Rather, of course, doesn't see it that way.

"Civil Rights," said Rather. "Vietnam, Watergate. These were the stories we told. We're now being blamed for them."

Uhh...no. You are being blamed for never being fair politically. Your being blamed for letting your ideology come before your journalistic ethics. How many of us on the right were for Civil Rights? Against Vietnam? Horrified by Watergate? I think a great many of us. No, Dan, it wasn't the stories, it was the way you framed them. And it wasn't even those stories. It was all the stories in the years since. Decades of bias reporting that sent most of us to talk radio to TRY to get the other side of the story.

If it hadn't been for Rather, there would be no Fox News. Not because he paved the way, but because the marketplace demanded some fairness.

But even Wolf admits how pathetic that sounds:

"That we were back in the 60's was certainly pathetic. That we were blaming all our troubles on the great right-wing conspiracy was equally weak. Recalling all this was another way of saying that Rather, at 73, was not just a screwup, but misty with age."

Wolf then even admits what all in the network news business felt:

"I was or could be with just a little push, helplessly back in the cool and hegemonic and liberal network world. Our world. Our lost world. Our better world. When the news was the news. When we were young. When our side was winning. What had happened?"

Well, for one thing Mr. Wolf, the news wasn't "the news" and that was the problem. It was Dan Rather's version of the news. You even admit your side was winning. Should there have been "a side" in network news? Of course not. Which is why the right became so frustrated. I wish your world were lost, but it is still holding it's own, despite Rather. A better world? I'll just leave that one alone.

Mr. Wolf becomes brutally honest regarding the report on the memo scandal:

"Although the CBS report took special pains not to accuse the evening news of bias (a more dreadful sin than incompetence), surely Rather and company were thinking that they could kill the king."

He goes on:

"The king lives, however. Rather and the CBS's news division are dead. And their dying is for CBS's chairman, Les Moonves, something of a wet kiss."

But Wolf ends with an amusing belief. He says he doubts you could have a fruitful discussion about the value of the news with the CEO's of Viacom, G.E., and Disney "even on the best days-those without ominous calls from the Bush administration."

So the administration can strong arm those CEO's on the news, huh? An interesting but hardly realistic take I think.

There is no doubt that our voice is being heard now. There is no doubt that we have finally gotten our message out. But it took 2 decades of Rush and almost a decade of Fox News to get us there. And finally we have the bloggers, although not well known outside the internet and political circles, bloggers such as Instapundit, Hugh Hewitt, LGF, Powerline and Wizbang are no longer going to allow stories to go unchecked. Call them gatekeepers if you will. Most don't do it for money either, they do it for the love of politics, for the love of their ideas, for the love of truth.

You might call this a level playing field now.