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Home Front: Culture Wars
Who is Dan Rather?
2004-09-20
DAN RATHER HAS ALWAYS BEEN STRANGE. But as the veteran CBS Evening News anchor approaches his 73rd birthday this Halloween and the sunset of his career, the lengthening shadows cast by his latest controversy have begun to expose how eccentric, megalomaniacal and devoid of ethics and judgment he for decades has been.
That pretty much sums up Rather and the article, but this next bit is rather interesting . . .
But being in college gave Rather a semester-by-semester student deferment from being drafted into the Korean War. After Rather graduated, "the way he got around being eligible for the draft was he joined a reserve unit — Army reserve," wrote B.G. Burkett, co-author of the book Stolen Valor. Rather dropped out of the reserves as soon as the Korean War ended in armistice. Whether Rather used journalist or related politician connections to get into the Army reserves, as he would later accuse President George W. Bush of doing in the Texas Air National Guard, is unknown.

Former CBS reporter Bernard Goldberg . . . : "Rather's voice started quivering, and he told me how in his young days, he had signed up with the Marines — not once, but twice!" This was inaccurate. Rather signed up once with the Army reserves and once with the U.S. Marines. Rather . . . "was discharged less than four months later on May 11, 1954 for being medically unfit
 He couldn't do the physical activity." As a boy, Rather "had suffered from rheumatic fever," reported veteran UPI journalist Wes Vernon. Ever since Dan Rather has described himself as a former U.S. Marine, after spending roughly the same amount of time in Marine Corps training before being rejected that now-Senator John F. Kerry spent in Vietnam. "This," wrote Burkett, "is like a guy who flunks out of Harvard running around saying he went to Harvard."

The nonexistent loose journalistic ethics that have characterized Rather's entire career were soon evident. "Rather would go with an item even if he didn't have it completely nailed down with verifiable facts," wrote Timothy Crouse in his best-seller about presidential campaign coverage in the Nixon era The Boys on the Bus. "If a rumor sounded solid to him, if he believed in his gut or had gotten it from a man who struck him as honest, he would let it rip. The other White House reporters hated Rather for this. They knew exactly why he got away with it: being handsome as a cowboy, Rather was a star at CBS News, and that gave him the clout he needed. They could quote all his lapses from fact
."
And it goes into quite a bit more detail. Read the whole thing, as they always say. Even if he had nothing to do beyond reporting and defending the memos, he clearly had the leanings of someone who would be willingly duped into believing the story was true, if not active in pushing to make it as true as possible.
Posted by:The Doctor

#2  Dan Rather is gonna be the guy flipping my hamburgers before this is over.
Posted by: Chris W.   2004-09-20 7:02:34 PM  

#1  I think he's the first big martyr in the war between the Pajamahaddeen and the MSM.
Pajamastan WINS!

As of September 18th, the CJR's last word on the subject is a snide little piece attempting to belittle the contributions of PajamaLand. It cites, with no critical analysis of its own, several left-wing bloggers who deny that the Pajamahaddeen contributed anything of substance to the story. At no point is there any mention of the obvious evidence (some of it linked-to above) that bloggers broke the story with expert testimony and insightful analysis.
from http://www.thegantelope.com/archives/000213.html
Posted by: Anonymous4021   2004-09-20 3:06:43 PM  

00:00