Dan Rather's Lack of Courage

Goodbye, Gunga Dan---Geoffrey Norman's sure the door won't hit you on the way out:

When CBS News cut staff because of low ratings, Rather made compassionate noises but did not resign in protest or offer to take a pay cut himself. When the producer of the show that was built around the forged documents was fired, Rather expressed sympathy but did not resign in solidarity with her. He wanted that anchorman job, and he held on to it with a kind of tenacity you could almost see in his face.

In the years after he first took over the job, he made sure that Cronkite didn’t have any work to do that might get him on the air. He wanted no competition from the “most trusted man in America.” Rather, like all of them, craved airtime. He lived for that, to get his face on television — not, as he always would claim, to be a reporter.

He went everywhere and did all sorts of bold things to get his face on the television. He plainly had his own agenda and was as much a creature of the Zeitgeist as any of them. He also, famously, had his quirks, and he could carry a grudge, especially for people named Bush. But that is superficial stuff. What mattered, in the end, was … his act was getting old.

This is a story that should evoke feelings of compassion of the kind you feel for an aging athlete. Except…well, except Rather never did take responsibility for that broadcast with the forged documents; he didn’t resign, and he didn’t apologize. He earned, it is said, over a quarter of a billion dollars from CBS. When it became clear to everyone — and certainly to him — that his time at CBS was done, he could have moved on and used some of that money to set up his very own blog. He could become part of the new media, now that the old has so shamelessly gone after the soft features and synthetic feelings market where television exists, not to bring you the news but to manipulate emotions and offend good taste. He could hire a couple of eager young assistants and spend his days bird dogging the evening news shows, staying on them — as he might say — “like white on rice.” Exposing their superficialities and their mistakes and their lies. Could anyone do a better job on network news?

Is there any non-felon demographic group one can point to with less character than the network news anchors who comprise the Hair Helmet Hamas?