I’ve thought of something good about
hurricanes. You get so wrapped up worrying about living and
dying and whether you will have a house in the morning you
forget about the upcoming election. That’s good. Living in
Florida has been such a nightmare lately I’d forgotten all about
the two Johns and the President and VP trying to line up votes.
Then along comes ol’ Dan Rather and
memo-gate. I respect him for his past and the good journalism he has
done. So what was Dan and his producer smoking when this little memo
came floating along from a guy who admittedly hates George Bush and
has spent most of his life trying to sink W? What happened to that
huge dose of skepticism you used to carry on you shoulder? Can you
say, read flag? Remember the old saying, “If it’s too good to be
true…..?” You wanted a scope and you got it! Veteran news anchor
forgets to ask the most basic questions and refuses to listen to the
dissenting voices that are warning him of, “Danger, Will Robinson,
Danger!” Now the headline reads, “News anchor, possessed with
nailing a sitting President collaborates with Democrats and gets
burned by a Texas nut job. That may not be what happened but it is
in the back of everyone’s mind.
Now we find out that the producer of the
piece, Mary Mapes, actually directed and arranged a phone
conversation between the man who faxed the fake memo and a leading
Democrat Kerry campaign operative. This is huge. It makes it look
like there was an orchestrated move by the Democrats to attack the
Presidents National Guard record using documents they couldn’t
produce on their own. Yo, dude. They couldn’t produce them because
they never existed in the first place. This needs to be examined and
investigated. The American people need to know who knew what, when,
where and how. Does that cry sound familiar. For Pete’s sake, this
is an election year. Didn’t we learning anything from the dirty
tricks of the Nixon administration at the Watergate Hotel?
So why does Dan Rather getting away with a
simple, half-heart apology and we drop it.! Does CBS think the
public is stupid? Consider the latest conversation I overheard near
the produce counter in my local grocery story. This guy was actually
giggling with delight about how Dan Rather and CBS were finally
getting a taste of what they’ve dished out on 60 minutes for years.
In our own local poll at the TV station where I work our viewers
voted 94 percent to 5 percent they would never trust CBS News and
Dan Rather again. Do you know what kind of ratings hit that will
eventually deliver to CBS?
Sadly, what this validates is what many of
us in this business have known for years. The major networks do have
political agendas. They think the rest of us West of the Harlem
River are a bunch of dolts. They pretend they are unbiased and
a-political when in fact they have been anti-government and
anti-conservative for years. Those folks in their high towers don’t
think like the rest of us. They have become such pariahs they think
only they have the corner on truth. They don’t trust the American
people to make the right decisions so they have to try and shape the
world in the image they set fit.
John Edwards got it right when he said
there are two Americas. There is the America as the big networks and
Dan Rather see it, and then there’s the real America the rest of us
know and experience each day of our lives. I hope Dick Thornburgh
and the other independent investigators hired by CBS get to the
bottom of this mess. I hope heads roll. It’s the only way to clear
the air for the rest of us who work too hard every day trying to get
it right.
Al Ruechel, Copyright 2004, All
Rights Reserved
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