Rather's farewell

I did not catch Dan Rather's last news broadcast last night. I did watch the one hour documentary detailing Rather's career. I won't quibble with his spin on the various stories over the years, but I know he presents a distorted "strawman" view of what constitutes "bias." In last night's documentary, Rather tried to define his opponents' accusations of "bias" as mere disagreements. This view is obviously false and papers over Rather's decades of distortions, spin, memory hole manuevers, falsehoods, smears and other MSM/DNC tactics. Dan Rather's legacy is sampled here.

My final (??!!) thought on Rather's career is that Rather could not defend himself against accusations of bias in a free debate with any leading conservative pundit. Rather defends himself and discusses bias only with a friendly audience or interviewer. Without a real challenge, Rather feels free to create and spar with strawmen of his own imagination. A well versed new media personality, such as Rush or Hannity, or even bloggers such as John Hinderaker or Charles Johnson could eat Rather alive with his own past words in a true debate. Rather's fig leaf of objectivity depends increasingly upon his insularity from any real discussion of his own history. Rather has insulated himself the way that Cronkite and Murrow were insulated from any real competition when the MSM still had its monopoly. The difference with Rather is that his insular act has increasingly played to a smaller and smaller audience over the years.

I hope to provide additional posting that places Cronkite and the rest of the CBS "legends" in their true context soon.

On a related note, Charles at LGF posted some interesting thoughts that were triggered by last night's farewell news broadcast. LGF points out that Rather employed some 9-11 footage last night that has been buried since 9-11. He is right, but LGF's post has encouraged me to create a more comprehensive post that categorizes the MSM/DNC tactics into several genres. I think this will help us understand what we face every day in the MSM/DNC and help further the new media revolution. If Rather's career is to serve any good purpose, it will be as fertilizer with which we can create a deeper understanding of the MSM/DNC machine that he so loyally served for almost five decades.