Under Excuse Number Four, item (6) of the post below, I listed three famous people who died within a short time of one another. When I chose football player Steve McNair to round out my last list, it was only because he was the closest thing to a recently dead "famous" person. At that time I suggested that if a more famous person died within the next few weeks, McNair would have to be replaced. Well, as luck would have it, the list will look much better now with Walter Cronkite's name on it instead.
"The Most Trusted Man in America" has died within 19 days of Karl Malden and The OxiClean Guy. For Mr. OxiClean, this is quite an honor. On the other hand, were Walter or Karl to hear that the third member of their death cluster is a guy named Billy Mays who was a modern day snake oil salesman, they may feel a little slighted. Sorry Walter and Karl, I can't just go back and re-order my whole list now. Too much thought and effort and math went into it.
I'm not sure why I cried when I watched the news this morning and saw clips of Cronkite's broadcasts. I think it was his announcement of President Kennedy's death that really hit me. (I wonder who the other two in Kennedy's death trio were. I bet no one ever thought about that. And if they did, they had some serious issues.)
Saturday, July 18, 2009
News Flash--Correction to Last Post
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2 comments:
Kennedy's death trio is a no brainer (so to speak)- on Nov. 22, 1963, in addition to JFK, both Aldous Huxley and C S Lewis died as well, although coverage of their deaths was, needless to say, overshadowed.
as far as Cronkite, i was a little annoyed by all the paeans to his supposed objectivity as a newsman. at the peak of his stature, he famously came back from Vietnam after Tet and pronounced on the Evening News that the war was unwinnable: "Who won and who lost in the great Tet offensive against the cities? I’m not sure... it seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate." of course, this was completely absurd from a military point of view- the NVA/VC were roundly defeated. however, Cronkite's groundbreaking abandonment of his vaunted "objectivity" had a powerful effect on America's perception of the war, leading to our subsequent pull out, and therefore to the horrors Pol Pot wrought on the Vietnamese as well as his own people.
[from American Thinker: "On April 30, 1977, Pol Pot’s troops launched a surprise attack on 13 villages in eight Vietnamese border provinces. Ba Chuc was the hardest hit...the intruders killed 3,157 villagers. The raiders shot them, slit their throats or beat them to death with sticks. Babies were flung into the air and pierced with bayonets. Women were raped and left to die with stakes planted in their genitals."
There were two survivors to the massacre.
Cronkite didn’t cover it on the CBS evening news.]
Cronkite's editorializing in fact heralded the END of media objectivity, and there is a direct line from it to the pathetic existence of keith olberman and his ilk rampant on "news" channels today.
OUCH. Tell me how you really feel, man. I love the "so to speak" on the Kennedy "no brainer." So mordant. That's my favorite part of your mini diatribe.
I, like many others probably never knew of such a famous death cluster. What was the timing? Could the news of one have induced another?
Mike went off on a similar tirade about Cronkite. I'm not real smart about war and politics, but I still can't figure out how a news anchor could say something that would lead to such a shift in public opinion that it would cause politicians and generals to roll over and relent and thereby cause Pol Pot to continue the mass killings. That's quite a chain of events, quite a ripple effect, just because a news anchor might have crossed an editorial line (even though he had just been there and had just seen what was going on). I guess the Dixie Chicks didn't have a similar power to sway public opinion even though all the pro-war people acted like they did.
The so-called "liberal media" has had 6 years to say something that would end this war, yet they haven't been able to. What's the difference? I don't get it.
Anyway, plenty of the Fox "ilk" are out there blatantly and hypocritically editorializing on their "fair and balanced" "news reports" every minute.
I won't argue much about Vietnam. I'm not sure we should have gone in the first place (just like the current war). I could go on, but I'll start sounding ignorant real quick, so I won't.
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