While the legendary Walter Cronkite is tacking quietly into the sunset aboard his sailboat, Dan Rather, his controversial successor at CBS News, is determined to settle old scores.
And while my initial thought when I first heard that Rather had filed a $70 million damage suit against his old bosses was that he should have signed on as Uncle Walter’s first mate, I’ve reconsidered.
Yes, the lawsuit is a world-class case of sour grapes, but it could serve a significantly more important purpose.
It contends that CBS ruined Rather’s reputation by making him the scapegoat in one of the strangest investigative stories in memory — A September 2004 report that correctly said that President Bush’s cushy Vietnam-era military service with the Texas Air National Guard was a result of high-level string pulling, but was based, in large part, on a forged document.
While aspects of the reporting were indeed faulty, the president’s rich-boy party hearty lifestyle while Americans were dying by the thousands in Vietnam is no secret. The reaction to the story by the Republican right wing was ferocious, and is a cardinal example of how the mainstream media has been repeatedly cowed by the Rove Blowback Machine, which in this instance further greased the skids for Bush’s re-election and neitralized one of the MSM’s more outspoken figures.
That chapter in the president’s life demands to be aired out for both the historic record and to put his failings in a more comprehensive context, just as allegations that Bill Clinton as Arkansas governor had a habit of wagging his wand at the women he chased needed to be aired out.
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