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Dan Rather says “It’s All About Me”
September 20, 2004, 8:19 a.m.
It’s All About Me
A world exclusive.
EDITOR'S NOTE: National Review Online is instituting a series of
exclusive contributions from the most eminent figures of our age.
Drawn from all the proverbial walks of life - even your own! - our
contributors will reveal themselves as never before to you. The rich,
the powerful, the influential, the famous, the really smart, the
vulgar...they will all be here only at National Review Online.
Celebrities, authors, journalists, TV stars, politicians,
international statesmen, top CEOs, rock idols, will unbutton
themselves solely for your pleasure. Imaginatively invented and edited
by Alexander Rose, It's All About Me's contributors represent the
grand comedy and faintly depressing tragedy that is American life as
we know it.
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Our first contributor has been in the news a lot recently. Or should I
say, he has been the news for 40 years. But he's no has-been. You've
watched him, you've laughed with him, you're laughing at him, it's CBS
current-affairs supremo Dan Rather, who tells NRO how he lives with
himself.
As the world's hardest-working journalist, I am often approached in
the street by fans demanding to know how frequently I'm on CBS -
though they often confuse me with Kenneth Anger, who Lesley Stahl once
told me I resembled! "Kenneth, what is the frequency?", they ask,
politely but firmly, before pummeling me. Well, to use one of my
pithiest down-home Ratherisms, you're seeing me more often these days
than a Bush-voting southerner is hurricanes!
If you watch CBS Evening News, as many of America's seniors do, you'll
know that some partisan "bloggers" - Republicans too lazy to get out
of bed in the morning, I think! - are casting doubt on the veracity of
documents dating from early 2004 that conclusively prove that George
Bush is not fit to be president of the United States, unlike John
Kerry. For these people, I have one simple, direct question that you
can stick in your own Memo to File: Do you have any idea of how
important I am?
I am a world-respected reporter who bases his reporting on
unimpeachable sources and anonymous tips, not like that dilettante
Cronkite. I report. I report the decisive facts. I report, and I
decide the facts. No opinion. Just pure, unfiltered, substantive, fair
and accurate facticitude, as we used to say at Sam Houston State
Teachers College, my alma mater. As my good friend and fellow "Sam
Houstonian," James Carville, remarked over lunch at the Mile Eye Club
when the partisan political ideological forces at the Washington Post
and ABC started spreading their lies, the sacred institution of
nightly network news is the mainstay of our democracy, and has been
since the Louisiana Purchase. That's why I am called an anchor - I
provide Americans with the kind of weighty news bogged down in silt
and covered with barnacles they're crying out for in this
information-starved age. In other words, presenting 60 Minutes II is a
hallowed trust, a boon to mankind. I am that trusting boon. "Bias" is
simply not in my vocabulary. And neither is "Chandra Levy," come to
think of it.
If I were not television's most respected newsman, then why is it that
I am repeatedly asked by Les Moonves to cover the world's most
dangerous assignments? One week, I'm braving the fiery temper of
Hurricane Ivan by myself in a rowboat off Cuba; the next, I'm
literally "on-air" when I fly - with a monkey test-pilot at the
controls, if you can believe that! - the Air Force's untried,
experimental nuclear-fission jetplane somewhere over the South
Pacific. Or what about the time Andrew Heyward said at the morning
conference, after I'd proposed doing an in-depth, challenging story
about subversive CIA operations in Western Samoa in 1978, that he
wished I'd move there! And everyone else at the table agreed! I'm
sorry, pajama-clad partisans, but no other anchor could demand - and
receive - so much time off from appearing on CBS network affiliates to
get the kind of in-depth, challenging stories I'm renowned for.
Here's another tough question - the kind for which I'm justly
renowned. How is it, if my critics are right to say that "Rather has
lost it" or that "CBS stands for Counterfeit Bush Scandal," that I
have so many explosive scoops in the pipeline? I don't want to spill
any trade secrets, of course, but I'm working on two - beat that,
Shafer, you loser - blockbuster segments for 60 Minutes II! Tomorrow,
I'm flying to Abilene to liaise with an unimpeachable source who's
providing me with copies of copies of diaries written by Adolf Hitler
between 1906 and 1947. These will finally prove to the world that this
gadabout housepainter refused to take a medical exam before entering
the Imperial German army in 1914, so rendering him unfit to command
Oberkommando der Wehrmacht come 1939. I've even arranged with
world-renowned historian Hugh Trevor-Roper to consult them with me,
though he hasn't returned my calls. But my producer assures me that
Professor Michael Bellsiles, universally regarded as an expert
forensic-document examiner in the groves of academe, will be there to
authenticate them. After that, I'll be investigating the most
controversial story of my career: I can't say much now, but a secret
text, typed on a superscript-equipped 1897 model IBM Selectric, called
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion has been provided for my eyes only
by an unimpeachable and anonymous source codenamed DAVID IRVING. Its
conclusions are going to rock the world. No longer will America
believe that Lord Rothschild did not use his family's influence to
pull a few strings when he financed the Suez Canal. A few random
"bloggers" and the American public as a whole will refuse to believe
me, but CBS stands by the accuracy of its story for the moment.
Personally, I think the lack of definitive evidence disproving the
book's authenticity speaks for itself. That is the real story here.
Courage.
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Liberals Hate America!
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