Cronkite’s Legacy Includes the Killing Fields of Cambodia
by Kurt SchlichterWalter Cronkite passed away a few days ago and pardon me for not joining the wailing and gnashing of teeth of the professional media mandarins. The fact is that Cronkite was an over-praised meat puppet, a doctrinaire liberal-left talking head who never once uttered a word that would have caused so much as a sigh of consternation in the Manhattan media environs he dwelled in.
Except among his loved ones, the hoopla that has accompanied his passing has nothing to do with Walter Cronkite the man and everything to do with Walter Cronkite the symbol. He symbolized a time – “The Golden Age” to hear the wistful liberals tell it – of a solid, unconquerable media monolith that passed judgment on What Is The News and defined Socially Accepted Opinion.
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Oh, those glorious days of yesteryear, when those drooling slobs without the education or breeding to live in New York and work at the Times or at one of the three networks would genuflect before their black and white TV sets every evening and await Mr. Cronkite to bestow upon them The Truth! Now (sigh), it’s chaos, with too many different media outlets and too many different opinions. It’s gotten out of (our) control!
Come back, Walter, and save us from Fox News!
It was a Golden Age, all right – a Golden Age of enforced unanimity and bogus consensus hidden behind the strained-serious face and stentorian oration of St. Walter. It was an age of media liberalism unchallenged by anything like a conservative alternative. And it was all encompassing. In recent days, many have watched the footage of Cronkite announcing the death of John F. Kennedy. But if you watch the footage for a few minutes before his genuinely moving final bulletin, you’ll hear his innuendo hinting that Kennedy has been shot by disgruntled right-wingers. It must have broken his heart to find out that JFK had been murdered by a commie loner with an affinity for Castro.
Think of the proudest moments of the heroes of the media’s “Golden Age” – the McCarthy expose, the Watergate hearings, Cronkite’s own infamous thrust of the rhetorical dagger into the back of the fighting men in Vietnam (and of the Vietnamese who hoped for freedom) that was his Tet Offensive editorial. It’s like a liberal greatest hits album. There’s nothing, nothing even remotely conservative in the pantheon – because nothing conservative would have ever even occurred to the media heroes like Cronkite, Edward R. Murrow and the rest. Their prized objectivity was really only a tool that justified their own biases and opinions – if they did it, by definition, it was “objective.”
Cronkite was supposed to be the voice of the people of Middle America, but he was really just a loud voice speaking at them. And soon after they turned and rejected the man Cronkite dubbed the smartest of presidents – Jimmy Carter!?! – and elected Ronald Reagan, he threw in the towel. He passed the torch to Dan Rather, and the sun set upon the Golden Age of Media Liberalism. For all his faults, at least Cronkite maintained a certain dignity, but Crazy Dan is a catastrophe. When Rather dies, the quickest way to find his obits will be to Google the terms “Texas Air National Guard fraud” or “What’s the frequency, Kenneth?”
The passing of Cronkite does mark the end of an era, but let’s not fool ourselves. He was human wallpaper to those of us who grew up watching him intone the news every night, a vaguely comforting presence during turbulent times for those of us too young to understand that much of what he was often passing off as the truth was the utter nonsense.
But to simply dismiss his actions ignores their very real harm, and to simply write off the superficial eulogies of the mainstream media as mere nostalgia is to underestimate their danger. In the case of Vietnam, where he and the rest of the media elders did their level best to ensure that the Vietnamese had no chance of a free future, the killing fields of Cambodia are a stark reminder of the human cost of Cronkite’s conscience. And the threat of a return to a liberal media monolith looms ahead, with petty fascists fantasizing about re-branded censorship reestablishing their monopoly on public discourse under the guise of “fairness” and “community control.”
Walter Cronkite is gone. Our condolences should go his family. But we must also speak the truth – the man was not a hero, not a saint, and let us all hope our country never again sees another man like him.
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[...] Iconic TV News Anchor Shaped the Medium and the Nation Kurt Schlichter, Big Hollywood: Cronkite’s Legacy Includes the Killing Fields of Cambodia Dick’s World: Walter Cronkite and Me Around The Sphere: And That’s the Way He Was [...]
Wonderful piece, Kurt.
I work in a newsroom, and the people there didn't appreciate me articulating these facts. Still … it has to be said.
Many nails are hit on the head.
Would Cronkite be relevant in today's world of the Internet and bloggers? He would not garner the attention he is now receiving.
Thank you Kurt. I wrote an eerily simular piece I published yesterday…http://shermansmarch.blogspot.com/
I weep no tears for the ol' Commie sympathizer…good riddance.
Thank you Kurt. I wrote an eerily simular piece published yesterday…http://shermansmarch.blogspot.com/
I weep no tears for the ol' Commie sympathizer…good riddance.
Cronkite was hired at CBS by Ledyard Blair Clark, who went on to become editor of "The Nation" magazine. Clark bragged about it. Nuff said.
Kurt, thanks for telling the truth, something rare and hard to find these days.
Cronkite was liberal hack in a transparent objective cloak which he tried to hide behind.
At that time the American people had NO choice but to listen to him.
Didn't Cronkite object to windmills near his property? Not in my back yard mentality for the libs pet windmill project? Hmmmm, imagine that, a hypocrite to boot.
He emerged from the primordial stew of liberalism, no not Berkley, but our dear ol' University of Texas. These days it's a great school with many clear-thinking non-liberal students, but the modern faculty has more akin with the old Soviet Politburo than that of any sane part of the U.S.of A. Now, U.T. of the 30's wasn't U.T. of the 70's and on but it still bears mentioning. Of course Crokite DROPPED OUT OF THE U. of TEXAS.
On the mark comments! Cronkite's Style made the man, he was in the right place at the right time and this contributed to his opportunity and his professionalism; but…to me his career will always be overshadowed by his (and CBS's) handling of Vietnam and Tet. CBS had and has a Communist leaning to its broadcast. I would point you to the book; 'Due to Circumstances Beyond our Control' where Fred Friendly took on CBS and eventually resigned because they would not handle Vietnam fairly…they ran the 'I Love Lucy Show' instead of the Tonkin Gulf Hearings…then for 20 more years CBS lied, covered up and attacked our efforts in Southeast Asia.
Cronkite projected to the American people that Tet was a complete loss to the American side while we stopped the Communists dead in their tracks; and then CBS attacked our soldiers and service with the stories of Mi Lai but did not publish or communicate the fact that the Communists were doing Mi Lai's all over Vietnam. See: http://pricegraphicarts.tripod.com/WorldWideTerro...
On the mark comments! Cronkite's Style made the man, he was in the right place at the right time and this contributed to his opportunity and his professionalism; but…to me his career will always be overshadowed by his (and CBS's) handling of Vietnam and Tet. CBS had and has a Communist leaning to its broadcast. I would point you to the book; 'Due to Circumstances Beyond our Control' where Fred Friendly took on CBS and eventually resigned because they would not handle Vietnam fairly…they ran the 'I Love Lucy Show' instead of the Tonkin Gulf Hearings…then for 20 more years CBS lied, covered up and attacked our efforts in Southeast Asia.
Cronkite projected to the American people that Tet was a complete loss to the American side while we stopped the Communists dead in their tracks; and then CBS attacked our soldiers and service with the stories of Mi Lai but did not publish or communicate the fact that the Communists were doing Mi Lai's all over Vietnam. See: http://pricegraphicarts.tripod.com/WorldWideTerro...
You guys have an "everyone is against us" complex. Truth should not have a slant either way. Somehow, now there are different brands of it, depending on what side you're on. And you think Sean Hannity is an honest guy? How about Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh and all the apologists for the Iraq war responsible for probably up to a million deaths including thousands of Amercian soldiers? They upheld the lie that was WMD. I'm surprised a military man such as yourself would support anyone who put your men in harm's way unnecessarily.
And by the way, they reported Mi Lai because we were supposed to be BETTER than that. What the hell are you fighting for if you behave like the scum that your enemy is.?
No choice, until Huntley and Brinkley came along.
I remember that well. I remember his way of dealing with the Iran hostage crisis. He was stenorian, and condescending and he made sure he colored the world in a fearful haze of America Sucks. He was the worst thing that happened to broadcasting. The man who so bravely reported WW2 devolved into a small minded, arrogant elitist who looked down on his viewers rather than tell them what was going on for the day. If anyone ever wants to hear his real opinions of this mighty country check out his 1989 speech. It was one of the biggest verbal middle fingers to the USA I have ever heard in my life. I hope he is happy now explaining himself to the dead of Vietnam because I am sure that is part of his penenance. Talking to the men he helped betray.
Yep.
mickey you are a fool.
We weren't discussing the pinkos of today who do the lock step lemming walk into the sea of unreality. We are discussing CBS and The Anti-war Mafia of the Vietnam period. It wasn't the fact that Mi Lai was reported on; it was the fact that it was all one sided reporting which ignored the mass murders of the South Vietnamese and tribal populations by the VC and the Viet Cong. The dirty little secret about war is it sucks and the soldier is the first person who is against war. He pays the highest price. But the other secret is that more people die because of this anti-war crowd who do not show a solid wall of support toward victory. When our enemies are emboldened they believe they can attain victory if they just hold on and they can win the propaganda war here in this country. Cronkite and company helped the enemy by accident or on purpose. Aid and comfort to the enemy should never be acceptable while taps still sound over brave men's graves
It takes a bit more intellect than you are displaying here to understand the larger picture being discussed. The liberals OWNED the media for about twenty five or so years beginning in the sixties and ending with the emergence of conservative talk radio on A.M. in the late 80's. A.M. was a DYING genre until Limbaugh and others revived it. What we have now is BALANCE, well sort of. Obama and the Goons will try to take us back to the "bad ol' days" of Cronkite and get beaten like a drum in 2010and 2012 for their effort. Clean out you ears and wash out your eyes, 77, SEVENTY SEVEN SENATORS VOTED TO AUTHORIZE IRAQ. It wasn't a "unilateral" GOP effort. The reliable lefties voted NAY, but the likes of Kerry and Biden voted AYE. Did these intellectual GIANTS fold under the pressure of Rush Limbaugh?
Finally someone tells the truth about "Saint Walter".
the man was not a hero, not a saint, and let us all hope our country never again sees another man like him.
Too late. Stone Philips, Brian Williams, Tom Brokaw, Katie Couric, et al.
Mickeyr, if you had never spent time with a refugee from the Khmer Rouge's brutal, inhuman insurgency, viewing his detailed paintings of the ghastly, unspeakable horrors visited upon his family and community, then you'd likely never have to lay awake at night and wish you'd never known such brutality was possible. It has yet to be portrayed or spoken of yet in film or book form, and it still haunts my darker moments.
And Uncle Walter had a direct hand in that.
As a nation, we are not perfect, but we are NOT the bad guys, Mickey. Wait until you meet the real bad guys; your juvenile imaginings will be effectively humbled.
You don't understand. At the beginning he was all gung-ho about Vietnam. Then, when it looked like Americans might actually win it, he (probably instructed) had to bring down the American side and encourage the VC. The war must go on! The betrayal is much higher and they are still in power now – getting America is useless wars that THEY profit from. You really think it is just coincidence that we keep getting involved in these futile wars with no American interest? And all based on lies. Gulf of Tonkin – exposed as a lie. Desert Storm – based on a lie from April Glaspie (and controlled by the Rumplestiltskin Wolfowitz). And as if that wasn't enough, another war in Iraq and guess who has their finger in the pie – WOLFOWITZ (and a cabal of other "dual Israeli citizens.) Again, all based on a lie. They couldn't lie their way into getting us to attack Iran for them, so instead Israel will jeopardize Americans and attack Iran and run back like the cowards they are knowing there will be AMERICAN casualties with the retaliation and thus get Americans to fight their wars AGAIN. MARK MY WORDS.
And as I had to inform Mickey, it was a courageous Huey pilot that LANDED and physically protected innocent Vietmanese from crazed G.I.'s. at My Lia. It was U.S. Army v. U.S. Army, gun to gun. We ARE BETTER THAN THAT. That Helio crew proved it, that day, as it was happening! Liberals are so myopic.
You need to adjust that colander on top of your head.
Stafford,
Don't forget the fluoridated water! They've been f'ing with our precious bodily fluids for decades!
P.O.E.
P.O.E.
P.O.E.
Standard COINTELPRO tactic.
Stafford the wind you hear is the breeze whistling between your ears. Wow that was a huge paragraph of junk you spewed,,,or regurgitated. Did it hurt?
…But we must also speak the truth – the man was not a hero, not a saint, and let us all hope our country never again sees another man like him.
This is sort of how I feel about Michael Jackson.
Yeah, but just saying "he wuz a commie!" and then drop the trail at him is sensible? How useful for the puppet masters. I guess the case is closed. Oswald acted alone, too!
What Jim said.
And another point: Hannity, O'Reilly and Limbaugh are commentators — they're on the air to share their OPINIONS on the news. Cronkite was supposed to be a news reporter — besides his being completely wrong, and the fact that he provided aid and comfort to the enemy — when Cronkite went on the air with his OPINION of the Tet Offensive, he seriously breached journalist ethics.
It's looking for you. Clinton's in it. He wants to wave his d*ck at you. Its all a LIBERAL conspiracy, nothing more. Anything else would be CRAZY, right?
Stafford,
My brother-in-law's a pretty big wheel in the Pistcataway Masonic Lodge (#536) — he told me they've got a file on you.
I think the article is over the top. I lived through the Cronkite era and don't remember it this way. Of course, I am aware that my interpretation is just that. Kurt, on the other hand, has no such awareness.
Er, ya….right….
Just to clarify, is your position that the CIA is incapable of controlling newspapers and the media or that they can and they CHOOSE not to? If you believe that, you are not only crazy, but naive to boot!
On a pure nostalgic basis it’s to bad, he was that comforting voice of the ‘60s that I grew up with, oh well. On real look Cronkite was a through and through lefty and as matter of perspective did a lot of damage to this country. His “Tet” narrative was the death nail our Vietnam efforts — right or wrong …and invariably to millions in Cambodia. His backing of Jimmy Carter, as a very smart President… ROLFL, eh…hmmm… that is opposed to Mr. Reagan, one of the best presidents in the history of the Republic. That’s not to say that Mr. Carter is dumb, he’s misguided …we’ll say. God bless, gone but not forgotten your opinions sir are finally your own.
Someone today said that because Walter resembled Walt Disney, there was instant cred, as he could do or say no wrong. Murrow on the other was was too edgy, and dangerous for the milquetoasts at black rock. I thought that was an interesting slant. The veneer is off a "legend."
Uh, broad conspiracies leave me natually skeptical. People as a species have a really tough time keeping really big secrets. We can't even keep little secrets. Now, since you seem to want to attack me personally, I won't bother to dignify the rest of your rant with a response until tomorrow when I have more time. Go play with your dinghy.
Kurt, has nailed it. Cronkite was borderline seditious in his conduct.
Everybody but MSLSD, huh? Yep, every night, my parents were locked onto a black and white TV like zombies, ZOMBIES, I tell you. It was horrible. Dad sat there, mindlessly drinking a ……….BEER! Good Lord, I should have known it then. Mom, doing the governments' bidding, night after night by……making DINNER!!! Oh, the humanity! I think it was meatloaf, again. If we had only known of the insidious plots against us. There I was, thinking of ways to get out of doing my 4th grade homework playing with Hot Wheels, tools of the capitialist military-industrial complex. Why wasn't I reading Marx? I feel so used. Daydreaming of 68 Mustangs, 427 AC Cobras and the Gemini/Apollo missions when I COULD HAVE BEEN MAKING CARDBOARD CUT-OUTS OF CHE GUEVARA and doing community organizing in downtown Chicago. They put those images in my head. That's it, I am suing my parents. Thank God I was made aware of this in time. You have done your country a great service.
Is he the "Grand MucketyMuck"? Cool!
Truth: the same set of facts can be perceived completely differently by two people. How one interprets the facts is impacted by that perception including their own beliefs and views. To use your own example: As a liberal, you assume Bush knew "there were no weapons of WMD's to be found in Iraq" and deliberately mislead the public to achieve his specific agenda. Others might assume he couldn't be sure about the WMD's, but decided America could not take a chance on being wrong.
As a liberal, you are probably willing to give Al Gore the benefit of the doubt that even though it has been proven he greatly exaggerated statements as being factual in his documentary "An Inconvenient Truth", he did so only because he couldn't take a chance with earth hanging in the balance. Other more skeptical folks might feel he did so to break big oil and make a bunch of money on his own investments in alternative energy source. . . and so on and so on. Who you give the benefit of the doubt to depends on who you want to believe.
I have it on good authority that Stafford faked the moon landing in his backyard one night while smoking peyote and chanting loudly.
BTW, Stafford–all your IPs are belong to us. We know who you are and where you live. That black helicopter overhead? Cheney is in it, and he hasn't been hunting in a loooong time…
4th Degree Grand MucketyMuck! He's on the Secret Handshake Committee and is the New Jersey Delegate to the annual World Domination Meeting and Fish Fry.
"juvenile imaginings" ……..
hyper-accurate Joan but, much too kind.
They probably cause all the minuses Stafford gets too. And the fact that he lives in his mother's basement and hasn't seen the sun in 47 years.
I have blackmail photos of him picking his feet in Poughkeepsie.
Uncle Walter the most trusted man in America reported that the Viet-Cong were still strong after the Battles of TET in 1968 and that the War was Lost at Worst or a Stalemate at Best. Of course the truth was the VC were Annihilated they took a Tremendous Beating. That years later the North Vietnamese Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap the Architect of the NVA Order of Battle said "We lost the Battle of TET in the Field. We knew it ,You knew it and We knew you knew it but We Won it in the Press" Uncle Walter and those like Him had done their work . To many he was a Giant in his field to me he was just another Useful Idiot and a Chronicler of History and a very very biased one at that.
Yep, the liberals could control the media with their black helicopters, right? This guy is a LOON!
BTW, can you link me to to the official Act of War that Congress passed to make this war legal? Or are you ignoring the Constitution?
You mean Jamesb.
Carter is definitely misguided but he is dumb, mean-spirited, bigoted, the very definition of a poor loser, insensitive to the plight of a great deal of the world and narrow minded. But those are his good points and I am not here to praise the Pariah of Plains. So if Cronkite backed him as a very smart President what more does that say about good ol' Walt?????
Wow do I LOVE coming here..so many like minded people! I just could find no sorrow in heart to weep at this commies passing. For that alone though I am sorry.
What was I taught? Hmmmm. Well, for one, we never had teachers pontificating about factless conspiracy theories. I was not subjected to lectures on the Gay African-Hispanic Lowrider through History. I don't remember the lecture on Community Organizing, Kenya and You. Sorry, I was listening to the World Series with an ear-bud on a transistor radio. If it makes you feel any better, I got my knuckles rapped pretty good when Sister Priscilla found me out during Game 6.
You referencing Obama? Why? And I was replying to jamesb
Walter Cronkite was a tool of the CIA, who then instructed him to go against the war just for the sake of continuing it? Are you trying to sound like a conspiracy theorist caricature, or are you genuinely insane? I suppose you also think the world is secretly run by the Trilateral Commission or one of those other alleged circles. Obviously, some wars are started for less than noble reasons, but to suggest Vietnam, Desert Storm and Iraq are included in that category is beyond ludicrous, and the sad thing is that you are so far off the deep end you will probably never realize that. Now go put some more aluminum foil on your head and blog about Skull and Bones or something, and if I see anymore shaded anti-Semitic references on your part, I will report you.
For all the words spent on Vietnam, this doesn't get talked about enough, the almost-incredible brutality of the agrarian Marxist Khmer Rouge. In 1975, William Safire said:
"In all human history nothing has taken place quite like the emptying of Phnom Penh. Sennacherib destroyed Babylon, the Romans sacked Carthage, and Hitler's bombers leveled Guernica, but in every case the attacker was destroying a particular city, not the idea of a city itself. A city is civilization; a civilization is diversity and creativity, which needs personal freedom; Communism is by its nature anti-city, anti-civilization, anti-freedom. The Khmer Rouge understand this; too many Americans do not."
You forgot to tell him we have Elvis.
Let's just put it this way. The sole remnants of the reporting 'style" that he engendered is practiced by the BBC. I hope that the BBC dies too, and by the way my condolences to the Cronkite Family.
RobShaw
*cough*"Death knell"*cough*
Amen Brother…. Right on the mark…That rat bastard sold out the country and the US Military..
I liked his coverage of the JFK assassination and the Moon landing, but when he declared Vietnam lost, he definitely crossed a line. It was also stupid–we won the Tet Offensive, and we were winning the war. That editorial will be a black stain on his reputation for me, and for the entire media elite.
Cronkite's betrayal of America should never be forgiven because the man never once acknowledged his betrayal nor asked for forgiveness. I would have forgiven him instantly had he but once admitted what he'd done – but he went to his grave without doing that and thus deserves the condemnation he is now receiving.
What scares me most is how dearly I loved that man. He was so comforting, I trusted him, I had faith in him. I suppose that is why the anger is so intense. It's suffused with fear. No traitor is as deadly as one whom you believe to be your friend.
"At that time the American people had NO choice but to listen to him."
My history of network news anchors isn't exactly encyclopedic, but they actually had at least THREE choices. NBC and ABC both had nighttime newscasts running around the same time. In fact, I'm reasonably certain that ABC's Cronkite-equivalent, Howard K. Smith, took a "conservative" pro-Vietnam stance as openly and editorial-esque as Cronkite's "liberal" one. (Wikipedia, though I don't regard it as a credible source, claims that he used the Neville Chamberlain allegory to argue in favor of the war… if thats true, GEE, how things have changed, huh?)
You can spin it however you like and pretend that we might've stayed (and "won") that war if not for this early example of the eeeeeeevil media conspiracy – but the fact is, Cronkite's stance resonated because an eventual majority of people AGREED with him, not the other way around.
Neither do I. I was much too young. I do remember a great many parents disliked him for these very reasons. Given the eventual historical context, Kurt's points are quite valid and widely shared.
" It wasn't the fact that Mi Lai was reported on; it was the fact that it was all one sided reporting which ignored the mass murders of the South Vietnamese and tribal populations by the VC and the Viet Cong."
Is it worth pointing out that the fact that the Viet Cong was committing war atrocities didn't really qualify as "news" (i.e. "stuff you might not know") whereas American soldiers doing so kinda did?
[...] Read all of Kurt’s piece, it’s like smelling coffee in the morning. Filed under: Wisdom of the Ages Article tags: Walter Cronkite, What Liberal Media? [...]
Y'know what, Stafford?
I'm probably against 90% of the wars you are, were or will be against… and that makes me feel dirty.
Guys like you make me want to convert to Judaism just so I can feel MORE justified in despising you and your ilk. You give everything you claim to support a bad name, up to and including ACTUAL neo-nazis who're at least HONEST about being scumbags.
I suppose I should be amazed that Big Hollywood made it all the way through the weekend before predictably trotting this out…
"What scares me most is how dearly I loved that man. He was so comforting, I trusted him, I had faith in him. I suppose that is why the anger is so intense"
So true……
[...] Read More: July 20th, 2009 | Tags: Big Hollywood, Cronkite, Killing Fields of Cambodia | Category: Left all the way | Leave a comment [...]
I won't go so far as to label him a communist. I don't believe that to be true. He was a useful idiot. Perhaps, one of the most influential ever.
Which makes me want to go OK…Walter you were so brave. Like a certain man I know who was 22 when he had to fly missions like those you called in sick to. But this guy couldn't call in sick. He had to go. He didn't have a choice. Walter Cronkeit, tool.
OK I know the CIA is getting a lot of flack lately but how do they get involved in this? How does one square that conspiracy?
Gotta add..any one who is Anti Semetic or makes statemenst like that immediatly loses all credibility. Sorry Stafford but you lose. By your third reich inspired rhetoric. The left has a problem with anti semetism and Stafford is a good example.
You mean you honestly can't grasp the very simple concept that governments benefit from war – even after it was made so accessbile to you by Orwell? What part of this is confusing you? What has our own government benefitted by war? Some thing are very obvious. More power to spy on you, more of your money, more of your life spent wasted slaving away for government, INCOME TAX, INCOME TAX WITHHOLDING ( you know, that "temporary" measure), mandatory conscription (how they get around the 13th Amendment on that I will never know), etc….
I can see you are already programmed to have a blind spot to a certain group being involved despite the very obvious string of names like Krauthammer, Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, ,,,oh and let's not forget the ROTHCHILDS.
You have some serious problems. Maybe you should open your mind to the lies you have been told….
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_a...
You have some serious problems. Maybe you should open your mind to the lies you have been told….
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_a...
BTW, are Zionists "scumbags"?
It's best to remember the factionalization of the Democratic Party in the late 1960s over Vietnam, and the fact that the big media folks of the day were in very large part still enamored with Camelot and with the thought of putting a Kennedy — in this case, Senator Bobby — into the White House. That played no small role in Cronkite's post-Tet commentary, since by then Eugene McCarthy had shown LBJ was vulnerable, and in the wake of the New Hampshire primary results, Kennedy had jumped into the fray at a time when most primaries still were held after the end of March.
I had a chance in the mid 1970s to hear Walter off-camera at an Overseas Press Club dinner I went to with my father, and you could not hear that speech and not realize how liberal Cronkite was. But this was still at a time when even a detested president like Nixon wasn't doing all that much to roll back the FDR-LBJ social programs — the big fight with Nixon was over foreign policy and long-held hatred dating from the Alger Hiss kerfuffle. So Cronkite could exist in a world where it was easier to display the veneer of non-partisanship, because most of the things were going the left's way.
Bernie Goldberg had it right on O'Reilly on Monday night, when he said Reagan's election and two terms were what really set the left off, because the media tried to paint him as both another Nixon and a lunatic who would blow up the world, in the run-up to the 1980 election, and it failed to work, as did their efforts to tear him down between 1981-88. It was only Cronkite's forced retirement in 1981 by Bill Paley in favor of Dan Rather that prevented Walter from being seen in a far different light, in terms of how his CBS Evening News would have handled covering the Reagan Administration (hint — pretty much the exact same as the Dan Rather CBS Evening News did over the next eight years).
Didn't have a choice. Great example of "freedom" eh? Gotta go murder for the bankers!
Uhh, Staphy, you forgot to tell us how Israel, the Mossad and Goldman-Sachs is involved in all of this.
Really, so do anti-Palestinian statements carry the same weight?
Another dinosaur has passed. Walter lived in a mileau which allowed him to present his elitist world-view as "The way it is." Thankfully, Olberman, Matthews, and Cooper can't pull it off anymore.
"BTW, are Zionists "scumbags"?
No, they are not.
I'll tell you why you should feel some grief for Mr. Cronkite's passing: because it is a matter of common decency. When anyone of great stature dies, whether their greatness is for the better or for the worse, a moment of clarity needs to be taken to examine their legacy, but it is not in the interests of most people to, how should I say it, have dirt thrown into their eyes. Personally, I didn't like President Reagan, but when he died, I didn't show this kind of venom at his memory because it was the decent thing to honor his memory. Reagan's death didn't particularly change my opinion of him in the least, but I held back and mourned the loss. I did so out of respect for common decency. That's what good people do: they show respect to the mourners and ask questions later.
This is sort of how I feel about Michael Jackson.
Thank you for your sensible, albeit cynical, perspective. But keep in mind CBS and all news media, for that matter, are simply propaganda centers for CIA. Look up "Operation Mockingbird."
It takes a bit more intellect than you are displaying here to understand the larger picture being discussed. The liberals OWNED the media for about twenty five or so years beginning in the sixties and ending with the emergence of conservative talk radio on A.M. in the late 80's. A.M. radio was a DYING genre until Limbaugh and others revived it. What we have now is BALANCE, well sort of. Obama and the Goons will try to take us back to the "bad ol' days" of Cronkite and get beaten like a drum in 2010and 2012 for their effort. Clean out you ears and wash out your eyes, 77, SEVENTY SEVEN SENATORS VOTED TO AUTHORIZE IRAQ. It wasn't a "unilateral" GOP effort. The reliable lefties voted NAY, but the likes of Kerry and Biden voted AYE. Did these intellectual GIANTS fold under the pressure of Rush Limbaugh? Your argument is weak and reasoning flawed. By the way a helicopter pilot (W.O Hugh Thompson) and his crew saw what was happening at My Lai, courageously and correctly interviened and made an OFFICIAL REPORT. It wasn't frigging CBS that were the "hero" in that sordid tale. There are books on the subject, go get one and read it.
[...] Related: Of course, you have to break a few omlettes to immanentize the eschaton. Filed under: Liberal Fascism, Oh, That Liberal Media!, The Future and [...]
OK, then you can look up "Operation Loony Tunes". JUST KIDDING!!!!!
There is a "black helio" hovering out back though!
I am just glad Cronkite didn't offer his commentary after D-Day or the Battle of the Bulge.
For an expanded take you can read my version, published yesterday at <a href=”http://shermansmarch.blogspot.com/” target=”_blank”>http://shermansmarch.blogspot.com/
I hold Cronkite personally responsible for giving the world the impression that the U.S. was a "Paper Tiger" that would "cut and run" when pressed. We are still fighting that image. The Viet Cong and N.V.A. were simultaniously fighting an asymmetrical war to complement their uniformed ground and air forces. That asymmetry is exactly what we face today, the forces of radical Islam are certain they can "outlast" us, like the Commies did in Vietnam. Thanks Walt! You a POS, and "That's the way it REALLY is!".
My dad was in Vietnam during TET, so I read that obit with quiet satisfaction. I'm certain I'm not alone.
"When anyone of great stature dies, whether their greatness is for the better or for the worse, a moment of clarity needs to be taken to examine their legacy…"
***Hate to break it to you Lawrence, but examining Cronkite's legacy is exactly what most of the people here are doing. Open your eyes and mind and think abut what people are writing.
"Personally, I didn't like President Reagan, but when he died, I didn't show this kind of venom at his memory because it was the decent thing to honor his memory. "*** Wonderful. Good for you.
"Reagan's death didn't particularly change my opinion of him in the least…"
***And I am sure Cronkite's death hasn't changed anyone's opinion either.
"I did so out of respect for common decency. That's what good people do: they show respect to the mourners and ask questions later."
***That's what "good people" do? First, who are YOU to insinuate that the posters of differing opinions than your own are not "good people"? Liberals seem to believe that only THEY are "good people", and anyone who has a different opinion is not "good people". No one here has said anything about Cronkite being a nasty, evil man; a drunk, or any other personal insults. Several people have commented on his "comforting" persona. It was his POLITICS, and his BIAS when he was projected to be this objective demi-god of news that people are commenting about here.
You liberals try to describe every opposing opinion as some sort of mean-spirited, "personal" attack on someone, when in fact it is simply an opinion different than your own. This tactic only serves to weaken your arguments, and make you look less "objective" than you believe yourselves to be.
"We can't even keep little secrets." That is what the CIA does for a living.
BTW, it was you attacking me personally first. Now you scamper off like a coward.
No doubt it is uncomfortable facing a reality different than the one you have been taught.
Carter is definitely misguided but he is also dumb, mean-spirited, bigoted, the very definition of a sore loser, insensitive to the plight of a great deal of the world and narrow minded. But those are his good points and I am not here to praise the Pariah of Plains. So if Cronkite backed him as a very smart President what more does that say about good ol' Walt?????
yeah, but he got found out when he forgot to blank out the word "FRISBEE" on his lunar lander. The whiffle ball bat in the background was a dead giveaway. You can see it if you look at it frame-by-frame.
Thank you for saying this, since for all the words spent on Vietnam, this doesn't get talked about enough, the incredible brutality of the agrarian Marxist Khmer Rouge. In 1975, William Safire said:
"In all human history nothing has taken place quite like the emptying of Phnom Penh. Sennacherib destroyed Babylon, the Romans sacked Carthage, and Hitler's bombers leveled Guernica, but in every case the attacker was destroying a particular city, not the idea of a city itself. A city is civilization; a civilization is diversity and creativity, which needs personal freedom; Communism is by its nature anti-city, anti-civilization, anti-freedom. The Khmer Rouge understand this; too many Americans do not."
A great many things seem to zoom over your cranium. Unhindered even by the grasping appendage.
Thank God somebody said it.
Walter Cronkite was a fraud, a Communist masquerading as the voice of Objectivity. After he retired, he let it all hang out, but by then nobody cared that the truth had been tortured to death under his reign.
I'm surprised the MSM hasn't requested a state funeral for him. Or at least a gigantic stadium memorial service. I'm sure Magic and Kobe can think of something to say about him. Did Uncle Walter eat fried chicken? (that was the greatest moment of Magic Johnson's life. Uh huh.)
Before waxing nostalgic about Cronkite's brave reporting. Both he and Andy Rooney were reporting for Star and Stripes during WW II. Story goes that both were required to go on a B-17 mission and report factually, on the spot. Rooney made the trip and, obviously, survived. Cronkite called in sick. Many years ago, the father of a friend mine who was a B-25 pilot during the war, repeated that story.
He could call Ghostbusters…
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