What disappoints me about Rathergate the most is not any disillusionment I may or may not have undergone regarding Dan Rather. I never had any opinion — good or bad — about him. I’m not too much of a news-head, so I don’t have “favorites” among the newscasters.
What disappoints me is his scorn for us, his listeners. During this whole Rathergate thing, what appeared to bother him most was that we, the audience, took an active role in the news process. We listened to what he said, and then, we checked it out! For ourselves!
After we did that, we formulated our own opinions and discovered our own additional facts to support these opinions (not necessarily in that order).
I had always been taught by Mrs. Liebich, in U.S. History back in high school, that this was what intelligent people, such as she hoped we’d grow to be, did. You think about things, make your own opinions.
But Ol’ Dan, he didn’t have Mrs. Liebich for a teacher. No sirree! No, he figures it’s our job to sit there and receive his news. He is a practiced enough announcer to inflect the words such that he sounds authoritative, regardless of what he’s saying. Out here in TeeVee Land, our job, as audience members, is twofold:
- accept what he says.
- do nothing else.
We’re not all idiots, Mister Rather. Even some of us who aren’t news junkies show signs of intelligence occasionally. And now, we have a voice. A very public voice. So you watch yourself, now.
white pebble 