A look at the long storied career of Dan Rather, 92 years old, who covered civil rights, Johnson, the Vietnam War, Nixon, Watergate, the '68 Democratic Convention (where he was famously beaten-up on the convention floor), Carter, Reagan, Iran-Contra, Bush, Clinton, Monica Lewinsky, Bush, 9/11, Cheney, Iraq & Afghanistan, Abu Ghiraib, 60 Minutes, and many other stories. He "retired" in 2004 after a story he ran on George W's spotty service record was challenged by right-wing advocates leading to a big kerfuffle, though it was later proven to be accurate.
Since then apparently he's taken to social media and is a big star on Facebook and Twitter.
During his whole career he's been accused of being "a lefty," but as we all know, reality has a distinct left-wing bias. The Roger Ailes/Rupert Murdoch right-wing "alternate reality" is powerful and influential, but wrong. When Rather was young there were only three networks, ABC, NBC and CBS, and as stated in the program "they agreed on the facts." Nowadays, it's a 'choose-your-own-reality' media landscape.
The show is timely, because the forces of truth and accuracy and fact-based reality are up against the wall this election season, and there's no guarantee that they will prevail.
Another takeaway: Republican presidencies seem to always come with ethics scandals and wars. Democratic presidencies are clean -- except for made-up scandals like Lewinsky and the Swift-boat hoax.
I was touring the internet after the show, looking up some half-remembered details, and ran across a nest of Obama haters. Wow, the overwhelming need to rewrite history among these morons is stunning.
Yes, Barack continued some bombings that he shouldn't have. That's because (I suspect) presidents have a lot less power these days than they used to, with arms manufacturers having a lot more. It seems every president since Reagan has felt some requirement to expend weapons as fast as possible. It doesn't really matter where.
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