Why I can’t rouse myself to mourn Cronkite’s passing
Bookworm on Jul 18 2009 at 1:55 pm | Filed under: Media matters
I grew up watching Walter Cronkite. He was a fixture on the TV in my household and, in our little world, had a great deal of credibility. Had he died 20 years ago, I would have mourned him sincerely as the passing of a childhood icon. I know better now, though.
While I send my sincere condolences to Cronkite’s family and friends — those who actually knew and loved the man — I can’t be bothered to get very excited about his death. He is, after all, the person who, single-handedly, through a combination of hubris and ignorance, damaged America in ways that still resonate almost forty years after the fact. From John Podhoretz:
Cronkite was a key figure in many ways, but foremost among them, perhaps, was the fact that he cleared the way for the mainstream media and the Establishment to join what Lionel Trilling called “the adversary culture.” Cronkite, the gravelly voice of accepted American wisdom, whose comportment suggested he kept his money in bonds and would never even have considered exceeding the speed limit, devastated President Lyndon Johnson in the wake of the 1968 Tet Offensive by declaring that the United States “was mired in stalemate” in Vietnam—when Johnson knew that Tet had been a military triumph.
This on-air editorial, spoken during the most-watched newscast in the country when that meant 30 million people were watching (as opposed to 7 million today, with the nation having added more than 100 million in population), was a transformational moment in American history.
“If I’ve lost Cronkite,” Johnson was reputed to have said, “I’ve lost middle America,” and shortly thereafter he announced he would not run for reelection. This was a mark of Johnson’s own poor political instincts—a president who thought a rich and powerful anchorman living the high life in New York city was the voice of the silent majority was a man out of touch with reality—but it was a leading indicator of how the media were changing. Cronkite didn’t know what he was talking about when it came to Tet, as the late Peter Braestrup demonstrated in his colossal expose of the scandalous media coverage of the battle, Big Story. But he knew that among the people who mattered to him, and who were the leading edge of ideological fashion, Tet was a failure because the war in Vietnam was bad, and he took to the airwaves to say so.
Related posts:
Email This Post To A Friend
15 Responses to “Why I can’t rouse myself to mourn Cronkite’s passing”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
The world gobbles up blood libels against Israel (with update)…
Most of the world’s media members, if asked, would undoubtedly identify themselves as sophisticates, who are too cynical and world-weary to take anything at face value. Their mental self-image almost certainly falls somewhere between wise-cracking Car…
I have to say I’m with you on this, Book. The man shamed himself and sided with America’s enemies too many times to merit more than a shrug from me.
Once again we’ll see the media fellating itself with the usual frenzy of post-mortem fluff about what a great journalist he was and how he inspired today’s generation of sober, thoughtful, objective, ethical, highly educated, hard-hitting reporters.
I miss Karl Malden, a true journeyman, and Billy May, a great salesman and entertainer, far more than the blowhard Cronkite or the pedophile Jackson. Sadly, my most accurate instrument for measuring the worth of somebody who has died is to watch how much the media fawn over him. The greater the fawning, the less the loss to the rest of us.
Since Cronkite every TV talking head has aspired, not to be the very best journalist or reporter, but to be the next Walter Cronkite.
I was partial to David Brinkley. Once he passed on I stopped watching This Week. It was no longer worth the time.
Brinkley was worth mourning. Cronkite? Not so much.
“One shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.”
“If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all”.
So…silence should probably suffice, but even though – like Book – I deeply resent his role in proclaiming the Tet Offensive as an American failure, even a broken clock is right twice a day. So here’s my recognition of what he was – at least once upon a time. You do have to wonder what changed him… Who knows – maybe _this_ is what changed him!
http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2009/07/life-long-cure-for-constipation-walter.html
Cronkie left millions of bodies in Vietnam and Cambodia, due to his influences on American politics and perception.
He should have been put in a mass grave as well, but he wasn’t, because he was born in the US, not in Cambodia or Vietnam.
Thank you, YM…that was very well said. Journalistic opinions have real-life consequences for which said journalists should be held responsible. I shall not mourn at Cronkite’s grave.
Hanoi Walt (end of message).
The Nasty face of reality here
We then started hearing of many atrocities being committed. (After Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge on 16 April 1975, as many as four million Cambodians were slain by the victors over the next two years.) The Khmer Rouge would get on the single sideband radios that had been part of the military network. After the Americans had made the evacuation in Eagle Pull, the Khmer Rouge would get on the radio and hold the key so you could hear the office people being tortured and murdered on the air. . .
Unlike Vietnam, the Cambodians could have held out. We, the advisors, were told we could supply the Cambodian army as long as they could fight. That’s what we told them. After we evacuated the country, that order was rescinded.
The French died at Dien Bien Phu. They were soundly defeated but they fought and we just went out the back door.
We, the advisors who had lived with these people, sometimes for years, had to sit there and listn to them on the radio calling to us, saying, “Where are our supplies? We’re still fighting. We’re holding out.”
Finally they ran out of ammunition. That’s the only thing that made many of these people surrender and then they were executed by the Khmer Rouge.
One of the last transmissions — the last transmission I ever heard out of Cambodia — was a Cambodian colonel, just before they killed him. You could hear them breaking down the door. You could hear him say, “Vous les Americains Sont Pires que les Francais.” — you Americans are worse than the French.
That’s only a small taste of what people like Cronkite and Spark helped along. Only a small portion. If you can stomach the full goods, click the link and read.
Danny, there are plenty of Leftists, like Helen or Book/Neo’s friends, that talk about American sins and evil.
In truth, they don’t know what the hell they are talking about. They would puke their waffles and their Green Whole Foods Breakfast if they ever knew the reality, if somebody forced them to see and hear.
But nobody does it. Everybody’s polite, intimidated by Leftist ideological purity and fervor. Hrumph. Their fervour may match my own: may.
I swear our children are being indoctrinated in elementary school to focus on American sins as being uniquely evil in the world. This indoctrination can only come from the teachers, via an endemic hatred-of-America cultural mindset within the administration and teaching staffs. Across most of this country.
A friend of a friend is an elementary school teacher, and she’s a flaming lib. Sometimes I want to ask her, “*ARE* you deliberately indoctrinating our kids into the idea that America is uniquely evil, that we have more to blame for, more to apologize for, than the rest of the world?” Sometimes I wonder what her response would actually be.
“Had he died 20 years ago, I would have mourned him sincerely as the passing of a childhood icon. I know better now, though.”
Amen to that; especially the “I know better now, though” part.
No wonder I feel at home here – I kind of thought I was the only one!
When I read the news of Uncle Walter’s passing (in Kenya’s national newspaper), I said to Gail “I’m sorry for his loved ones’ loss, but I feel no pain whatever at his passing.”
He harmed our country too much for me to mourn him, however good a father and grandfather he may have been. And that harm grew out of his own hubris, I believe — what connection to the military and its men and women did he cultivate – in order to get a balanced view of what they were about? It always looked to me like his “reporting” was informed more by his own prejudices…his own “experience” as Sotomayor might say….than by any actual knowledge of what he was talking about.
And that’s (just) the way it is…….
Cronkite said that even if Tet had turned out to be a victory for the US, that the US would ultimately lose against the Vietnamese (because we deserved to lose).
See, Cronkite didn’t care about objectivity or the truth. He told Americans what they feared was true, that this was a pointless war. And he convinced them it was pointless. To the point where Democrats could cut funding without a worry in the world, as they left untold millions of women and children to be murdered, tortured, and starved to death.
I will never forgive the Democrats, even if this was the only crime against humanity on their hands. This isn’t just “politics” to me. This was never about just a “disagreement” between two political visions for America. This was and is about life and death, just as the Dems themselves know it is. Their life for everybody else’s.
Ymarsakar:
That reminds me of a short “conversation” that I had with a fellow classmate in graduate school just a few years ago. He was an aging-hippie type (Sorry, for that comment; but as one who is balding himself, there is something funny/disturbing about a balding man with a pony tail), somehow or other the conversation in class turned to protesting etc. He made the comment that protesting certainly does make a difference and used the example:
I pointed out to him that we did NOT end the war in Vietnam, what we ended was the U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia; that the war and the killings only got worse and continued long after we were gone. Of, course, this only lead to an end of the discussion as he then turned it into a personal attack with:
After telling him that I debate about issues, not about individuals; and other classmates pointed out that I have an educational bakcground in Chinese and lived in the Far East for several years he did apologize; but the conversation was effectively over. I guess some just cannot face facts.
Well, what do you know?
I’ll be brutally honest here. Those with uncertain stomachs, don’t read further.
What do I know? What I know is that the only guaranteed way to make you understand what went on in Vietnam is to personally slaughter every single individual that you have ever cared about with my own bare hands, in front of your eyes.
Then you will understand the situation you helped to create. Then you will comprehend hate.
But you know what, you’re not worth it. What you believe or think isn’t worth getting the blood of children, infants and girls, on my hands. But it was worth it to you and Cronkite, wasn’t it. You mass murdering serial killers. Your vision of what was “right” fully justified helping in the slaughter.
Just as I would not lose a night of sleep over executing a serial killer or mass rapist, neither would I feel the same for the likes of Cronkite. All that would matter would be issues of legality, not issues of conscience.
Like I said before. Everyone you ever cared about. Then you’ll come close to understanding.