Missing dinner with Walter Cronkite

Thanks Pam.

I wasn't quite the news junkie you were, but that is the way it was.

And I LOVED "You were there." I totally forgot about it until you mentioned it.  

Stormie
Religious beliefs are not a basis upon which to affirm or deny civil rights.

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by: StormWalker @ Sat Jul 18, 2009 at 07:59:03 AM CDT

Remembering Walter

I remember watching all the coverage of the JFK assassination all three days of sitting on the floor in front of the TV my mom even let me eat my lunch in the living room, A very big deal at that day and age.

I also remember watching all the early space flights on TV and of course "You are there" In some ways the History channel owes a lot to Walter.

Many others have written about the impact of his commentary after the TET Offensive. Not to get political here but it was significant and showed how much he was trusted as a Newsman. He and David Brinkley are the reason I am so interested in both history and news.  

"So long and goodnight"

 

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by: WackoTheSane @ Sat Jul 18, 2009 at 08:28:56 AM CDT

Fellow news junkie here

(well, DUH...)

This is a GREAT post and wonderful tribute to a reporter of incomparable integrity, honesty and gravitas.

He always seemed so REAL and friendly, like he was telling ME the news of the day- and I never ever doubted the words or wondered about the slant/ angle of his reporting. Like so very many, I watched his final broadcast with such sadness and like you, Pam, I remember the "You Are There".

But then again, I'm nostalgic about ABC's "Schoolhouse Rock" series. ;)

It's sad to know that the generations after ours will not know what it was like to turn on the news every evening (pre-cable or Internet) to watch him and believe every word.

RIP, Mr. Cronkite and many thanks.

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by: Louise @ Sat Jul 18, 2009 at 08:30:15 AM CDT

Great post!

Yes, I remember him well. I don't remember the moon landing, but watching clips of his coverage are touching. He was very human, empathetic and lovely in all his coverage while setting the standard for integrity.

He was a good man who lived a good life and seemed to want others to do so as well, by being informed about what was happening in the world around them. He provided context for the news and broke it down. He seemed to think that knowledge is power and should be freely shared and not hoarded. I'm so glad we knew him such as we did.

Educate me.

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by: BethCA66 @ Sat Jul 18, 2009 at 08:44:06 AM CDT

You Are There

I remember "You Are There"  We were stationed in Japan at the time and all we got was Japanese television (with some American programing - "The Rat Patrol" with the Germans speaking German and the Americans speaking Japanese and "Batman" with the Caped Crusader and the Boy Wonder both speaking Japanese are two I remember) and Armed Forces Radio.  Every Saturday morning was a series of radio plays and "You are There" was one of my favorites.  

I can still remember the intro music with the French horns and Cronkite's lovely voice.

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by: Zorya @ Sat Jul 18, 2009 at 10:22:06 AM CDT

Watching all the long faces and crocodile tears....

...of the moral and intellectual midgets on television news these days talk about Cronkite is beyond irritating. Most of them are so young that they never got to watch Walter or Edward R. Murrow treat news the way it should be treated, with dignity and gravitas.

Interesting to see that Dan Rather, after a long period of virtual blacklisting by the news organizations, is finally re-emerging as a spokesman on some cable shows.

And to have to sit through the chumminess, joking around and self congratulatory BS that passes for news these days is sickening...

We miss you Walter!

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by: wagonjak @ Sat Jul 18, 2009 at 11:35:42 AM CDT

Once "the news" was a great meal...

...now it's more often a stomach ache of overindulged junk food.

People like Cronkite served us, so to speak, the news; most today are simply parasites upon it. To channel surf through their saturation coverage of whatever....Michael Jackson's life and death is the scoop de jour....is like watching maggots feed on a corpse....if the subject is lucky enough [in this context] to actually be dead. Aging, dowdy, stereotypically "unattractive" Scot/Brit spinster who's never even been kissed but has a beautiful voice cracks a bit under publicity/performing strain? Faster Pussycat, Kill Kill Kill!!!

A few nights ago, Tavis Smiley asked a fascinating Larry King [who, as I noted in Louise's earlier thread, is much more pro gay than some think] how CNN, which didn't, of course exist then, might have covered the JFK assassination. King said he bet they'd do a solid year of stories about it.

There's probably been a study or two done on the effect on those who were of age of Kennedy's assassination. I recall reading that after FDR died of natural causes, visits to psychiatrists suddenly went up. I was in high school speech class when it was announced over the school PA that he'd been shot triggering days of collective cognitive dissonance...while in Texas, where today they're still raiding gay bars, some students applauded the announcement. [Yes, there are good people everywhere and many in Texas have worked hard to make it a better place but....]

Because it is so imprinted on my psyche, I simply can't remember if we were let out of school early so that I might have gotten home in time to see Cronkite announced his death real time, or if I saw a replay a little later. But I do vividly remember the days of entirely justified saturation coverage by the Big Three networks then. I did experience the mental whiplash of seeing Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald real time, the indelible funeral... the black and white image of Jackie's face through the black veil that could have been carved by Michelangelo....John-John saluting as his father's coffin passed [tho, turning 3 the same day, not understanding what he was seeing]....the mindboggling wave of heads of state who walked in the procession.

CBS replayed an interview with Cronkite in his 80s still choking up when recalling it, then saying wistfully, "Anchorman shouldn't cry."

Our generation knew it had been changed forever somehow, but we didn't know that five years later our concepts of reasonable expectation and justice would drown a second and third time in blood.

Once upon a time, a fiction writer would have been mocked for the melodrama of two world-renown symbols of hope, already historically bound together, being murdered within two months of each other.

The writer would have been accused of indecency for putting the announcement of the assassination of the first in the mouth of he who would be second. But it's true that Robert Kennedy was the one who told a crowd of black supporters of his campaign for President in Indianapolis who had not yet heard that "I have bad news for you, for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world, and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and killed tonight."

Looking back at that, I was reminded of another aspect unimaginable today. The Kennedy brothers were far from saints in many ways, but they were of a kind that simply don't exist in American public life today.

In the midst of his shocking announcement, alternating between moving and too-New England formal, after reminding them that, "I had a member of my family killed," ...without benefit of an iPhone to have Googled it, without benefit of a teleprompter from which to read it...HE QUOTED AESCHYLUS!

"Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."

He misremembered one word of the English translation, but HE QUOTED AESCHYLUS!

By the time we saw Coretta Scott King, regal and inspiring in her own black mourning veil, the networks were broadcasting in color. RFK had called her after his extemporaneous eulogy in Indianapolis, offered to send a plane to bring Dr. King's body from Memphis to Atlanta, and was one of the few whites to attend his funeral.

Two months later, it would be his widow we helped mourn...all to the narration of Walter Cronkite.

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by: Michael Bedwell @ Sat Jul 18, 2009 at 11:39:29 AM CDT

I was trying to figure out who I thought were journalist closest to Cronkite standard

Christine Amanpour, Fareed Zakaria, Gwen Iffil, I had hopes for Chuck Todd, but MSNBC has him filling time with such SHLOCK, that he is going to become just average, if he doesn't watch out.
For those to young to remember NEWS was just a half hour long, once a day. The crap filling 24 hours everyday, probably would have made Cronkite less than we remember him too.
I got really angry last night here, when immediately someone chose to slash and burn Cronkite for no apparent reason, except maybe they thought it amusing, or cool.
The same happened immediately after Michael Jackson...almost within minutes. Jackson was damaged goods, and odd, but I wish Blenders could hold off trashing someone, while people grieve a few hours or a day.
Certainly that isn't asking more than you'd do in the offline life. The anonymity brings out an ugly strain concerning recently dead people. Civility here is to mirror a coffeehouse, is this what you'd say face to face with someone?

"race, taste. and History finally overcome....and you ain't there"
by Tony Kushner

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by: peteyPornpig @ Sat Jul 18, 2009 at 14:04:11 PM CDT

Walter Cronkite: An appreciation Today's news owes him more than you think

Found this on the Countdown site.  Olbermann makes some good points

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31...

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by: Zorya @ Sat Jul 18, 2009 at 14:43:53 PM CDT

Someone Should Start a Wall Of Shame....

For the sickening bunch of clowns and sycophants in both the "news" royalty and the pundit class these days. They all fall pathetically short of level of competence set by Walter Cronkite.

...feel free to add your own names to this sadly incomplete list

Chris Wallace, Juan Williams, John King, Chris Matthews, David Gregory, Gloria Borger, Andrea Mitchell, Lynn Sweet, Rick Sanchez, Chip Reid, Monica Novatney, Nora O'Donnell, Tony Hall, Contessa Brewer, Tamra Hall, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brrzezinski, Dana Bash, Alex Witt, Nora O'Donnell, Cokie Roberts, George Stephanopoulos, the "Beltway Bitches" Morton Konbdracke and Fred Barnes...

Billy Kristol, Laura Ingraham, Pat Buchanan, Jake Tapper, Dana Milbank, Ed Henry, Chip Reid, David Brooks, David Broder, Richard Cohen, Krauthammer, Howard Fineman, George Will, Chris Cilizza, Cal Thomas, Oliver North, Jane Hall....

...and yeah, I watch and listen to way too much news...

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by: wagonjak @ Sat Jul 18, 2009 at 16:44:29 PM CDT

We do too

and rather than elevate to a wall, may I suggest instead a walkway?

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by: Louise @ Sat Jul 18, 2009 at 16:55:50 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

glad you named Nora ODIOUS twice, which she deeply deserves.

she gives me gas

"race, taste. and History finally overcome....and you ain't there"
by Tony Kushner

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by: peteyPornpig @ Sat Jul 18, 2009 at 17:30:45 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Turn it off.

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by: Pollyanna @ Sat Jul 18, 2009 at 19:37:59 PM CDT

[ Parent ]