Rather Scary
When I read Bernie Goldberg’s book, “Bias”, a couple of years ago, I remember thinking, “This guy really hates Dan Rather!” Goldberg paints a picture of “The Dan” being a sort of old-school strongman, driven by ego and paranoiasimilar to that of thedictators he covered. Goldberg discusses at length Rather’s obsession with Nixon, but describes Dan as being rather like Nixon himself. I always felt that Goldberg was being a tiny bit dramatic and unfair, though I started subconsciously to notice a resemblence between ?The Dan? and a certain other dictator.
This week, however, The Dan has deployed the full might of CBS in a Nixonesque attempt to cover up, deny, and avoid blame for running primetime news based on obviously forged documents. In a news report which could have had (and was intended to have) a direct impact on the outcome of a presidential election, Rather has blown the credibility of the network he helped create. And like all good strongmen, he won’t go down easily. Maybe Goldberg had a point.