I'D RATHER NOT SAY GOOD-BYE, DAN
Wednesday, March 9, 2005
By Greg Palast
www.OpEdNews.com
Without his make-up, Dan looked like hell warmed over: old,
defeated, yet angry. And he told our television audience something
that just blew me away. Dan Rather said that American reporters may
not ask tough questions about George Bush or his wars.
"It's an obscene comparison," Rather said, "but there was a time in
South Africa when people would put flaming tires around peoples'
necks if they dissented. In some ways, the fear is that you will be
neck-laced here, you will have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism
put around your neck."
Talking to another reporter, Dan told it straight about the
careerism that keeps US journalists in line. "It's that fear that
keeps [American] journalists from asking the toughest of the tough
questions and to continue to bore-in on the tough questions so
often."
Silence as patriotism. Ugh. He confessed, "One finds oneself saying,
?I know the right question, but you know what, this is not exactly
the right time to ask it." It was making him ill and he was ready to
say, BASTA, enough. Suddenly, there was fire in those eyes: "It's
extremely dangerous and cannot and should not be accepted and I'm
sorry to say that, up to and including this moment of this
interview, that overwhelmingly it has been accepted by the American
people. And the current Administration revels in that, they relish
and take refuge in that."
Of course, Dan said all these things to a British audience. But back
in the USA, Dan had promised America he would be a good boy, a
trained press puppy who would poop on the paper set down for him. He
told his US audience, "George Bush is the President. He makes the
decisions. He wants me to line up, just tell me where."
But CBS' million-dollar man was about to step out of line.
In 2003, BBC Television questioned George Bush's career as Viet Nam
era Top Gun fighter pilot. In the British broadcast, I held up a
confidential letter from Justice Department files stating that Poppy
Bush had put in the fix to get Junior Bush out of 'Nam and into the
Texas Air Guard. George could spend the war protecting Houston from
Viet Cong attack.
A year after the BBC broadcast, the
I'm-going-to-be-a-real-journalist-now Rather decided to run the same
story on 60 Minutes. And just as he predicted, the press-police at
the network and in the White House seized him and lit the tire
around his neck.
What was Dan's mistake? Yes, yes, he shouldn't have embellished the
story with a document he couldn't fully source. But that memo (not
the one in the BBC report) was about a side issue, not the key
accusation, that Senior Bush got Junior out of the draft. Despite
not a jot of evidence that the main story of draft-dodgin' George
was wrong (BBC never withdrew it), CBS cited Rather's insistence on
the veracity of that report as grounds to crush his career and his
reputation.
Rather was convicted by a corporate kangaroo court. Dickie
Thornburgh, who had been Poppy Bush's Attorney General and owed his
big salaries and career to the Bush family, ran an "independent"
investigation which concluded -- surprise! -- the Bushes had done no
wrong. It was Dan that committed the evil. That whacky conclusion
went along just fine with the diktat of Sumner Redstone, CEO of
Viacom, CBS' owner, that a "Republican administration is better for
media companies."
In "Darkness at Noon," Arthur Koestler explained why old Communists,
brought up for trial by Stalin, still sang the system's praises --
just before they were shot. To do otherwise would have been to cast
doubt on the cause to which they sacrificed their lives. Now, Dan
Rather, like those soon-to-be executed victims of Stalin, has bowed
his head in silence in the face of the evil purge. To do otherwise,
I suppose, would be to acknowledge that his career has been a path
of increasing salaries and celebrity bought by increasing toady-dom.
Imagine if Edward R. Murrow, after having exposed Joe McCarthy,
replied to criticism by bowing his head for the noose-man.
Rather died as a journalist years ago by accepting the evil gag
orders of the media moguls. Still, I applaud his attempt with the
Bush story to kick his way out of his professional coffin.
Unfortunately, his current silence simply gives aid and comfort to
the censoring corporate news-killers.
Last night, Rather read off his last "news" broadcast, if you can
call it that. To Dan the newsman, and to American journalism, all I
can say is, rest in peace.
*****
Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, The
Best Democracy Money Can Buy. Subscribe to his reports at
www.gregpalast.com
To see a segment regarding George Bush's war years from the BBC
film, "Bush Family Fortunes," winner of the Freedom Film Festival's
George Orwell Prize (2005), go to:
http://www.gregpalast.com/images/TrailerClips.mov
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