Dean's World

I never call it liberal bias myself, but rather, left-wing myopia. When you work in an industry where 80% of the people you work with vote the same way in every election, and everybody shares almost all your same opinions on most of the big issues, you don't think you're slanted, you think you're middle of the road, and maybe only "liberal" in the sense of being open-minded.

This myopia is causing them so self-destruct, and Cronkite's just another of the obvious symptoms rather than the disease itself.

Newspaper circulation continues to deteriorate nationwide. Network TV news, still a giant, is an aging, weaking giant. Competition is a healthy thing, but you'd think some of them would see the handwriting on the wall and start to realize they can't go on like this forever.

When I prefaced my comment with "Assuming the video isn't fake", I wasn't trying to imply that it was some sort of plot by Karl Rove or the EVIL Vice President Cheney (who ate a pizza pie and made the children cry). It could easily have been put together by some "moonbat" on the Left to attack Bush. Don't know. I'll assume it's really bin Laden until I see evidence otherwise.

As to Walter Cronkite, I'm very disappointed in him for saying that. It sounds like he's listening to Dan Rather too much, or maybe Michael Moore got to him. Too bad. I have always respected and liked Walter Cronkite since I was a little boy. He is still my favorite newsman of those I have ever seen on TV.

Two things about him that I have always remembered:

1) In 1968, our parents, who were Democrats, took my brother Dave and me to a political rally in Portland, Oregon. Walter Cronkite was covering the event. He had no idea who we were, us twin boys, but he saw us and he looked at us and smiled, beamed at us. His motive was pure benevolence for some total strangers' kids. Whatever his political views are today, he was a good man.

2) His enthusiasm for the space program during the 1960s was contagious. The climax of that was the climactic historic event of my life, the Apollo 11 Moon landing in 1969. His non-stop coverage of that epochal event and everything that led up to it was superlative. He was the Dean Esmay of his day.

In her book "Slander", about bias in the media, Ann Coulter attacked Walter Cronkite for attacking Jerry Falwell for blaming homosexuals, polytheists, atheists, etc., for the atrocity of totalitarian monotheists on 9/11/2001. My political views are, on the whole, closer to Coulter's than to Cronkite's these days. But I still think that, if I were a kid, I'd probably rather be smiled at by Walter Cronkite than scowled at and called a traitor by Ann Coulter.