"My attitude is, I want to move forward now," says Rather. "I want to get through Wednesday as gracefully and as classily as I know how and then take a little time to myself and then move right into the next phase of my work. Thank God my health is good, I feel vigorous, feel strong, and I want to get into both '60 Minutes Wednesday' and '60 Minutes' and try to do some great journalism."
There are possible problems even with that plan, however. Leslie Moonves, the CBS president who charged into the scandal and has not been even slightly supportive of Rather or of CBS News, has implied "60 Minutes Wednesday" may be canceled if its ratings don't improve. And there is some question how welcome Rather will be at "60 Minutes" in the wake of the scandal, even though he's an alumnus (1975-81). Some insiders think Rather should have done more to protect the discharged employees and should have threatened to leave if they were let go.
"Now I'm guilty of a lot of things, and I've made a lot of mistakes -- but I haven't made that mistake -- of running, backing away," Dan Rather says.
(By John Paul Filo - CBS)
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Video: Washington Post media critic Paul Farhi discusses NBC anchor Dan Rather's final broadcast.
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Audio: Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz reflects on Dan Rather's final anchor broadcast.
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_____SAYINGS OF DAN RATHER_____
SAYINGS OF DAN RATHER
Some call them "Ratherisms." Others prefer "Danisms." Either way, it was election time that inspired Dan Rather to come up with his most memorable sayings. A sampling:
NOVEMBER 1984
• "Walter Mondale has seen the light at the end of the tunnel -- and it's out."
NOVEMBER 1986
• "You can pour water on the fire, call in the dogs, the hunt is over, Terry Sanford has won the North Carolina Senate race."
NOVEMBER 1988
• "George Bush is sweeping through the South like a tornado through a trailer park."
• Bush went through Dukakis's hopes in Georgia "like a jackknife through peaches."
• In Florida, "where the flamingos fly, George Bush has taken off."
• Daniel Patrick Moynihan's Senate opponent was thought by some observers to have "about as much business in this race as a moose in a phone booth."
• In the Southwest, "fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, and Republicans have to win in Arizona."
NOVEMBER 1992
• The election is so exciting it could "make the wax pop out of your ears if you love politics."
• Clinton took one state like "a big wheel through a Georgia cotton field."
• Texas is "the big enchilada or, if not an enchilada, then a huge taco."
NOVEMBER 1994
• On the Democrats' challenge, "It was always a big rock up a high hill. The rock just got bigger and the hill just got higher."
• Election results were "scary enough to make the Democrats' fingernails sweat."
NOVEMBER 1996
• Election night was "the long kiss goodnight for Bob Dole."
• In reference to a poll showing Colin Powell would have beaten Clinton: "Woulda, coulda, shoulda. If a frog didn't have long hind legs, he wouldn't have squat to jump with."
NOVEMBER 2000
• "This race is tight like a too-small bathing suit on a too-long ride home from the beach."
• "Sip it, savor it, cup it, photostat it, underline it in red, press it in a book, put it in an album, hang it on the wall, George Bush is the next president of the United States."
• "We've lived by the crystal ball and learned to eat so much broken glass tonight that we're in critical condition."
NOVEMBER 2004
• "This race is hotter than a Times Square Rolex."
• "This race is humming along like Ray Charles."
• "This situation in Ohio would give an aspirin a headache."
• "We don't know what to do. We don't know whether to wind a watch or bark at the moon."
-- Compiled by John Maynard
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The major flaw of the original story was that documents used to support its allegations were not thoroughly verified. Rather likes to think of himself as a "reporter-anchor," but he hardly has the time to go rummaging through files and halls of records to check on the authenticity of documents that are decades old.
All this has been argued to death and could be argued until doomsday. One of the sad things about it is that it gave the right wing, which has had its sights on Rather for years now, something to cheer and dance in the streets about. Over the years, ultra-conservatives have made Rather their public enemy No. 1. They deluged him with hate mail, founded a Web site called Ratherbiased.com and were the prime suspects when a computer was used to jam his phone lines. He says he doesn't know how he became such a lightning rod for controversy.
"What I do know is that it's not something I worry about," he says. "I've never worried about it. I am independent as a reporter -- determinedly independent and, when I think it's necessary and advisable, I'm fiercely independent. And I think the determination to stay independent is part of what's made me what you call a 'lightning rod.'
"There's always somebody of some political persuasion or some ideological belief and/or partisan political agenda who takes the attitude, 'If you don't report the way I want you to report, if you're not going to reflect my biases, then I'm going to try to hurt you, ruin you if I can, by hanging some negative label on you and calling you names like 'biased.' And at that point, you're in the classic fight-or-flight situation. Now I'm guilty of a lot of things, and I've made a lot of mistakes -- but I haven't made that mistake -- of running, backing away. I haven't done that, I'm not doing it and I'm not going to do it."
Former CBS and CBS News president Sir Howard Stringer, just named chairman of the entire Sony empire, was once the executive producer of "The CBS Evening News" and remains a Rather admirer. He used to talk about the unique experience of walking down the street with Rather and feeling all eyes upon them, of Rather's magnetism and "larger than life" persona.
Near the end of "A Reporter Remembers," Stringer says that whatever mistakes were made with the National Guard story, Dan Rather has compiled "an extraordinary body of work." The question is whether he will be able to keep compiling it. Obviously if the decision is entirely his, he will.
Rather has always been the news as well as being a news giver. Over the years, he appeared in headlines more often than any of his competitors -- whether for his on-air shouting match over Iran-Contra with George H.W. Bush, his tiff with a Chicago cabdriver or his mugging by a mysterious psychotic who reportedly uttered the seemingly meaningless "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" while clobbering Rather on a New York street.
Some doubted the story's veracity, but years later the same man murdered an NBC stagehand and inadvertently revealed he had attacked Rather, an expression of his clinically paranoid-schizophrenic delusions that people on TV were sending out invisible signals that controlled his life.
On the documentary tonight, Rather points out the man never actually said "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" though that later became the title of an R.E.M. song. The mugger did ask "What's the frequency?," though, and at one point "addressed me as 'Kenneth,' " Rather says. It's sort of like "Play it again, Sam," one of those famous quotes that was never said.
Some of Rather's fans breathed a sigh of relief when the man was finally found and the story thus verified, because Rather does seem to run on an electrical current that is his alone. There is, inescapably, a tension in his appearances on the air -- thus shock-jock Don Imus's irreverent observation at the 1996 Radio and Television Correspondents' Association dinner that Rather delivers the news "like he's making a hostage tape." But is it tension, or urgency? Rather believes the news is serious business. He's not going to lean back in his chair and deliver it to viewers conversationally. He's not trying to be your friend.
For that reason and others, his departure from the evening-news wars tonight may mark the end of more than one era. The networks love the revenue that news programs like "60 Minutes" bring in, but they hate the messiness of news, the trouble news causes, the awful unpredictability of it all ("reality" prime-time shows, entirely different, are carefully packaged and controlled).
CBS News, having weathered many a crisis, has hit a larger than usual iceberg this time. Andrew Heyward, president of the news division, is considered by many to be much more loyal to the corporate side than to news. For years, the great CBS News presidents -- Richard Salant, William Leonard, Fred W. Friendly -- saw part of their job as standing up to incursions by bottom-liners from the corporate side. Heyward has been all but invisible since the scandal broke and never publicly offered to resign.
