'Courage' to the End

Dan Rather acknowledges applause after his signoff, a tribute CBS cut away from to show an ad. (John P. Filo -- CBS via Reuters)

"Courage" and Rather go way back, that being the word he used to sign off the evening news early in his tenure until he gave it up after critics ridiculed him and pointed to it as evidence of Rather's eccentricity.

On his last night, Rather did not care and used it to say what he had to say.

Good for him.

And then, because CBS News cannot walk without tripping over itself, when the evening news staff surrounded Rather and applauded him after he had signed off, rather than keeping the camera on the -- hello -- newsworthy scene -- CBS News cut away to the Wal-Mart billboard that runs at the end of the newscast.

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One of the lesbian couples that caused PBS to yank distribution of an episode of "Postcards From Buster" has been nicked again by public television.

Karen Pike, one of the moms featured on the "Sugartime!" episode of the children's series tells The TV Column that the PBS newsmagazine "Now" had made arrangements to come to Vermont to interview her and her partner, Gillian Pieper, and various other locals, as part of a look at the "Postcards" flap.

Right before the "Now" program's crew was to arrive, she reports, the story was abruptly killed.

According to Pike, "Now" wanted to interview them about their involvement in the "Postcards" episode, in which the show's star, the animated bunny Buster, visits Vermont and learns about making maple sugar and cheese from several local children, including those of the Pike-Pieper household and another household headed by two women. In the course of the episode, Buster is introduced to the two lesbian couples. The appearance of the moms led PBS to announce it would refuse to distribute the episode to the more than 340 of its television stations. (WGBH, which produces the show, has made it available to any PBS station that wants it.)

PBS suits insist that the decision had nothing to do with a letter that new Education Secretary Margaret Spellings sent to PBS chief Pat Mitchell at the same time, denouncing PBS for spending federal Ready to Learn funding to produce the episode.

Shortly before the "Now" crew was scheduled to show up, Pike says she got a call from producer Brian Myers saying the story had been killed because they were not able to get anyone from Education or PBS to give an interview.

"One more time I'm hearing that my family is considered invalid by PBS unless they have somebody on the other side that can condemn me," Pike said.

"Once again I put it out there and invited them into our home, and once again PBS won't do a show unless they can find a Margaret Spellings to say 'they're bad people.' "

Pike says of that conversation with Myers: "Somewhere along the line he said 'off the record,' but I'm not a reporter and my life is not off the record. I consider anything that has to do with my family is very much on the record."

Contacted for comment, Myers confirmed that he had made arrangements to interview Pike, Pieper and others in Vermont, and that "it had gone pretty far down the road" but that he "never got on a plane." Asked why the story was scrubbed, he said, "As to why it was killed, I don't know anything; I was not privy to any discussions" and referred the call to "Now" spokesman Rick Byrne.

Byrne told The TV Column that "we decided . . . at a certain point that we were a little bit behind the news cycle on [the story] and by the time it aired it would be way behind the news cycle."

The story had been scheduled for March 25 -- the same week to which WGBH had pushed the air date of the "Sugartime!" episode to allow PBS member stations to review it; that is, until PBS decided to disassociate itself from the episode.

A PBS spokeswoman says the public television network did not turn down the request by "Now" for an interview, and was waiting to see "where they were taking [the story]" before deciding "who might be the appropriate person or is it appropriate."