But What Was The Frequency?

I must admit that I've always liked Dan Rather, and was saddened when he stepped down last week. I realize I'm in the minority on that one, but I have my reasons.

When it came to field reporting, there was no one who could top him. He had a knack for being in the right place at the right time. He was in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, broke the news that Kennedy had died, and sat in Abraham Zapruder's living room, bidding against Life magazine for the rights to Mr. Zapruder's home movie. He was one of the first reporters to realize that Vietnam was going to turn into what it did. He was on the floor of the Democratic Convention in '68. He went nose to nose with Nixon on live tv. The list goes on.

What I liked most about Dan Rather, though, was the palpable feeling that there was real madness bubbling just under the surface. Walter Cronkite may have been stalwart, dignified and the most trusted man in America, but with Rather you always got the sense that he could crack at any moment and start screaming about where the alien bodies were hidden.

He came damn close to that a few times, too.

That's why I was happy to see the career retrospective CBS aired last week devote at least a few minutes to the "What is the frequency, Kenneth?" story.

We were hoping, however, that they wouldn't stop there-that they'd run clips of the time Rather stomped off the set in a huff, leaving viewers with a nice shot of his desk and empty chair for six minutes of the broadcast. Or at least one of the times (there were a few) when protestors got onto the set. Or those tapes of Rather in Iraq, calling his fellow anchormen "big sissyboys" and "pansy-ass homos" for not being on the front lines with him-then challenging them to bareknuckle fisticuffs when he got back to the States.

Rather's retirement last week heralded the end of the old guard, of an era stretching back to Murrow's day, when broadcast journalists had real guts, took real chances and were almost required to be crazy as jaybirds to get the damn job done.

I only wish he'd taken the time to tell us where the alien bodies were before he left.

-Jim Knipfel