Then, he became a major disappointment and continues to fall short of what a broadcasting elder statesman should be.
Last week, Rather said journalists have lost their guts.
Yes, Dan. It took guts to put a flawed report on the air and flush away your career.
Rather got bounced from CBS for his role in a botched investigation of George W. Bush's National Guard service. The report might have been right, but he couldn't prove it. The paperwork that was supposed to be the smoking gun was forged. The rest was based on hearsay and innuendo and rumor. Dan Rather could have and should have known better. If that wasn't bad enough, Dan Rather never really took responsibility for what happened and his apology was half hearted, at best. He continues to blame conspiracies and vendettas for what happened at CBS.
Now, back to his "no guts" remark.
I guess Dan never saw Lara Logan get sexually assaulted and nearly killed in Egypt.
Dan apparently never saw those reporters ducking rocks and Molotov cocktales in Kiev.
Dan isn't watching when Jon Karl holds White House spokesman Jay Carney's feet to the fire every afternoon.
Dan didn't notice when reporters risked getting all sorts of diseases while covering tsunamis and third world earthquakes and hurricanes.
Dan was elsewhere when reporters and photographers had to race to get out of the way of rapidly advancing southern California brush fires.
Dan was nowhere to be found when I was measuring zero-point-zero inches of snow in Stroudsburg.
Well, you get the idea.
Everything Dan Rather's said after 2004 makes me sad.
