Great article in POLITICO today. I am glad to know that what I have been telling friends and family privately was again right on as to how the political world is changes due to instant news, 24/7 infotainment passed as news, and blogs. I explain at the end of this article as to why I feel all of this is important.
The Huffington Post dispatched a reporter to Texas this summer to investigate rumors about Rick Perry’s personal life, hoping for an irresistible story about hypocrisy.
Enter L. Lin Wood Jr.
Retained by Perry’s gubernatorial campaign committee, the acclaimed libel lawyer fired off a letter to the website in August, threatening to sue if the story ran – an aggressive response even for a candidate whose aides later admitted they entered “Def Con 9” mode when long-circulating rumors began to swirl anew as Perry prepared to run for president.
The Huffington Post’s founder Arianna Huffington said recently the website didn’t spike the story because of Wood’s letter, but because there was “simply no there there.”
Still, Wood’s behind-the-scenes work for Perry – and his more public efforts last month to shoot down allegations of sexual impropriety leveled at former Perry rival Herman Cain — suggest there’s an appetite among high-profile campaigns for a more aggressive response to damaging stories. And though some Washington scandal veterans argue Wood’s confrontational approach— which blends litigation-style PR with legal threats and actual lawsuits — is better suited for Hollywood and supermarket tabloid stories, others predict the demand for those services will only expand as scandals increasingly dominate political coverage that spreads rapidly online.
“I’m not out looking for business,” Wood told POLITICO. “But I think that any candidate for public office would be well advised to have the benefit of an experienced opinion on whether a particular article or a particular accusation might rise to the level of being actionable defamation, because I’m afraid that the environment is such that this type of reporting is not going to get better. I’m afraid that it’s only going to get worse.”
Wood is also representing failed Senate candidate Jeff Greene, who lost a Democratic primary in Florida last year, and is suing newspapers over stories that linked him to a real estate scheme. In a letter sent in the heat of the campaign to the St. Petersburg Times, Wood called their story “journalistic fiction” and suggested he would file a lawsuit for “many millions of dollars unless the Times immediately corrects its libel” by retracting the story.
Wood’s past clients show his work had been mostly outside politics until recently. I predict with Wood going out on his own now in a boutique law office we might see him more on the political stage and it would be smart to hire him before the other guy does is my motto.
Wood’s past clients include Democratic Rep. Gary Condit, in the reporting of the death of intern Chandra Levy. Wood became the star Libel Litigator in the country when he made his reputation by helping exonerate Richard Jewell. Wood went on to represent clients in a host of high-profile cases, including the parents of JonBenét Ramsey, the young woman who accused basketball star Kobe Bryant of sexual assault and of course multiple lawsuits in the Anna Nicole Smith saga.
Ray Sullivan, a Perry spokesman, told POLITICO that the governor’s team decided to hire Wood in August when “we got wind that” Huffington Post — which he described dismissively as “a liberal web-based media outlet” — “seemed intent on quickly writing lies about the governor, and we were concerned about the speed at which those lies could be published online.” Sullivan characterization of the situation matches one outlined in more detail in an ebook by Mike Allen and Evan Thomas, which explained that Perry’s aides were “distressed to learn that Jason Cherkis, a Huffington Post reporter, was in Austin prowling around on a story that had been gossiped about for years in the Texas capital: is Perry gay?”
The rumors included “a detailed story about a supposed assignation with a former [male] state official,” wrote Allen and Thomas.
Wood “authored one strongly worded letter to the media outlet, which never replied and never wrote the story,” Sullivan told POLITICO. Wood “did this one thing and that’s it. We never told him to stop and he’s not billing us now as far as I know. The purpose for which he has been retained is completed,” Sullivan said.
Arianna Huffington, president of The Huffington Post Media Group, told POLITICO that the decision not to run a story had nothing to do with the letter. “We looked at what we had; we realized that it was not a publishable story, and it was over,” she said. “The story was already killed before we got the letter from Lin Wood. I never even read the letter.” She added: “If we feel good about a story or stories, we run them, no matter what the legal threat. That’s not an issue. We have a great legal department and have no problem taking on legal challenges.”
Lin Wood’s work for Cain went differently. He began work more than a week after POLITICO first revealed that two women had received financial payouts after accusing Cain of sexual harassment. Additional accusations of harassment followed, as did an allegation from an Atlanta woman named Ginger White that she’d had a 13-year affair with Cain. L Lin Wood labeled all the allegations “lies,” urged women considering making additional allegations to “think twice” and wrote a letter to White’s lawyer asking for her phone records to “ascertain whether the decision to grant interviews was politically motivated and to determine whether she has received or [been] promised money for participating.” Wood also investigated the backgrounds of White and at least one supporter of another Cain accuser, and highlighted their financial problems, which he asserted the media had willfully ignored.
“What I find naive is the failure on the part of members of the media to be asking the tough questions of the accuser, someone who has obviously a troubled past, who has an incentive potentially financially to go out and to make these kinds of unfounded accusations,” Wood told Piers Morgan in an interview on CNN a few days after White went public about her alleged affair with Cain. “Why don’t you look at yourself, Piers, and the members of your media and recognize that you in fact and the media are participating in the deterioration of our political process?” In that interview if I remember correctly Wood never brought out the scandal consuming the U. K at the moment of illegal wire tapping which involves even Morgan’s previous employer.
Wood told POLITICO he has had “informal conversations or communications” with the lawyers for Sharon Bialek, who accused Cain of harassment, and White, “but there have been no formal demands made under applicable statutes at this point in time.”
Cain spokesman J.D. Gordon said he “really enjoyed working with Mr. Wood,” who he said talked with “several individuals in leadership positions” on the campaign. But Gordon stressed that the lawyer worked for Cain personally and not the campaign, which would have been required to disclose payments to him.
Don’t be surprised if more defamation specialists like Wood get involved in politics, Richard Painter predicted, adding “accusations – and how to deal with them both in offense and defense – is an important part of the political game. This will be more common. It is most unfortunate, but that’s the way it is.”
Political lawyers serve their clients well by trying to block damaging stories from running and by seeking to stop the spread of those that do, said Trevor Potter, who was the top lawyer for [John] McCain’s presidential campaigns in 2000 and 2008. “In my experience, it is not unusual to hire lawyers and to have them intervene with news media to essentially litigate a story in the hopes that it can be knocked down and proven unsubstantiated before it is printed,” said Potter. “And obviously, from the campaign standpoint, you don’t want to have an accuser out there doing a press tour day after day. On the other hand, if you can’t prove it’s false, that’s a political problem, not a legal problem.”
Wood told POLITICO that it’s not about politics for him, explaining “my representation of political figures in my career is not based on a political ideology.”
Though he worked on Richard Nixon’s 1972 presidential campaign (recalling he was “extremely disappointed … to learn that in fact he was a crook”) and contributed to the presidential campaigns of Republicans John McCain and George W. Bush and Democrats John Edwards and Barack Obama, Wood said “I don’t claim to be a political person.”
The principles driving his work do not “vary based on whether it’s a presidential campaign or a senate campaign or a state campaign or even a non-political attack on someone’s reputation,” said Wood, who in his late teens spent about a year covering high school football and basketball for his hometown newspaper, The Macon News. “I just happen to take the view that the rules should be the same for public figures, political candidates, and even private individuals, and that is a rule that goes back and insists upon fundamental principles of journalism being adhered to by the media.”
Ah you have to wonder if Bush would have been a one term president if John Kerry had been smart enough to hire Lin Wood BEFORE the swift boat ads took hold?
This is offense PR at it’s best, and as explained in Lin Wood’s own words he is not about political ideology. In today’s instant stories online in some cases without a scintilla of evidence I have long said we would not have had great presidents in the past like Franklin D. Roosevelt or John F. Kennedy. Wood sees where there is a need and will continue to fill that need in my opinion for years to come in the political arena. You can’t blame Wood’s belief in Nixon, I often say I voted for the guy both times and he broke my heart. Nixon is probably the single one reason I am a moderate independent that normally splits my vote today.
Be sure and read the whole story at POLITICO and the well documented links in the article that will give you a lot of background on Perry, Cain and Wood. Wonder how the democrat Jeff Greene’s litigation is going?
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I did not see it but have found some video clips of L. Lin Wood and Piers Morgan going head to head in what appears to be at times a heated exchange.
Did any of you actually catch the whole show? I saw replays on CNN of them talking about how heated Piers Morgan called attorney L Lin Wood naive and surely Morgan did not think what he was saying? With part of it clipped out and then Wood’s southern gentleman voice coming back with “I’m sorry you find me naive” and then slapping Morgan down. Wood was on Morgan’s show to defend his client GOP Presidential candidate Herman Cain.
My question is did Morgan do this for ratings as taking on Wood with no holds bar and no fear of a lawsuit, or was it a Brit that had no idea what is going on in our legal system?
I wish I had seen the whole hour, I don’t know if Lin Wood was the guest for the full hour or not, do any of you? If so give us your play by play of who won this “debate”.
I also wonder if Wood has found a new set of clientele, remember Jeff Greene suing some media in Florida for endorsing his opponent and then trashing Greene? It is certain I believe, as some in the news is saying that if we had 24/7 infotainment/news back in the 30′s, 40′s, 50′s and 60′s we would not have had great presidents like Franklin D Roosevelt or John F. Kennedy. So what is the balance on the public or voters right to know, and what is private and/or personal lives? I understand why Newt Gingrich was outed in the late 90′s; because while he was leading the charge for President William Clinton’s impeachment over consensual sex that Clinton did not feel he needed to bare all to the voters, especially when President Clinton was on the way out to retirement. While we were learning that Gingrich had abandoned a wife who was dying with cancer for a mistress he had for years. So it was good-bye to Gingrich the Speaker of the House at the same time.
I can’t find this on the CNN site but you can view it at You Tube here:
The thought of throwing rocks if you live in a class house comes to mind on that.
Wood also addressed the 24/7 infotainment/news craving for all things personal and private and what that appears to be doing to candidates in this day and time.
I think I see Lin Wood carving out that a politician does not have to openly share what is a very private life UNLESS it all checks out before you air it. Should the infotainment/news be allowed to fill the airwaves for 24/7 with rag magazines type gossip?
I am leaning towards Wood going for it. How is that Democratic US Senate Candidate Jeff Greene lawsuit going? The backlash on this is would it give the U. S. Supreme Court Justices a pass on conflict of interest? Or will it affect how the Court might rule on something like this coming before them?
Here is one more video I found, might be a copy because I did not have the chance to watch it before this post.
So tell us your thoughts, remember that anyone who can afford it can bring a lawsuit, but are these “news tidbits” out of line because they could be based on gossip and not facts? I did find the full interview transcript on the CNN site.
We encourage all of you to join other posters to discuss all of the cases we cover. Diamond Girl runs the community part of the site and remember discuss the evidence don’t attack other posters. If you read a post that upsets you just scroll past that comment http://community.rosespeaks.com/ I seldom step on the forums that belongs to the members and is in great hands with Diamond Girl and she will be having a robust discussion there that all of you are invited to join. However, as I do have time I enjoy reading and participating in the discussion.
Visit our Download Section and pick up all of the documents related to any cases we follow; we put up papers throughout the trials, and then leave them up as part of the history of the cases we cover.
I HAVE A LOT OF DOCUMENTS TO PUT UP ON THE STANCIL FORD SHELLEY AND GAITHER B THOMPSON II CRIMINAL CHARGES IN SOUTH CAROLINA AND WILL HAVE THOSE UP TOMORROW FOR ALL OF YOU.
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The expressions in this blog article are based on the opinions of Rose Turner or our featured authors, please remember we are not lawyers and those opinions expressed here are each of our individual opinions and should not be taken as legal advice and/or legal opinions. The comments following this blog article are the opinions and sole property of the blog site members and do not necessarily reflect those of the site owners. If comments to this or any other articles are not related to the article or does not meet the terms of use for Rose Speaks, they will be removed by the moderators.
Where would any of us be today without the dream of Ted Kennedy, born rich, fought for all, including the poorest of the poor and every minority in our country. Exactly one year to the day of his death, he gave what he must have known was his last national speech. How very proud we all must be no matter what our beliefs or which side of the spectrum we vote.
A Letter to be delivered to President Barack Obama only after my death from Senator Edward M (Teddy) Kennedy.
May 12, 2009
Dear Mr. President,
I wanted to write a few final words to you to express my gratitude for your repeated personal kindnesses to me – and one last time, to salute your leadership in giving our country back its future and its truth.
On a personal level, you and Michelle reached out to Vicki, to our family and me in so many different ways. You helped to make these difficult months a happy time in my life.
You also made it a time of hope for me and for our country.
When I thought of all the years, all the battles, and all the memories of my long public life, I felt confident in these closing days that while I will not be there when it happens, you will be the President who at long last signs into law the health care reform that is the great unfinished business of our society. For me, this cause stretched across decades; it has been disappointed, but never finally defeated. It was the cause of my life. And in the past year, the prospect of victory sustained me-and the work of achieving it summoned my energy and determination.
There will be struggles – there always have been – and they are already underway again. But as we moved forward in these months, I learned that you will not yield to calls to retreat – that you will stay with the cause until it is won. I saw your conviction that the time is now and witnessed your unwavering commitment and understanding that health care is a decisive issue for our future prosperity. But you have also reminded all of us that it concerns more than material things; that what we face is above all a moral issue; that at stake are not just the details of policy, but fundamental principles of social justice and the character of our country.
And so because of your vision and resolve, I came to believe that soon, very soon, affordable health coverage will be available to all, in an America where the state of a family’s health will never again depend on the amount of a family’s wealth. And while I will not see the victory, I was able to look forward and know that we will – yes, we will – fulfill the promise of health care in America as a right and not a privilege.
In closing, let me say again how proud I was to be part of your campaign- and proud as well to play a part in the early months of a new era of high purpose and achievement. I entered public life with a young President who inspired a generation and the world. It gives me great hope that as I leave, another young President inspires another generation and once more on America’s behalf inspires the entire world.
So, I wrote this to thank you one last time as a friend- and to stand with you one last time for change and the America we can become.
At the Denver Convention where you were nominated, I said the dream lives on.
And I finished this letter with unshakable faith that the dream will be fulfilled for this generation, and preserved and enlarged for generations to come.
This site is closed today in honor of Senator Edward M. (Ted) Kennedy.
Here is his eulogy when his brother Robert F. Kennedy died.
If you are a Kennedy fan or lived through the Kennedy era share your thoughts here with all of us today.
Your Eminences, Your Excellencies, Mr. President:
On behalf of Mrs. Kennedy, her children, the parents and sisters of Robert Kennedy, I want to express what we feel to those who mourn with us today in this Cathedral and around the world.
We loved him as a brother, and as a father, and as a son. From his parents, and from his older brothers and sisters — Joe and Kathleen and Jack — he received an inspiration which he passed on to all of us. He gave us strength in time of trouble, wisdom in time of uncertainty, and sharing in time of happiness. He will always be by our side.
Love is not an easy feeling to put into words. Nor is loyalty, or trust, or joy. But he was all of these. He loved life completely and he lived it intensely.
A few years back, Robert Kennedy wrote some words about his own father which expresses [sic] the way we in his family felt about him. He said of what his father meant to him, and I quote: “What it really all adds up to is love — not love as it is described with such facility in popular magazines, but the kind of love that is affection and respect, order and encouragement, and support. Our awareness of this was an incalculable source of strength, and because real love is something unselfish and involves sacrifice and giving, we could not help but profit from it.” And he continued, “Beneath it all, he has tried to engender a social conscience. There were wrongs which needed attention. There were people who were poor and needed help. And we have a responsibility to them and to this country.
Through no virtues and accomplishments of our own, we have been fortunate enough to be born in the United States under the most comfortable conditions. We, therefore, have a responsibility to others who are less well off.”
That is what Robert Kennedy was given. What he leaves to us is what he said, what he did, and what he stood for. A speech he made to the young people of South Africa on their Day of Affirmation in 1966 sums it up the best, and I would like to read it now:
“There is discrimination in this world and slavery and slaughter and starvation. Governments repress their people; millions are trapped in poverty while the nation grows rich and wealth is lavished on armaments everywhere. These are differing evils, but they are the common works of man. They reflect the imperfection of human justice, the inadequacy of human compassion, our lack of sensibility towards the suffering of our fellows. But we can perhaps remember — even if only for a time — that those who live with us are our brothers; that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek — as we do — nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.
Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men. And surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again. The answer is to rely on youth — not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease. The cruelties and obstacles of this swiftly changing planet will not yield to the obsolete dogmas and outworn slogans. They cannot be moved by those who cling to a present that is already dying, who prefer the illusion of security to the excitement and danger that come with even the most peaceful progress.
It is a revolutionary world we live in, and this generation at home and around the world has had thrust upon it a greater burden of responsibility than any generation that has ever lived. Some believe there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world’s ills. Yet many of the world’s great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protestant reformation; a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth; a young woman reclaimed the territory of France; and it was a young Italian explorer who discovered the New World, and the 32 year-old Thomas Jefferson who [pro]claimed that “all men are created equal.”
These men moved the world, and so can we all. Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change. And I believe that in this generation those with the courage to enter the moral conflict will find themselves with companions in every corner of the globe.
For the fortunate among us, there is the temptation to follow the easy and familiar paths of personal ambition and financial success so grandly spread before those who enjoy the privilege of education. But that is not the road history has marked out for us. Like it or not, we live in times of danger and uncertainty. But they are also more open to the creative energy of men than any other time in history. All of us will ultimately be judged, and as the years pass we will surely judge ourselves on the effort we have contributed to building a new world society and the extent to which our ideals and goals have shaped that event.
The future does not belong to those who are content with today, apathetic toward common problems and their fellow man alike, timid and fearful in the face of new ideas and bold projects. Rather it will belong to those who can blend vision, reason and courage in a personal commitment to the ideals and great enterprises of American Society. Our future may lie beyond our vision, but it is not completely beyond our control. It is the shaping impulse of America that neither fate nor nature nor the irresistible tides of history, but the work of our own hands, matched to reason and principle, that will determine our destiny. There is pride in that, even arrogance, but there is also experience and truth. In any event, it is the only way we can live.”
That is the way he lived. That is what he leaves us.
My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.
Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world.
As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him:
“Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not.”
Senator Edward M. “Teddy” Kennedy, the same can be said of him as he said about his brother.
Where would any of us be today without the dream of Ted Kennedy, born rich, fought for all, including the poorest of the poor and every minority in our country. One year ago today, he gave what he must have known was his last national speech. How very proud we all must be no matter what our beliefs or which side of the spectrum we vote.
The end of an era died this morning; as John F. (John, John) Kennedy Jr. said about his mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’ death would apply today to his uncle Senator Edward M. (Teddy) Kennedy’s death, he did it in his own time and in his own way with the things and the people he loved around him.
Another quote being used today is; “He remained at the helm of the boat he so loved very much using those skills of sailing in this his last battle”.
I can not even begin to say what it was like to live through the touch of the Kennedy brothers, from John to Robert and then Ted. Senator Kennedy at the age of 36 became the surrogate father to the children of his assassinated brothers, President John F. Kennedy, and Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Reports say he never let any of those many children he loved so much down and was there for each of them taking this role thrust upon him with love, humor, and teaching them of the legacy of their fathers and the promise each one, [a Kennedy], of them held in life.
He once said, you might not get what you want, (meaning for him the presidency), but you do the most with what you get, he lived that and became the Lion of the United States Senate.
As a tribute to his always fighting for those less fortunate, for those of us on Medicare, and children who get S-Chip we must pass universal health care. We must educate each other and throw out the fear mongering and present the facts. Senator Kennedy fought for ALL Americans to have health care, as he said at the Democratic National Convention this day one year ago; “From the north to the south from the east to the west; every American is entitled to health care”. He spent his career fighting for that and what a legacy that would be to him if we put petty politics aside and rallied for Senator Kennedy’s life long dream for each of us.
Do not let the dream die, but allow it to live on through those causes he believed in, which as you look around our nation you see that in everything from the VA; to the assisting living care for our older citizens, from our children, to those of us that are old and sick with Medicare. He believed and so we must now pick up the torch, and not let the dream die, but carry it forth today and tomorrow; put aside our differences and promise that during each of our lifetimes the Dream shall never die but the Dream Shall Live on! Do not let it die with one man no matter how great he was, but take the example of his life and reach out to make all lives better.
How very fortunate we are that Ted Kennedy served us, in the darkest of times and the brightest of days, we are so very lucky he passed our way.
A couple of Ted Kennedy quotes I found:
“Integrity is the lifeblood of democracy. Deceit is a poison in its veins.”
“The Constitution does not just protect those whose views we share; it also protects those with whose views we disagree.”
- Ted Kennedy
Leave your thoughts on Senator Edward M. (Ted) Kennedy here with us today, his life and his death, did it affect you and if so how.
The expressions in this blog article are based on the opinions of Rose Turner or our featured authors, please remember we are not lawyers and those opinions expressed here are each of our individual opinions and should not be taken as legal advice and/or legal opinions. The comments following this blog article are the opinions and sole property of the blog site members and do not necessarily reflect those of the site owners.
From 1961 to 1981 Walter Cronkite came into my home every night and my parents trusted him totally. If Cronkite said it, then it was true. We, like many American homes, believed he was “the most trusted man in America”.
There has been much said about his passing and what he stood for. For my family, he was the voice for middle America and he was the most trusted man in America. We had a black and white television and when he came on, homework stopped, dishes were left to be washed later, my dad’s newspaper was laid to the side and as many families, we stopped for thirty minutes as a family and got the news of the day.
Cronkite came from a line of journalists in the tradition of Edward R. Murrow, who in the 50’s, produced a series of TV news reports that helped lead to the censure of Senator Joseph McCarthy and thus the end of a time of terror where all of Hollywood feared being labeled a communist and put on a “black list” if they failed to report on others as communists following WWII. McCarthyism became it’s own term in the 1950’s because McCarthy cashed in on American’s fear thus he was able to lead his own reign of terror in the U. S. Senate. Does this sound familiar with the fear tapped into by political leaders following September 11, 2001?
On July 7, 1952, the term “anchor” was coined to describe Cronkite’s role at both the Democratic and the Republican National Conventions, which marked the first nationally-televised convention coverage. He also expanded evening news from 15 to 30 minutes on September 2, 1963, making Cronkite the anchor of American network television’s first nightly half-hour news program.
Cronkite carried us from the heights of landing on the moon to the lows of multiple assassinations in the 1960’s. All of us remember exactly where we were when Cronkite, who showed emotion as he seldom did saying journalists were about reporting, but that day there was a tear in his eye and his voice broke as he told the nation that John F. Kennedy had been killed by an assassin in Dallas Texas, my home town. Cronkite carried us through those horrible days that followed… the burial of President Kennedy, watching a young widow with two small children… and even in that he taught us history; pointing out that the same funeral bier held Kennedy’s casket, which rested on the same catafalque that had supported Lincoln’s bier. So even in the public mourning of a nation Cronkite taught us history, explaining that Jacqueline Kennedy had President Abraham Lincoln’s funeral researched and based her own “blue print” on that, for her fallen husband, President Kennedy’s, public funeral. Cronkite taught us history from the East Room to the Capital Rotunda to the horseless rider with a boot turned backward to show a fallen hero. We cried as a nation and it was Cronkite that placed the historical events in perspective for us.
On June 6, 1964 Cronkite did a special report called “D-Day +20 and brought Retired General and former president Dwight D. Eisenhower out of retirement and to return to his former Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) headquarters for an interview with Cronkite.
Cronkite brought us many reports of the ever changing times from 1962 to 1981, the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. He brought us the news of “Bloody Sunday” that started on March 7, 1965, where we saw 600 civil rights marchers attacked by state and local police with billy clubs and tear gas. These were our fellow Americans and most of us thought about it, followed it via Cronkite and a few of us feared that could be us. On March 9, 1965 the civil rights marchers tried again and were attacked and again it was Walter Cronkite that brought it into our homes. Cronkite brought us the news from March 21, 1965 thru March 26, 1965 as the marchers made the 54 miles from Selma to Montgomery Alabama with a civil rights leader named Martin Luther King Jr. at the front of the line of marchers. The Selma to Montgomery marches marked the political and emotional peak of the American civil rights movement and Walter Cronkite never failed us in his objective coverage, again all in black and white televisions with families like mine around the country gathered in front of the televisions with their parents telling, as mine told me, we were witnessing history. There was Governor George Wallace, who in 1962 marked the tone for what was to come in Alabama during his 1962 inauguration saying: “In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever”. We remember Wallace standing at the doors of the University of Alabama on June 11, 1963 to stop desegregation as two Afro-Americans, Vivian Malone and James Hood, were escorted to the doors by federal marshals in a confrontation we all feared would turn into more blood shed. Walter Cronkite brought us that, as he did Martin Luther King’s speech at the Washington D. C. mall to a crowd of over a million people. For the Civil Rights movement would not be stopped and like many times in our countries history we grew, we changed, and Cronkite was there every evening or on assignment telling us objectively what was happening but also reassuring us.
The democratic convention in 1968 was one of the other times he allowed emotions to take over for a few seconds and brought Americans to know of the riots at the convention and that the police even entered the convention and began to rough up newsmen. It was Cronkite who turned and had the cameras show us as he called the police “hoodlums”. We had lost another potential great leader in June 1968 when Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles California. The late 50’s and 60’s were turbulent times and Cronkite was there, ending his newscasts with “And that’s the way it is…”
Beginning on January 16, 1980, “Day 50″ of the Iran hostage crisis, Cronkite added the length of the hostages’ captivity to the show’s closing to remind the audience of the unresolved situation, ending only on “Day 444″, January 20, 1981. Something that Keith Olbermann has started doing, is a similar technique with a closing Count Down, counting each day since May 1, 2003 when President George W. Bush declared “mission accomplished” in Iraq.
Cronkite also brought us through the Cuban missile crisis, the Vietnam War, where, following a trip to Vietnam, Cronkite did in an editorial on the Vietnam War and that was the beginning of the end of the war as President Lyndon Johnson said, “If I have lost Cronkite, I have lost middle America.”
Cronkite brought us the Watergate scandal. When President Richard M. Nixon resigned it was Cronkite who said our Constitution works almost two hundred years after being drawn up by our founding fathers, it worked; and no man, not even a President was above the laws of the U. S. Constitution and we learned history again from Cronkite.
Cronkite brought us the Apollo 11 Moon landing on July 20, 1969, and when the rocket carrying our astronauts launched from Cape Canaveral Florida again in a seldom show of emotion, Cronkite led the nation with the phrase, “Go baby go”. When they landed Cronkite expressed what we all felt with a simple, “Wow”; and again we, [my family], knew he was coming into our home via a black and white television and extending our history lessons from the classrooms at school to our living rooms at home.
There is a Chinese Proverb of “May you live in interesting times”. I have only recently learned was a curse and not a blessing but for us, we have been blessed by living in both interesting times as well as historical times and like the sailing Cronkite so loved in his private life, he also held the helm of the ship of history of the 60’s and 70’s and we learned so much from him.
Go baby, Go, thank you for teaching my generation so much, we will not see the likes of you again Mr. Cronkite and as Mr Cronkite said every night in my home growing up, “That is the way it is; Tuesday, July 21, 2009”.
The expressions in this blog editorial are based on the opinions of Rose Turner or our featured authors, please remember we are not lawyers and those opinions expressed here are each of our individual opinions and should not be taken as legal advice and/or legal opinions. The comments following this blog article are the opinions and sole property of the blog site members and do not necessarily reflect those of the site owners.
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