Dan Rather Has Left The Bat Cave

I thought that Dan Rather used to live in the CBS building. It did not matter what day or time it was, if there was a breaking news story, he would appear. His anchor counterparts on the other major networks could not be found until hours after the news was old, and their makeup was carefully done.

Emergencies provide younger, less experienced reporters a chance to shine because usually a star anchor does not want to be in the office, even if that office is a television studio, on a Saturday morning at 7 a.m., but on CBS, other reporters did not stand a chance. It was as if Dan was huddled by a world police scanner just waiting for something to happen.

Most of my memories of Dan Rather are set on Saturday mornings. I was raised by a mom who valued sleeping late on the weekends, but sometimes a news event would be important enough to merit the violation of this principle. My mother would wake me up to tell me about some news event such as the raid to retrieve Elian Gonzalez, the Explorer explosion or JFK Jr. dying in a plane crash. She risked waking me up without arousing my annoyance by turning on the tv in my bedroom and flipping the channels.

Without fail, Dan Rather would be there. Doesn't he go away for the weekend? Does he have a family? Is his apartment in the building or did he have a pillow under the anchor desk? Even if there was a news event in another hemisphere, like the student uprising in Tianemen Square, he would be in the thick of danger narrating the day's events as if it did not occur to him that he could be carried away by the violent events all around him.

Unfortunately, Dan ended his tour of duty with a bit of disgrace, but if he has any flaws or biases, I think that the failing lies with the fact that he wants to do better and not rest on his laurels. He wants it to be like the old days when a breaking news story was special, meaningful and life changing for the nation. He is as hungry to get the story, any story, as any young reporter and has not grown mentally bloated or complacent as some of his esteemed counterparts. He still has faith in his profession's ability to unite the public so people will care about the story and take a position, any position, instead of growing jaded and assuming that the status quo is inevitable.

I do not watch the news during the week, but when a special report interrupts regularly scheduled programming, I imagine that I will still expect Dan to pop up and hope that he will not be able to resist the lure of another breaking news story.