Blogging Dan Rather: SXSW

Dan Rather is on stage now delivering a keynote speech at the conference. I teared up a bit when he entered the room to "What's The Frequency, Kenneth?" and the entire room (about a thousand people) stood up and clapped. I had a lot of "Amen!" moments during his talk, including when he said American journalists need a spine transplant. I wasn't the only one clapping when he said "investigative reporting is a redundancy," that all reporters should be investigating what they're covering.

Also? Rather was one of my first girlhood crushes. Seriously. Him, Alan Alda and Ricky Schroeder. Take that, twenty-first century tweens.

One has to wonder to which "gutless" American media he is referring? Is it the same media that was so weak-kneed as to leak damaging national security information, the same media that just "goes along" to undermine the war effort at every opportunity? Is it the same one that goes out of its way to malign the US and Israeli governments? It is that MSM Rather imagines has somehow gone soft?

Investigative journalism! Getting to the truth behind the surface! These are callings I can get behind. Since I don’t watch the television news, I tend to know Dan Rather only as a rather cartoonish newsman on a studio set, known somewhat for his very strange analogies. He’s the real deal, though. It was good to be reminded that there were people like this still in the world, and I wanted to do the same to hold up my bit of it.