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Memories of Uncle Walter
For those like me who grew up in the 1960s and ’70s, Walter Cronkite was the news. There was no CNN, Fox News, or The Daily Show; there was Uncle Walter from 6:30 to 7 p.m., and only in that time slot, unless there was a major event going on, like a space launch or a presidential election. That’s the way it was.
As I grew older and learned more about his politics, I became a bit disenchanted with the man, but I still respected what he represented during my childhood years and I mourn his passing.
My best memories of Cronkite are of his enthusiastic coverage of the Apollo space missions. I can remember camping out in front of the TV on my den floor with my best friend Greg, as we waited for Uncle Walter to tell us that the Eagle had landed and that Neil and Buzz were about to take their small steps for man and giant leaps for mankind.
What are your favorite memories of Uncle Walter?
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He removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes after Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon. A good moment.
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My parents always liked Walter Cronkite, too. He was born the same year as my mother. I remember his coverage of the Kennedy assassination, so I guess we were CBS people. But I could have sworn that really back in the day, the evening news was at 7 p.m. and moved to 6:30 when people wanted more game shows.
The way they remembered him this morning on NBC was to say that he thought a journalist should tell the facts, not opinion, and that he felt this was lost. How right he was.
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My dad used to watch Huntley/Brinkley on NBC (I loved the theme they used to have), then switched to CBS, but I think it was because he liked to hear the commentary by Eric Severide (sp?). I don’t remember much about Cronkite except the moon landings, the daily body count from Viet Nam, and the standard closing, “That’s the way it is…”
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NJLAWYER:
The news hour was 6-7pm, a half hour local news program followed by half hour network news, then on to prime time. First there were two stations, CBS and NBC, then three with ABC. We had to get up and walk across the room to change the channel. Life was brutal and short in those prehistoric days.
I fondly remember watching Walter Cronkite’s “Twentieth Century” program on Sunday evenings before Walt Disney.
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Ken, you must be about my son’s age (50), he had to watch black & white tv. As you say, it was brutal.
I never watched TV news. In those days, I was too busy to watch anything. My son and I used to have a ritual of watching “Get Smart” together as a father-son thing, and I was in love with “99″ (forgot her name).
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Chas, that was Barbara Feldon. I think she may have had a cameo in the recent “Get Smart” film.
Back to Cronkite. He really was fortunate to be in the biz when he was. A generation took his authoritative voice and mistook it for great depth of intellect. By his own admission he was a humble shoe-leather beat reporter.
An entire generation took Walter at his word when he did an editorial comment about the enemy’s “successful” Tet Offensive. Tet may have been a bold gamble. But it was no enemy victory by any conceivable measure. From then on the USA was mainly fighting the conventional army from the North. But it was a war that the politicians were never able to sell the necessity for, and LBJ shoulda had an “exit strategy” from the git-go if the South was unable to repel the North and its surrogates. Cronkite’s complicity in our defeat in Viet Nam should never be over-emphasized. I applaud him for pointing out the frequent inconsistencies between what was going on and what the Pentagon/McNamara/LBJ were telling the voters. But he was wrong about Tet.
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Chas, 57 this coming Thursday, but who keeps track any more.
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I’ll always remember Cronkite most with regard to the JFK assassination. I was in the 7th grade back then. It’s still quite moving to watch the clip of him taking his glasses off as he announces the confirmation that Kennedy had died, then unable to help from tearing up.
Amazing when you think how all of us watched the same newscasts and same newscasters back then. Having a main and common source of media information did provide us with a certain unity among us as a nation.
There’s no going back now, of course, for better or worse — sometimes I’m not sure which.
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He was still alive???
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Mickey asks:
“What are your favorite memories of Uncle Walter?”
I have no favorite memories of “Uncle Walter.”
My memories of him center around my time in Vietnam when I was actually experiencing the news he was “reporting” on. In my view, he was among the first really blatantly biased reporters who manipulated the news rather than objectively reporting it. He and CBS were against our involvement in Vietnam and did everything possible to manipulate public opinion in that same direction. As someone who was there, his bias was more apparent to me, than to the American public, thousands of miles away who only knew what Cronkite told them. Hence, I considered him blatantly biased.
While I and my friends were putting our lives on the line for America, he made my job much harder. He encouraged the enemy by almost always reporting our efforts in a negative manner. This also encouraged opposition at home. In a 1989 interview with Morley Safer, General Giap (top general of the NVA) said:
In 1995 the Wall Street Journal published an interview with a Col Bui Tin, from Gen Giap’s staff, in which he said:
The anti-war movement purposely tailored many of their protests to take advantage of favorable news coverage by networks like CBS and reporters like Walter Cronkite—coverage that denigrated American efforts, encouraged the enemy, contributed to American combat deaths (many of them personal friends) and our eventual loss of the war.
I have absolutely no favorite memories of Walter Cronkite. I do not mourn his passing. I mourn the passing of many brave soldiers whom I fought alongside in Vietnam. They deserve America’s respect and admiration, not Walter Cronkite.
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Thank you, Michael Martin. First for your service to America and second for being one of the few in the past 24 hours to tell the truth about Cronkite’s biased reporting.
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MM:
This is off topic: I have a close friend whose father was an American Air force fighter in Vietnam, whom he doesn’t know and who also sired an older brother for whom he is looking and who was taken off to America and Canada via Operation Babylift.
I doubt you’ll know any of the figures involved but it might bring back memories for you.
http://hieuthach.blogspot.com/
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Vietnam was before my time, but from what I’ve read of Cronkite’s war coverage, I appreciate someone who had the honesty and courage to call the administration on their lies.
Contrast that to our timid and subservient media during the Iraq War.
I want a press that works until it gets to the bottom of the story. That challenges the government’s claims, then finds and reports the truth. If the government is blatantly lying to us (and they often do), I want the press to tell me.
So thank you, Walter Cronkite, for that precedent. I wish we lived up to it.
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I think Viet Nam was the first war where the press wasnt fully on-board with the whole crusade. I’ve seen old newspapers where the print media accounts described “US forces repel Red attack in Viet Nam”.
LBJ and Bill Moyers convinced the American people that Goldwater would blunder us into a war
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Heh. Just happened upon another quote by David Gregory, this time to Gov. Mark Sanford right after his affair, trying to land an interview for Meet the Press. This came out in emails released to the SC press.
Liberal media? Hardly. Gregory is basically promising him a soft interview where he can (1) frame the issue as he wants, then (2) move on.
It’s an establishment, corporate media. Profits are king, and the status quo rules.
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JJF:
VietNam was during my time. Many of my friends and classmates were there. I was a leftist peacenick at the time. I grew up later and enlisted in 1975, just as the last troops were leaving.
The Tet offensive was not even close to a draw. It was a military disaster for the Viet Cong. But, thanks to Walter Cronkite’s comments, among other misperceptions and misinformation, the American people began to despair of victory, the Congress cut off funding, we left with our international reputation in tatters, the dominoes fell and millions of people in Laos and Cambodia were slaughtered to make way for the new Communist man of the future.
I still remember Walter Cronkite’s newscasts fondly. For his avuncular visits to American family homes and his defining the idea of a news “anchor”, he deserves the accolades coming in his honor, but he was not on the side of the angels regarding Viet Nam.
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Ken (16): … the dominoes fell …
Frank: But if you’ll recall, the propagandists for the military-industrial complex insisted they would fall all the way to the US. If we didn’t stop ‘em in the rice paddies of Viet Nam, we’d be facing them in the wheat fields of Kansas.
Didn’t happen though, did it? Was it a lie, or were they simply “mistaken”?
How on earth did we justify the conscription of American men to fight and kill people that had neither attacked nor threatened us?
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I fondly remember Mutual of Omaha’s WILD KINGDOM.
Except for ‘20th Century’ our family rarely watched anything with Walter Cronkite in it. I have heard more from WC imitators than I have heard from WC.
“The good that men do lives after them. The evil oft interred with their bones.” or something like that.
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“Uncle Walter”?! They say that communication is much more about tone, inflection, and body language than the actual words that are spoken. That being true, many Americans did see Cronkite as a thoughtful, trusted, and kindly old uncle. Thank you, Michael Martin, for your service to our country, and for pointing out that in some instances our kindly old uncle did our soldiers- who risked their lives- no favors. Listen with more than your ears.
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Fritz,
To the extent that “Uncle Walter” had anything to do with our withdrawal from Viet Nam, he did do many of the troops a favor — by helping to halt American deats at 58,000 rather than 65,000 or 80,000.
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Undermining morale, Monday-morning-quarterbacking our military leaders in public editorials instead of reporting the news, and giving the enemy an opportunity to gloat and use propaganda against our country did NOT do our troops any favors.
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And the rank abuse by American politicians of our fighting men against a people who — I’ll repeat it again — had neither attacked nor threatened us … that had nothing to do with “undermining morale”?
In Viet Nam, we were engaged in an unjust, unconstitutional war. And yet the blame for undermining the troops’ morale goes to Cronkite? (Of whom I’m no fan, BTW … )
Surreal.
We really need to face up to our national faults. Conscripting American boys to fight proxy wars against the Soviet Empire in far-flung backwaters was one of them. The longer we maintain the myth of American righteousness in the affair, the longer we’ll be doomed to repeat such ill-advised militarist adventures. (See Afghanistan.)
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I never heard Cronkite called “Uncle Walter” before. I do remember watching the news when it was a school assignment, and I watched CBS because it came in more clearly than NBC (we didn’t get ABC at all). I don’t remember any particular news stories. I did watch the moon landing but I only remember the astronauts, and how very long it took them to get out onto the moon, not why did the reporting about it.
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Frank’s comments well show that whatever the Vietnam War was, it had NOTHING to do with orthodox biblical Christianity, one way or the other.
For either side to get involved and try to argue biblical Christianity perverts the purity of the faith.
Remember what Forrest Gump had to say about the War.
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Jon Rowe (#12):
Thanks for the good link to your website and the case of the “missing brother.” You’re right, I don’t know any of the people involved, but your assistance in the young man’s quest is commendable.
Best wishes.
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For the missing brother, it might be good to imitate the Koreans if it has not already been done. That is making well known websites so Vietnamese family members can be reunited.
I helped to settle some refugees out of Camp Pendleton back in those days. I wish I had had the resources back then that I have today.
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25 & 26:
Thanks!
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JON ROWE (24): Frank’s comments well show that whatever the Vietnam War was, it had NOTHING to do with orthodox biblical Christianity, one way or the other.
Frank: Like probably everybody else here, I tend to come and go, reading only those threads who may by their title appear to be of interest to me. (And then, not really “reading” them as much as skimming them.)
All of which is to say, in re. to your statement: Has somebody here made the argument that the VM War did have something to do w/orthodox Christianity?
JON ROWE (24): For either side to get involved and try to argue biblical Christianity perverts the purity of the faith.
Frank: Another request for clarification, please:
When you say “either side,” do you mean people on either side of the particular war under discussion at the moment, or people on either the pro- or anti-this-war side?
If it is the former, I might tend to agree with you, with the proviso that attacked nations do have the legitimate moral right to defend themselves. Thus if Nation A attacks Nation B and B acts militarily to repel the attack, one cannot simply declare generally that “the war” is either just or unjust. Rather, the war would be just from B’s perspective, but unjust from A’s.
If it is the latter, however — i.e., people taking positions in favor of or opposition to a particular war — then biblical/Christian ethics do most certainly inform the debate. Just War theory arose out of the effort of early saints to apply the Word of God to all situations of life, including international relations. While this or that particular war may have enough blame on both sides, so to speak, we ought nevertheless be able to look at what is known about the situation and apply biblical wisdom to it to try to determine if either — and which — side is in the right.
And closely related to the latter issue is the ability — nay, the necessity — of individual Christians to bring God’s Word to bear in the matter in order to inform their own consciences as to whether they will participate/support their nation’s war, or whether they will sit quietly by and keep quiet, or whether they will vocally oppose it.
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Frank,
I agree with you. There is a biblical notion of a “just War” and I don’t think that concept spoke to Vietnam. One thing that irritates me when both liberal and conservative Christians propagandize their faith on behalf of certain political concepts, especially War. If there is a clear cut answer I understand the need to speak out; but in too many instances, there is not and faith gets prostituted.
Though I’m not a Christian, I’m not against Christianity at all. It bothers just as much when the religious left and liberation theologists do this as much as when the religious right does it.
On same sex marriage, I can understand Christians wanting to get involved as the Bible (taken as an inerrant whole) pretty clearly forbids homosexuality. However, it is not so clear on for instance, capital gains cuts. David Barton actually had the gall to say that the Bible condemns both homosexuality and capital gains taxes. What nonsense.
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From a non-Christians perspective Vietnam turned out to be a terrible tragic mistake. Both Americans and the Vietcong bear responsibility, though I put more of the responsibility on the Vietcong.
I wouldn’t be against the war in principle if we followed Goldwater’s maxim of win it quickly and get out.
Though the capitalists end up having the last laugh. Vietnam, like China has undergone market oriented reforms. Their political leadership is still authoritarian/totalitarian and that sucks. But it’s not something worth going to war over.
One of the many good things Clinton did was normalize relations with Vietnam.
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MICHAEL MARTIN — You fought for a lie, and if you actually knew what you were doing, as it sounds like you might have, you were wrong to do it, particularly if you volunteered. Myself, I knew better, as did many other good people. I witnessed peaceful protesters attacked by dogs and police and arrested at Spiro Agnew demonstrations, and watched people go to prison for refusing induction. I saw a family lose their life savings in court cases. You were fighting for murderous repression at home and murderous imperialism abroad, Michael. I’ve said as much to my HS & college friend (who is my niece’s father-in-law), who quit college to go to Viet Nam, (all because he embarrassed himself by crying at an athletic competition). One of the lies you fought for was the lie that we were winning. (A lie that was often repeated by Rep. Jerry Ford and countless other apologists.) And the lie that Nixon had a secret plan to end, rather than prolong futile bloodshed.
SAWGUNNER he did an editorial comment about the enemy’s “successful” Tet Offensive. Tet may have been a bold gamble. But it was no enemy victory by any conceivable measure.
That’s nonsense. Here’s what Uncle Walt actually said, in probably the most important moment of his life:
The Vietcong did not win by a knockout [in the Tet Offensive], but neither did we. The referees of history may make it a draw. . . . We have been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders, both in Vietnam and Washington, to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds. . . .
For it seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate. . . . To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past
— Walter Cronkite, CBS Evening News, February 27, 1968.
We don’t ever see celebrity newspeople do this kind of thing, anymore. They’ve become kiss-up government stenographers. But that’s what the retro-actively sainted David Halberstam did all the time, and what Cronkite did at least once. Halberstam’s battles with Vietlnam brass are classic drama. Tim Russert, Tom Brokow, and Brian Williams didn’t do that. The only thing the latter two had in common with Cronkite was a sonorous baritone.
In today’s militaristic environment, the NYTimes and NPR won’t even use words the government disapproves. http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/06/the-nyt-and-torture-a-brief-recent-history.html WorldMag’s role in all this is to attack the NYTimes for running an AP story it doesn’t like.
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Scroop Moth,
That’s a lame reply. The South Vietnamese govt weren’t angels (neither has America even been) but the Vietcong were tyrannical b—–s. That didn’t make the war “just” according to Christian theology. Hell, I don’t even see removing of tyrannical govt necessarily a “Christian” principle. But the Vietcong were the bad guys more so than the Americans were.
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Their bad guys were worse than our bad guys. Hmm. At first impression, that seems lame to me, but I’ll think about it, and ponder what that might have to do with MICHAEL MARTIN’s indictment of a dead talking head for the death of his fellow soldiers and the defeat of the United States. Mainly, I don’t see what the relative badness of bad guys has to do with the historical accuracy of what Cronkite reported in 1968. Nor with US responsibility for lying to prolong the war for seven years and two months longer.
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Frank,
You and I have had discussions on these issues before. We are fellow Christians, yet we hold very contrary views on the application of our faith to our civic responsibilities. Why such a divergence from a common foundation? I don’t know if there is single answer to that, but I do know that your views should not be left to stand here unchallenged, as if they are the correct Christian position.
For a start, you contend that the Vietnam war was unconstitutional. We can lay that bogus claim to rest immediately. The Vietnam war has endured over 50 years of public debate and no one, not even its most vehement and knowledgeable opponents, has successfully pursued or even successfully argued that case. The American judiciary decides issues of constitutionality, not Frank in Spokane.
In 1970 the State of Massachusetts passed a law exempting its citizens from military service in any war not officially declared by Congress. The Massachusetts attorney general asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the resulting case, United State v. Sisson. That case was dismissed because the judge ruled that it involved “the sort of evidence, policy considerations, and constitutional principles which elude the normal processes of the judiciary and which are far more suitable for determination by coordinate branches of the government.” The attorney general of Massachusetts asked the U.S. Supreme court to hear the case and they refused by a vote of 6 to 3.
In another 1970 case (Berk v. Laird) the court held that Congress was within its legislative authority to authorize the use of military force without making a formal declaration of war. In other words, the U.S. Constitution says that Congress has the power to declare war, but it doesn’t say that Congress can only authorize military force if it first declares war.
From the very beginnings of our country our Constitution has been interpreted in this manner. We used military force against the Barbary Pirates (1801-1803; 1815) without formal declarations of war. Since then we fought in Korea, Grenada, Panama, Kuwait, and Iraq (1990) without formal declarations of war and they were all actions permitted by our Constitution. We are doing the same now in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Now you can argue all day for your particular interpretation of the Constitution, but in the final analysis the only entity that has the authority to say if something is unconstitutional is the American judiciary. It has not done so in the case of the Vietnam war, or any of our other conflicts for that matter.
So you are clearly wrong when you say that the Vietnam war was unconstitutional. Get the U.S. Supreme Court to agree, and you will be right, but not until.
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Moth (#31):
In your first paragraph you state that, “Myself, I knew better, as did many other good people.”
Can you tell us please a little more about yourself and what you were doing during that period, so that we might better understand how “you knew better” and what “you knew better.”
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Michael,
Let me open with a couple of introductory Qs:
• Was slavery “unconstitutional” when the SC ruled in the Dred Scott decision?
• Has the SC ever made an incorrect ruling in our own lifetimes?
I understand what seems to be your exasperation/frustration at our differences on several matters, even though we’re both Bible-believing Christians. (Our pastor mentioned this very matter as a side-topic in today’s sermon: “If God is sovereign, why does he permit error in His church? I think it is to drive us to more diligently study it in search of what is true.”)
This may seem contradictory, but trust me, when I write what I do, I do not possess a certainty that my views are “the correct Christian position.” I should probably take greater pains to explain that I think my views are the correct Christian position, as far as I am able to tell. I.e., I remain open to challenge and invite anybody to persuade me otherwise, whether from Scripture or by good and necessary consequence.
You write:
Suppose that, for whatever reason, we attended the same “liberal” (i.e., soft on the authority of Scripture), warm-and-fuzzy-type church. Two of our fellow members, Bob and Carol, are plainly living together without the benefit of marriage, and I mention something to you one day about them committing fornication.
You object, “But they aren’t aren’t committing fornication! The church leadership has not excommunicated them or banned them from the Lord’s table, much less begun any manner of proceedings re. church discipline!”
While it is certainly true that I am not competent to exercise church discipline over Joe and Mary, it does not follow that I am not competent to say that they are fornicating. The same thing is true when I say that this or that behavior of our government is unconstitutional.
If tomorrow they begin going door to door to confiscate all our books, we are not incompetent to declare their actions unconstitutional just because the Supreme Court hasn’t ruled on the matter.
Indeed, if the SC does rule, and it says that book confiscation is constitutional, we are no less competent to declare them unconstitutional. As in my church example above, just because I am not in a position of authority to adjudicate that something is wrong doesn’t mean that it’s not wrong.
Like Scripture, the Constitution says what it says. The Bible isn’t written in some arcane language and obscure syntax, and one doesn’t have to be an ordained priest or minister to interpret it (though one does have to be an ordained priest or minister to adjudicate church discipline based on it).
Likewise, the Constitution isn’t written in some arcane language and obscure syntax, and one doesn’t have to be a judge in order to interpret it (though one does have to be some manner of civil magistrate to adjudicate church discipline based on it).
The Constitution says certain things about war, notable among them that Congress must declare it.
Congress did not declare war against Viet Nam. They passed a “resolution” based on the (now thoroughly discredited — by no less than Robert Macnamara his own self) “Gulf of Tonkin Incident.”
I agree with you that no war since WWII has met that Constitutional requirement. (Though not every American military action has been a war — Grenada, for example.) I’ve pointed out before that, when Rep. Ron Paul insisted that there be a vote in Congress whether or not to declare war against Iraq, Henry Hyde responded on the record:
He could very well have said the same thing about Viet Nam.
I realize that this almost certainly will not convince you.
But I would caution you against accepting any government action as “lawful” or “constitutional” simply because there hasn’t been a Supreme Court ruling to the contrary.
There is a piece online I’d like you to consider, “Iraq, Al Quaeda, and Congress’ Power to Declare War.” Slightly lengthy, but well worth it (IMO). The author considers several matters, e.g., military actions in which a DoW is unnecessary (e.g., the Barbary Pirates).
Dinner’s on.I hope you’ll give the article a read — I’d love to explore it together with you.
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Frank,
That’s a good post (if you don’t mind me interjecting in your talk with MM); but I have to take slight issue with this:
The Bible isn’t written in some arcane language and obscure syntax, and one doesn’t have to be an ordained priest or minister to interpret it (though one does have to be an ordained priest or minister to adjudicate church discipline based on it).
The Constitution is a lot easier to read and arguably to interpret than the Bible. The Bible is a really thick book. Parts of it do read in obscure and arcane language. Parts appear to contradict one another. Good hermeneutics can smooth out the apparent contradictions; but we are left with hundreds if not thousands of literal contradictionless interpretations of the Bible that contradict one another (like for instance the Bible teaches TULIP or the Bible DOES NOT teach any ONE of those five points; both are assertions I’ve seen evangelicals/fundamentalists make). And very often we have to go back to the original Greek and Hebrew for the real definitions of words that fit the context.
The Bible is NOT as easy as you make it out to be; hermeneutic can be very very hard. Ordinary lay people with average IQs aren’t going to “get it” without help from authorities.
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Scroop Moth,
Yes their bad guys were a lot worse. Communism was evil. The Vietcong is not “relative” to the America that fought the war in any sense. America’s biggest sin during the War was not our presence but our bungling of the War. Though I admit it would have been better if we were never there at all.
I saw a family lose their life savings in court cases.
The South Vietnamese the Vietcong didn’t kill, like my friend’s mother, got all of their wealth confiscated WITHOUT A TRIAL. This was the rule, not the exception in a handful of cases.
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JR (37),
Duly noted. I did not intend to make Bible interpretation sound “easy” from cover to cover.
While there are some very, very clear themes and passages throughout, certainly there are also some more difficult issues that learned men have been struggling with for centuries.
I like how the Westminster Confession of Faith puts it:
And the section immediately preceeding says this:
Hence what I hope is the basis of my various discussions here: God’s Word being the final authority of faith (for the believer) and life (for all men).
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JR,
My point at (36) was simply that one needn’t be an “approved authority” to reasonably understand what either the Constitution or the Bible say.
The Bible, however, does speak with greater scope. (To say nothing of authority!)
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Several years ago, when John Ashcroft was our Attorney General, Walter Cronkite wrote an op-ed piee claiming that Ashcroft has earned himself a distinction as the “Torquemada of American law.” Tomas de Torquemada was the torturous politically powerful 15th century Dominican friar who became the grand inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition.
Cronkite stated, “Now, of course, I am not accusing the attorney general of pulling out anyone’s fingernails or burning people at the stake (at least I don’t know of any such cases). But one does get the sense these days that the old Spaniard’s spirit is comfortably at home in Ashcroft’s Department of Justice.”
Those were Cronkite’s own words. That was his opinion. One SHOULD hate the deeds and motives of evil men like Tomas de Torquemada. But John Ashcroft was and is simply a decent Christian man serving his country as best as he knew how with conviction and love for his country–a man that Mr. Cronkite, in my opinion, should have been able able to disagree with more honorably.
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Redirecting back to Uncle Walter.
In his day a journalism degree was merely advanced 5 Ws and the H. Contrast with today. The “journalists” are less and less old radio guys like him. You have a network anchor generalist who now turns to “our special medical correspondent, Dr Sam Jones..” or “our legal correspondent Bernie Fishbeinder” etc. They often trot out a generally uninforming retired colonel for military issues since today’s news anchor (unlike Cronkite and his generation) have no war experience of their own.
The question is are we better served, is journalism as a craft better served with avuncular generalists or do we need a “finance correspondent” to explain bailouts, a medical correspondent to explain health breakthroughs? Perhaps we dont need such experts but arent those now used to “sell” a network’s news capability?
With news ad revenues decreasing, I doubt we’ll see anyone like Walter again.
I think he conveyed the idea (even if he didnt truly personify it) of being an avg Joe who would ask the high and mighty the questions avg Joe’s would’ve asked. Today newsmen are too much in awe of various experts to be just a regular ink-stained wretch trying to land a story.
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How I Knew Better:
First, I’d like to thank Joan Baez and Bob Dylan. I started listening to them in 1963. I gave an anti-war speech in H.S. in 1965 in which I demolished the Readers’ Digest and must have repeated to fine effect the sentiment that even the president of the US sometimes must have to stand naked. In 1967/68 I was a college student and involved in teach-ins, protests, American Friends draft counseling (techniques of saying what you may not say), and so forth. Two classmates, enrolled in ROTC as I had been, explained to me on a long walk on a wet Spring night of 67 that technical critiques of our strategy of search & destroy and attrition were fatal. Defeat was inevitable. But the basis of my opposition was the original error, and the fraud of Tonkin. I was a member of the NAACP, and MLK was leading marches against the war. The biggest influence on me was Bertrand Russell, whose Viet Nam tribunal could not be contradicted. James Baldwin was huge for me as a writer of moral force who spoke to my religious upbringing, and I was impressed by the spiritual humanist Owen Barfield, whom I met and read (Barfield was anti-war, anti-CSLewis, and anti-Francis Schaeffer). I also got to meet George Wald.
Notice, no Noam Chomsky, because some of us figured it out without his direct intervention.
By late 1968 there was no serious debate. Tet was the mother of all intelligence failures, bigger than Pearl Harbor and Iraqi WMD combined. LBJ’s hawks were counseling disengagement. Nothing remained but seven years of slaughter to no purpose in Viet Nam (yet devastatingly useful in America for Republican demagogues).
I was standing in the check-out line in the college bookstore with a friend from HS when he vanished without a word, leaving a pile of books at my feet. The next I heard, he was at Ft. Polk. I was angry and heartbroken. He was a remarkably kind young man who had never touched a gun in his life (before ROT, that is). Years later, he came to visit me, and told me he had encountered the very person of Satan in Viet Nam. That was his enlightenment: Apocalypse Now.
Years after that, my supervisor during a job internship was Vietnamese, a wonderful boss and a good friend. She was one of the few survivors in her family and the only one in the US. I think of her when I see the closing scene of Platoon.
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There is in Los Angeles a ‘news team’ of presenters who are quite silly. Two women and one man and they are outrageously silly. I enjoy them as they show what idiots we now have for Journalists. For a lot of other journalists you can just turn down the sound and watch how they jiggle around making faces. They all say exactly the same words as they are reading exactly the same copy that was written by some pimple faced liberal kid.
For an example of good journalism, listen to Rush Limbaugh. He delivers the pertinent news and backs up everything he says with sound bites and references. ( You can find your local station by going to http://www.rushlimbaugh.com ) He follows up his program with his web site where there are word for word transcripts and the links to his references.
Rush’s only drawback is that you need to listen for two weeks before you understand his sense of humour. But you have to do that with other people as well so that is no big thing.
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Frank (#36):
Your main point is well taken: those in authority can be wrong. This is nothing new, but it doesn’t really address my point about the Vietnam War and its constitutionality.
You start out by posing a question about slavery and the Dred Scott case that evades my point and substitutes another. In 1857, the court ruled that Scott was the private property of his master and could not be taken from his owner without due process. At that time, this decision validated slavery and confirmed its constitutionality as practiced for the past 70 years from 1787 to 1857. So, in answer to your question, yes, slavery was “constitutional” at the time of the Dred Scott decision in 1857. Slavery would not become “unconstitutional” until it was rendered so by a collection of actions after 1857 such as the Emancipation Proclamation and the Union victory in the Civil War. In point of fact however, slavery did not really become unconstitutional until the Constitution was actually changed by the addition of the 14th Amendment, 11 years later in 1868.
So, in reality, we are talking about two different “animals”: the U.S. Constitution as it existed in 1857, wherein slavery was considered constitutional; and then the decidedly different U.S. Constitution in 1868, wherein slavery clearly became unconstitutional by the addition of the 14th Amendment.
Today, with a huge amount of hindsight and sweeping moral condemnation, we look back on the Dred Scott decision and consider it both wrong and “unconstitutional.” But in our moral indignation we actually sweep in too much and are not entirely correct. It was morally wrong (your substituted point, and a good point), but it was not unconstitutional until it actually became unconstitutional (my point) by both events and an amendment.
Now how does this apply to your contention that the Vietnam War was both “unjust” and “unconstitutional”? I think you are making the same mistake that I have discussed in the Dred Scott case. You have let your moral indignation get the better of you and have overreached in your judgment about the Constitution. The justice or injustice of that war is highly debatable, to say the least. But you feel so strongly about your moral position that you also unequivocally declare the war to have been unconstitutional. And that is clearly not the case. People have tried to make that case and have failed, as I have already pointed out. It is not, and it never was an unconstitutional war.
I read the linked piece in your post #36. It seems to me that the author errs just as you do when you state that:
“The Constitution says certain things about war, notable among them that Congress must declare it.”
As I have already pointed out in my comments on the Berk v. Laird case, the Constitution says that Congress alone has the power to declare war. This restricts the other branches of government from doing so. But the Constitution does not say that the Congress must declare war in order to authorize the Executive branch to use military force in situations they collectively deem appropriate. The Supreme Court has ruled on this several times and, in my opinion, they are not wrong. So, at the present time, the use of military force without a declaration of war is not unconstitutional.
Perhaps when you are elected President and can pack the Supreme Court with like-minded judges, you can get your way, but probably not until then.
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Moth (#43):
Thanks for your candid response. I’ll get back to you a little later. It is now close to 3 a.m. and I must get some sleep.
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Dang near all the Viets I know grew up here. Or they arrived as 7 or 8 year olds with no English. Then despite US schools they eventually wound up as Val/Sal of high school classes. Went to a Viet wedding. All these beautiful young women were in pharmacy, med school, optometry school or were working as programmers at Motorola/Dell/AMD. Not an under achiever in the bunch.
The communists who took over SE Asia after we pulled out forfeited such great folks. And our economy has been enriched by so many folks named Nguyen: Dat the Cowboys player, Betty the Fox News anchor, etc
I realize the Viet govt cheered the Tiananmen massacre, but I think the commies in Hanoi are nowhere near as nutty as the ones in Pyongyang or Havana
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#44 . . . you need to listen for two weeks before you understand . . .
I thought he’s the wingnut Head Start, spoon feeding bits of knowledge to you like you’re a crack baby.
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Since the topic of this thread is Walter Cronkite, a news man whose criticism of our war in Viet Nam allegedly help end it, does the name Joe Galloway ring any bells?
Moth (#43):
Your response was instructive. We have a small patch common ground. I became a fan of Joan Baez in the first part of her career in the late fifties. Her voice, her guitar, her melodies, and some of her lyrics still strike a chord with me. Even today she is on my IPod as I try to maintain my declining body with regular bicycling. I still appreciate her music despite my disagreement with most of her politics.
Music has a powerful influence on the emotions that sometimes magnifies those emotions out of a proper balance in their influence on human behavior and beliefs. In my opinion, that was part of what began to go wrong with American youth in the 60’s and continues to this day. Rational thought takes second place to emotional excess or even downright emotional chaos.
In 1962 I went to the US Air Force Academy and was kept so busy that I had little time or energy to do anything but study. Music was not much on my mind and I sort of lost track of where Joan Baez, et al, were heading. My main outlet beyond study was intercollegiate athletics as a gymnast. My average course load, like most cadets, was anywhere from 18 to 24 units per semester and I graduated with a double major in International Affairs and Civil Engineering. My studies included world history, Russian history, U.S. history, economics, law, geography, politics, international affairs, literature, the beginnings of computer science, some philosophy, a lot of engineering, and of course, lots of military stuff.
In the summer of 1964 I went through the infamous Berlin Wall at “Checkpoint Charlie” and visited East Berlin. I saw first-hand just a glimpse of what Marxism had brought to those unfortunate people: an economy in shambles, rubble from WWII that still had not been removed, and a sense of oppression, fear, and loneliness that was physically palpable. Driving by a huge storage yard, I could see past the fence slats where hundreds upon hundreds of Soviet tanks were parked. They were in readiness to brutally enforce that oppression and to extend it west all the way to the English Channel if they got the chance.
So, while you were listening to music, attending “teach ins”, protesting, and emotionally embracing the lies of Marxism, I was studying and actually seeing some of its reality.
Its first big lie is that there is no God. This frees them from any moral restraint but that of their own manufacture. They freely adopt the philosophy that the end justifies the means. “Good” is defined by whatever advances communism, and “bad” is defined by whatever hinders it. Lenin stated it succinctly:
“Who cares if 3/4 of the world’s people die, as long as the remaining 1/4 are communist.”
Millions upon millions upon millions of people have died in the 20th Century under some of the most oppressive and evil regimes in the history of mankind. Koestler’s Darkness at Noon or any of Soljenitsin’s works tell the truth about Marxism rather than the fairy tales of the left.
Bertrand Russell’s Tribunal, that you admire, was a travesty of leftist propaganda, financed in large part by Ho Chi Minh and the North Vietnamese for obvious reasons. But some leftists, like Staughton Lynd (chairman of the 1965 march on Washington) were not entirely blind to the truth. When asked by Russell to participate, he pressed to have it include an objective examination of all sides in the conflict. The answer he received was, “Anything is justified that drives the imperialist aggressor into the sea.” Seeing that truth and morality was the last thing on their mind, Staughton declined the invitation to be a part of Russell’s pathetic farce.
The second big lie of the Marxist left is that their motivation is a genuine concern for the poor and downtrodden. If this were true, they would not have murdered so many millions of them in Russia, China and elsewhere. From the very beginning, the peasants of Russia came under the Communist boot with as many as 60 million deliberately starved to death or perishing in Stalin’s Gulags. Meanwhile, the Mafioso of the Party lived in their luxurious dachas eating and drinking with a nation of slaves at their command. It’s all about power and wealth for them, not the poor. Their alleged concern for the poor is nothing but a deceitful cover, employed so that the ignorant masses will help them in their initial power grab. After that, the poor are good for only one thing: to serve their Communist masters. We have seen this almost everywhere the Marxists have come to power: the Russia of Lenin and Stalin, Mao’s China, Castro’s Cuba, Ceausescu’s Romania, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and Kim Jong-il’s national death camp of North Korea, to name just a few.
In fighting against these monsters, you say that we fought for a lie in Vietnam. As an example you complain that some people at one time declared that we were winning. This was a dastardly lie according to you, but that is absolute nonsense. As Gen Giap has made clear, we might have won had it not been for deluded people like yourself. You accomplished your goal and then claim we lied about the opposite possibility. That is a deceit and perfidy of the lowest order. But it’s consistent with Marxist immorality.
Even if this one time claim had been a deliberate lie, it is as nothing—absolutely nothing—compared to the worldwide lies and astronomical crimes of the Marxists thugs you were supporting. Jon is absolutely correct in his comments at #38, and you, at the very least, are as blind as a man born without eyes.
You just have ears to hear the emotional wailings of Joan Baez, and the deceitful propaganda of the left. But as to eyes for the truth—you have none.
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Read some of Fred’s experiences in — and reflections on — Viet Nam here. (Keeping in mind all the while that this whole patriotic, God-bless-America cluster-hump was perpetrated against a country that had neither attacked nor threatened the United States — and that the Gulf of Tonkin “incident” used to justify it all was a lie.
Then call Fred an America-hater, an unpatriotic lib’ruhl, or someone whose words “dishonors the troops.”
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I don’t mean to make light of a very serious historical event that hits some of us personally. But the MM SM dynamic plays itself out in this very funny scene with Sam Kinison in “Back to School”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xfi4s8cjLFI
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Frank (#51):
So, are you going to answer my arguments in #45 or not?
In #36 you raised some issues which I answered with a discussion of your Dred Scott example. From you—no reply.
I read and addressed your link in #36. You said: “I hope you’ll give the article a read — I’d love to explore it together with you.” But from you—no reply.
Now in #51 your response is a post from a disillusioned Marine whose only argument is the emotional wail of, “War is hell, and I can’t stand it.”
He gives plenty of graphic descriptions of the gruesome nature of war. It is obvious that he has done his duty and has become a casualty of war—an emotional and mental casualty. War does that, and it is terrible. I do not call him unpatriotic.
However, his next line of attack (attack–not argument) is to cynically denigrate the actions and motives of those who are willing to do what he is no longer capable of: that is, continue to fight even though it is hard, dangerous and yes, gruesome. I fault him for that—attacking the integrity of other men who are willing to still do what is needed, despite the difficulty and personal cost.
He no longer sees any value in patriotism or another soldier’s personal sacrifice. Rather, he easily dismisses it all with sweeping accusations about warmongers in the pentagon, ambitious generals, cowardly politicians, etc. I never served in the Pentagon, never achieved general rank, and have never been elected to public office, but I guess I must fit in there somewhere. The other alternative is that I’m just stupid or deluded to still believe in patriotism or that there really is evil in the world that we must be willing to fight against.
But “Fred” assures us that his feelings (emotions) are not because he has become unpatriotic, because if, “…the Wehrmacht were landing in North Carolina,” he would be right there for us. If you say so, “Fred.”
However, I believe it would be stupid, insane, or maybe even cowardly to wait until the Wehrmacht or anybody else got to North Carolina before we reluctantly decided to fight. But that’s just my reason speaking—instead of my emotions.
So Frank, when you are ready to respond to my arguments with reason, facts, logic, and historical examples, rather than just emotional pacifism, I’m ready listen.
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MICHAEL – I think you’re mistken to argue that the wailing pathos of the music one listens to somehow adds or detracts from one’s rationality and discipline. These come from practice, not from hearing the Art of Fugue or avoiding hard rock. Not to take away from your accomplishments, but please don’t think the Air Force Academy made you more disciplined and rational than a hippie. I could list activities in music, chemistry, biology, and languages that show as much discipline as most any gymnast displays. Not only that, my drill team won a ROTC competition! Much to the consternation of the Colonel, who did not want me promoted.
As for communism, I visited East Berlin and East Germany in the 70’s and the 90’s, and had some of the experiences you report, and have friends who grew up in East Germany (and now live in Baden-Württemberg). None of this requires me to share your opinions of the Viet Nam War.
Your argument seems to revolve around personal traits that you possess and anti-war protesters lacked. This is ironic, because often it’s the lack of discipline rather than the capacity for it that sends young men into the military. That’s a notorious stereotype, of course, but it’s unavoidable in representations from Homer to Tolstoy to The Things They Carried. A dozen members of my family have degrees from elite universities, but none of us since WWII served in the military.
If I’m right about the Viet Nam War and you are wrong, then the Air Force played the most despicable role in the conflict, and you have something to answer for. A friend of mine had a job in Viet Nam typing orders for bombing missions, because he was so meticulous and accurate. These were traits he had acquired from studying piano. He later got a PhD at the U Mich in music theory. (I played some of the Brahms intermezzi almost as well as he did.)
I don’t think the timeline of history and public opinion proves that the anti-war-movement ended the war, much as I wish that it had. But did my “success” from your point of view excuse your failure to win? I don’t think so.
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Michael,
Fair enough: I do owe you interaction on these issues/links I’ve raised.
Unfortunately, I must hit the sack at the moment. (Graveyard worker.)
I will try to get back to you this afternoon/evening.
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