In a Facebook rant last week, the disgraced former CBS Newsman Dan Rather preached about Donald Trump’s indecency over his smear of the Khan family. Naturally this was in a social media post. I presume no self-respecting news organization would hire such a man. Maybe The National Enquirer would be a good fit. 

     He raised some legitimate concerns (although he is seemingly indifferent to Hillary Clinton’s felonious treason and corruption), like that Republican conventions used to embrace American Exceptionalism. Trump has said that he “doesn’t like the term”. There was precious little heard about conservative values at this year’s RNC.

     I too question Trump’s decency. Why did he call John Allen, a respected four-star general, a “failed general”? Why would he smear the father of a fallen hero and assume that Mrs. Khan didn’t speak simply because she was Muslim? That’s bigoted and ignorant. 

     I’m not interested in Roger Stone’s silly conspiracies about Khizr Khan being a closet jihadist. Khan has a right to free speech. Ben Shapiro of the The Daily Wire made the point that Trump should’ve just taken the high road like President Bush did when Cindy Sheehan made similarly controversial statements about him during the Iraq War. Donald Trump and his obnoxious idiocy aside, Dan Rather is in no position to lecture anyone about morals or integrity. 

President Bush during his serrvice in the Texas Air National Guard.

     In the heat of the 2004 Presidential campaign, the veteran CBS News Anchor and his producer Mary Mapes pushed a story that George W. Bush’s father used his political influence to keep his son from being sent to Vietnam. An independent investigation showed that he lacked sufficient evidence and violated basic journalistic standards. In 2005 he left the anchor position and continued reporting on 60 Minutes. CBS gave him the boot in June 2006, and he has been irrelevant ever since. In 2007 he filed a $70 million lawsuit against CBS, which was dismissed two years later. 

   To this day Dan Rather denies the report was faulty, which makes him no less of a narcissist than the man he is criticizing.

     In addition to ending Rather’s career, the Killian Papers scandal was embarrassing for the network. CBS spent untold amounts of money investigating the matter. Yet as William Campenni, a fighter pilot who served with Bush pointed out, “Ironically, it was amateur bloggers who first uncovered problems with the memos. And, though he’s never gotten credit for it, it was a little-known writer at The American Thinker named Steve Gilbert who first uncovered the link between the memos supplied by Bill Burkett and their origins in the writings of Bush-hating blogger [Paul] Lukasiak.”

     I bring all this up because it’s not the first time Dan Rather has demonstrated his glaring hypocrisy. In a 2011 speech at American University, he spoke about how media bias is threatening American journalism (Lol). “Some of [the media] is informative, some of it even looks and sounds like news, but the underlying impetus of the media is to generate profit,” he told the students. Yes Dan, the primary purpose of a news corporation is to make money. But the good ones do their best to ensure that profit and political biases don’t compromise journalistic integrity. He also said, “If you’re going to be a journalist worthy of the name, you’d better take the attitude ‘if you’re looking for a friend, then get a dog.’” I can’t help but wonder if he was able to hold a straight face during the first half of that sentence.    

     In 2013 the reputation of Brian Williams went down in an epic fall from grace (unlike the helicopter he claimed to be riding in). Dan Rather claimed that NBC “threw him [Brian] under the bus”. He seemed to be the only one defending Williams, “I don’t know the particulars about that day in Iraq. But I do know Brian. He’s a longtime friend and we have been in a number of war zones and on the same battlefields, competing but together. Brian is an honest, decent man,” Rather said.

     To this day Rather denies the report he used in 2004 was unreliable, which makes him no less of a narcissist than the man he is criticizing. He used blatantly faulty information to mislead millions of people and assassinate the character of an innocent man. So I’ll draw from your own sanctimonious words Mr. Rather: Have you no sense of decency, sir?        

     Dan Rather – millions Americans still don’t trust you, and they shouldn’t. Stop seeking attention, shut up, and let the honest reporters handle the news. When I hear disgraced and washed up losers like him, Katie Couric, or Brian Williams acting like they still matter it makes me appreciate how drastically the Internet has expanded and improved our access to news over the past 20 years. Newspapers and cable networks no longer hold all the power over information, and that’s a beautiful thing. 

— American Exceptionalism 

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