Video: Rather- "Been Good to See Ya"

Jackson's Junction: Video Blogging - we provide (video), you decide!

Dan Rather signed off as CBS news Anchor tonight and gave his goodbyes and "Courage". 10 minutes into the broadcast, I sent an email to someone predicting he'd use "Courage", and yep... he did!

To bad he didn't take a shot at bloggers or something that would have made for some good news! Oh, well, here it is.

Note: I almost added a clip of Rather making those funny statements, but I felt that could wait until tomorrow. I'm gonna let Dan have his day, but rest assured, I built up a little pile of clips!

Update: Transcript here.
Update II:  If anyone experiences trouble playing this video, please email me.

-WATCH-

Comments

[preacher]

I was waiting for the Ratherism like
stuff the turkey put the coffee on I'm almost home

[ken]

O'l Dan Looked tighter than a long-necked wombat wearing a hat full of cranberries

[Richard R]

I had a faint hope that he'd retract the TANG/Bush story. Even after everything, it's never been officially retracted.

[jimmy]

You wonder if the CBS staff are working him out of the building, Dan is still waiting for the real papers that will prove him right

[TallDave]

He'd have to admit to himself they were wrong first.

You have to understand, Dan is not rational enugh to do that. He believes what he wants to believe.

[Willis]

I almost started feeling sorry for him. Till he mentioned his "courage" line.

[charles austin]

His hair was perfect. Aaaaoooooooo!!!!!

[jimmy]

The thing I have found funny is how over the years the MSM will at the drop of a hat dimiss anything that comes from Drudge or Blogs
OR Fox due to there so called Bias. yet they are pure

[Jaye Random]

I thought he made a couple of veiled allusions to his problems with bloggers-- the distributed nature of blogging can be seen as a "natural disaster" for the target, plus he probably still thinks of himself as a journalist who "report[ed] the truth" and "risk[ed] all" on the Burkett story.

[preacher]

Something that I have been thinking about for a while before tv and then cable people had to get there news from the radio or newspapers. so when tv came along they must have been looked on as the blogers are now

[Rob W]

Ask yourself if you hate him. Then ask yourself if you disagree with what you percieve is his political position. Then ask yourself if you thought he had the same political position as Brit Hume, would you hate him? Only if you can answer no to one of these questions is any criticism of him legitimate. The rest is all, as he said, disagreeing with him because he doesn't tell it like you want him to. That's hoping for bias.

[Fun Bob]

I believe that Dan, displaying the professional ethics of Chutch, plagiarized his "courage" tag line.

http://homepage.mac.com/neistatbrothers/movies/courage.mov

[Ross]

Rob W,

I hate Bill O'Reilly.

[Richard]

I'd "Rather" he just shot himself in the head on live T.V., then we would be rid of him for good!

[Fly'nGooseMahn]

Did anyone else watch the entire newscast? Didn't you get the feeling that that's what the news would be like every night if Dan had it entirely his way? I mean, I know it gets bad, but he had a glint in his eye and an upturned corner giving his mouth a little smirk as he took on: Big Oil, the "bad" economy, the evil banking industry, Health Care, Big Tobacco, the quagmire in Iraq, and a touching piece on his favorite ex-Prez, Bill Clinton. It was like it was his ideal night of news, every single thing he could slam in the evil capitalist, conservative, military, America.

[Rob]

Rob W,
You wrote:
"The rest is all, as he said, disagreeing with him because he doesn't tell it like you want him to."

Do you mean how we want him to tell the truth?

Rob T

[Pluto's Dad]

Well it was fun while it lasted. I doubt his replacement will be such a goldmine for comedians.

Ding Dong Dan Rather's Gone

[Pluto's Dad]

Rob W.

At least we, the averge joe, can admit our bias. That does not mean we cannot criticize someone, it just means a biased person has to be careful and have facts. Something Rather and Mapes did not have, something 60 minutes often does not have. (you'd know this if you ever watched a show where they talked about something you knew something about, and saw how completely uninformed it was. Then you start wondering if all the other episodes were just as uninformed).

Rather and Mapes are still running around saying they have no bias. What a joke.

[bryan]

man is dan rather boring [yawn]

[kynna]

Rob W,

Brit Hume once reported something that turned out to be false and he made a point of retracting it the next day and apologizing. He had been hoaxed. He didn't even do it maliciously. To even imply moral equivalence between Rather and Hume is close to obscene.

[Patricia]

Ron W,

You tell us to ask ourselves if we "hate" Dan Rather ( No ) and you also ask us if we disagree with his "political views," correct?

Well, Ron..how is it that we KNOW an anchorman's political views?

You obviously believe that his opinions differ from Brit Hume's.

But Brit's not a network anchor, Ron, is he?

Dan is. Isn't his reporting supposed to be objective, not subjective or editorializing?

If he IS an anchor, we shouldn't KNOW his views.

How did you come to that conclusion, Ron? Was it something Dan SAID?

I'll tell you how : because Dan Rather did not comport himself as a news anchor, but as a man doing political commentary and giving HIS views, not the news.

Think on that awhile.

[Dan "Cowardly Lion" Rather]

What makes a King out of a slave?
Courage!
What makes the flag on the mast to wave?
Courage!
What makes the elephant charge his tusk, in the misty mist or the dusky dusk?
What makes the muskrat guard his musk?
Courage!
What makes the sphinx the seventh wonder?
Courage!
What makes the dawn come up like thunder?
Courage!
What makes the Hottentot so hot? What puts the "ape" in apricot?
What have they got that I ain't got?
COURAGE!

[Ken]

There is no point in hating Dan. It is obvious that he, like Moyers, has no idea why we think so badly of their product.

Too many in the MSM have drifted into a belief that the "story" is by definition what they publish.

i.e. if they look at a situation and conclude it might be so, or should be so, or in their gut they know it so, then it is so.

Reporters are bold and poke into dark recesses based upon instinct. And that is good for all of us. But their conclusions should come from evaluation not hope.

Dan should never have been where he was. Not a bad person just a lousy choice to run a news group.

[Peter]

Plutos Dad hit it in the ten ring. For decades I swore at the TV, until I finally had the sense to quit watching.
Every single news item I saw concerning the way I made my living had simply incredible errors, both of fact and ommission. I may not always be the smartest guy in the room but I was damned good at my job, right up until I retired.
Thing is, I don't know a lot about your job.
It wasn't until the rise of talk radio and then the blogs and bulletin boards of the internet that we could compare notes. We then discover that almost every single one of us is really knowledgable about a couple of things, our jobs and our hobbies usually. We find from lawyers like the Powerline boys, Beldar and Steve H of Hog on Ice that most news items about the law contain errors of fact or ommission. We found from a typesetter about those Bush TANG fake documents. I am a reasonably engaged person, I don't know any typesetters and it wouldn't have occurred to me to check the fonts.There are a couple dozen doctors blogging, they tell me that stories about medicine and the practice thereof have those same glaring errors.
We've got the Milbloggers educating those of us that either never wore Uncle's suit or did so so long ago that much of our experience is irrellevant. We've got police and firefighters.
If the media types screw the pooch on a story about janitors there is someone to call them on it. And when that janitor calls them on it, Glenn Reynolds spreads it around to everybody.

[Stephen_M]

Rob W:
Hate him!?

I don't even know him.

I do know his work.
It sucks.

And I know that when he is fooled he stays fooled. Which makes him ludicrous.
Or else he's pretending to be fooled. Which is cowardly of him and insults the truth.