You might be able to call this the Blog of Death in the future. I write with passion about Walter Cronkite and his legacy, and Cronkite passes away the next day. Man, I hope all those British actors I mentioned yesterday are in good health.
But seriously, folks...
Walter Cronkite was the voice of authority for my parents, and their parents. In my studies of the media, he is one of only a few figures whom no one ever disparages or accuses of giving less than the best. In my mind, he represents an era I sorely wish I could have lived through, when the news was about how other people were making decisions which affected the country and the world, and Cronkite was telling us HOW these actions were going to play a role in OUR LIVES without being condescending or pandering or fearmongering. The news has undergone a profound evolution from the days of Addison and Steele to the 24-hour network and the blog. Cronkite was one of the keys in the greatest transitional period. He spoke to the masses, and always spoke with heart as well as mind, but he never lost sight of how the news was meant to inform and challenge and be a way for the people to speak out to those wielding decision-making power, for or against. I can never conceive of Cronkite speaking about the Gosselins or the O.J. Trial. NEVER.
Most of my firsthand exposure to Cronkite came through secondhand stories and snippets in documentaries...the JFK death announcement, the condemnation of Vietnam, the detailed reporting of Watergate, even spreading word that four Liverpudlians called the Beatles were going to change the entertainment world forever. But I'll never forget being a child and watching Spielberg's animated We're Back!: A Dinosaur's Story at least ten times. Cronkite played Professor Neweyes, the symbolic representative of all that was best in humanity, the believer and the dreamer...it was a role few others could have enacted with similar conviction.
Five years ago, I read a chronicle of CBS News in the eighties and received one last, inspiring picture of Cronkite, as a man who was prescient enough to see how the news was changing and made a Quixotic stand for how it should be. That he would fail was a foregone conclusion, but that he still tried...
I would have believed him, too, if he said the sky was green.
In contrast, I got up close and personal with Robert McNamara through Errol Morris's brilliant, Oscar-winning The Fog of War and David Halberstam's tear-inducing The Best and the Brightest...both approach Greek tragedy, the saga of a wise, good-hearted humanist whose tragic flaw was a belief in fact and intellect over emotion...not that he discredited emotion, but it played no role the ability to make analytic decisions. On a small level, this tendency resulted in the man who took charge of Ford and made it great again to push the Edsel. On a large level, he helped bring on years of death, pain, and a division America has never recovered from in a pointless war. To McNamara's credit, he learned the "eleven lessons" well, for The Fog of War depicts that rare man who is able to judge himself and his time objectively and still be personally repentent. His story is inspirational, but as a warning...especially if you read Brightest. Prepare to shiver.
Frank McCourt to me represents the great liberal picture of an educator, a man who never stopped learning and found the connection between personal and intellectual development. I never did read Angela's Ashes, sad to say, but essays and interviews left me convinced he was a warm-hearted man with genuine curiosity for all which came his way...and his brother Malachy appeared in The Mollie Maguires, a personal favorite of my Dad's.
All three will be missed.
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