Noonan on Rather

I, like Beldar, thought the article that Peggy Noonan wrote was very kind and certainly gave old Danny boy a serious benefit of the doubt (not there is actually any doubt here about his actions). I line up much more squarely with his view, that Dan Rather is a disgrace and has forfeited whatever good his career achieved (an issue for a separate debate). The thing is, what does a "journalist" have besides his credibility? They don't have any special skills in analyzing events, or in deciding or forecasting what the effects of events are. If they did, they wouldn't be so overwhelmingly Democrat, while the rest of the country remains split. There is nothing they teach them at "journalism school" that they can't learn from a good English teacher, is there? (Leaving aside the technical aspects of journalism that they could certainly pick up on the job). I mean, at law school you learn how to understand the law in a way that you can't get anywhere else, and the bar exam is there to make sure you learned those skills. What do journalists have?

The point is that Rather blew up the only thing he ever had. Our trust. And then, instead of repairing it the best he could (with an apology) he stonewalled and slunk away to the ash heap of history. Shame.

p.s. I say "our" trust, but I never watched the news until I was an adult, and by then, CBS was not the place to go for the facts.