Posted on 11/04/2006 3:21:48 PM PST by Borges
`Uncle Walter' says he could cover news today, and that's the way it is
Walter Cronkite turns 90 years old today, and the renowned broadcaster has lost none of his lust for the news business.
``I would like to think that I'm still quite capable of covering a story,'' he told the New York Daily News this week.
After anchoring the CBS Evening News for nearly two decades, his voice can now be heard introducing one of his successors, Katie Couric.
Asked for his reaction when he was invited to do the introduction, he replied without hesitation: ``I would like to be doing the whole broadcast.''
Still, he said: ``I was honored to be asked and I must say rather surprised. I'm very pleased to have my little signature out there at the beginning of the broadcast.''
Cronkite, of course, was the first anchor of that broadcast -- which was also the first nightly news program. Having him introduce Couric, said Sean McManus, president of CBS News and CBS Sports, was ``in retrospect, obvious.''
``It speaks volumes about what CBS News stands for,'' he said. ``It says so much about our tradition and our foundation.''
Cronkite helped build that foundation through his work during a particularly transformative time in American history. He was there to interpret for attentive audiences (undistracted by today's dizzying array of news sources) major world events like the Cuban missile crisis, Vietnam, the Watergate scandal, the Apollo 11 moon landing and the assassination of President Kennedy.
Cronkite is proudest of his coverage of the civil rights movement, the peace talks between Egypt's Anwar Sadat and Israel's Menachem Begin in the 1970s and the space program.
``The (moon landing) was certainly one of the greatest stories of the century and perhaps will be the greatest story of many centuries.''
Television news has changed since Cronkite and Huntley-Brinkley ruled the evening news roost. But Cronkite said the anchor's job hasn't changed much.
So which broadcast does ``Uncle Walter'' watch?
``I bounce around a little bit,'' he said. ``I think all the three major networks do a good job. I'm particularly fond of Jim Lehrer's report on public radio.''
And Couric?
``I think Katie's doing very well,'' he said. ``I would like to see just a little bit more hard news on the broadcast.''
These days Cronkite spends his working hours doing documentary narration and voiceovers, as well as some writing, although he gave up his syndicated column last year. A leg injury has kept him off the tennis courts for the past few years, but he still enjoys sailing. He does have one regret.
``I unfortunately have not been to Iraq,'' he said. ``It's the first war since (World War II) that I have not covered.''
Brinkley's book "Washington Goes to War" about DC pre- and during World War II when he was a young reporter is also quite good!
Like most legends, this one isn't true.
"Legend" my a$$. He's a news reader, nothing more. Why would anyone make a hero of a man who simply looked at stuff and described it? Where's the talent in that, let alone the heroism?
A legend in his own mind.
Is David Brinkley still with us?
A 90 year old crank is still a crank. Just an old crank. Screw that old Commie P.O.S.
Ah, yes.
He will surely go down in history alongside Benedict Arnold, the Rosenbergs and Vidkun Quisling----as soon as the lefty media-academic axis he helped create has been consigned to the dustbin along with Hitlerism, Communism, and Islamic Fascism.
Who knows, in a thousand years "cronkite" may be a generic verb for "betray by persuasion."
Well, all righty then. Looks like I haven't been keeping up with Cronkite's other missing pieces. Maybe it's better this way....?
Cronkite at 90: Still a legend in his own mind.
David Brinkley died in 2003.
what made him a "legend" was his deliberate call for surrender in Vietnam, on the air, spewing out his defeatism every frigging night, night after night, after night. Along with Morley Safer and Richard Threlkeld.
His reveling in reporting the number killed every Friday night was despicable.
Had it not been for Watergate, Nixon won the war.
The Democrats in Congress pulled the rug out from under the Paris Peace accords, ended all support for the free government in the South, every dime which was promised to them in the accords, and the promised bombing of the North if they violated the accords.
Gerald Ford, as the GOP in general at the time, was too weak to protest the coup by the defeatists in Congress.
Built a foundation of lies, misrepresentations, and outright anti-American statements.
I say send him to Iraq.
LOL! Same thing in my house, except my mom was the one screaming at Cronkite and what damage he was doing to our soldiers and our country. She's always been more political than my dad, and was the one that turned me on to Rush since day one.
I remember having a break between classes in college when I learned President Reagan had been shot. The first person I called was my mom and we had a good cry together over the phone.
At 46, I'm still a broken glass Republican, and always will be. I have my mother to thank, and my grandparents before her.
Proving that the good die young...
HILLARY, CRONKITE CALL FOR WORLD GOVERNMENT
1999 WorldNetDaily.com - December 9, 1999 - Where was the mainstream news media when Hillary Clinton introduced Walter Cronkite to the World Federalist Association on Oct. 19? Television cameras focused on Hillary's baseball cap; it is far more important that voters know where she stands on the issue of national sovereignty. Not until WorldNetDaily reported the Cronkite speech Nov. 30, did Americans discover that both Hillary and Walter are avid advocates of world government.
Cronkite says, "democracy, civilization itself, is at stake," unless the "basic structure of our global community" is changed in the next few years. Cronkite's appeal for world government came only five days before the release of the Charter for Global Democracy which embodies the version of world government preferred by the United Nations Association.
Both the UNA and the WFA have been promoting world government for years. Cronkite's group, the WFA, prefers a "federalist" system which would create a weighted system of voting in the U.N. General Assembly to create a legislative body roughly akin to the American Congress. The UNA prefers a "consensus" process that takes into account recommendations offered by civil society (non-government organizations accredited by the U.N.).
Both organizations want to elevate the U.N. to world government status and empower the U.N. to enforce all international law. In fact, in 1986, the WFA filed suit against the United States over U.S. foreign policy, arguing that Article VI of the U.S. Constitution made the U.N. Charter as well as other U.N. treaties, the "supreme law of the land." The courts ruled against the WFA in 1989.
Hillary's presence at the WFA meeting, and her introduction of Cronkite, directly aligns her with the world government movement, and particularly with the WFA's world government aspirations.
Cronkite called for the "revision" and limitation of the veto power of permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. The Commission on Global Governance and the Charter for Global Democracy call for the elimination of both the veto and permanent member status on the Security Council. This latter recommendation will be presented as the needed "reform" to the Millennium Assembly next September. Cronkite's more timid approach, as well as his "federalism" ideas have been overwhelmed by the U.N.'s "consensus" process now on a fast track toward adoption.
Cronkite called for the immediate ratification of a laundry list of U.N. treaties, including the infamous Convention on the Rights of the Child; the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW); and, "most important," Cronkite says, the International Criminal Court, which empowers the U.N. to prosecute American citizens whether or not it is ratified by the Senate.
Hillary made her support for these positions clear when she attended the U.N. Beijing Conference on Women in 1995.
Cronkite said in order to achieve world government, "Americans will have to yield up some of our sovereignty." He said, "the notion of unlimited national sovereignty means international anarchy."
Under the world government scheme embodied in the Charter for Global Democracy, any individual nation could wield only the power assigned to it by the U.N. National armies would be disarmed to the level of a national police force. The U.N. would maintain a "directly recruited" standing army under the direct authority of the U.N. Secretary-General. Private citizens would be disarmed, and the U.N. would control the manufacture, sale, licensing and distribution of all firearms.
To finance this expanded world government, the U.N. would be given the authority to impose taxes on the exchange of currency, on the use of resources, including the air, outer space, and the seas. Taxing authority is seen not only as the source of unlimited revenue, but also as a way to force a reduction of natural resources, especially fossil fuels, water, trees, and minerals.
Like the Clinton administration, and other world government advocates, Cronkite demeans opponents. He says that like America's rejection of the League of Nations, current opposition to world government is "led by a handful of willful senators who choose to pursue their narrow, selfish political objectives at the cost of our nation's conscience."
He goes even further to single out the "Christian Coalition and the rest of the religious right wing" as the culprits who have kept the world in a state of sovereign anarchy and prevented the emergence of a "civilized force of law" administered by the United Nations.
The fact that people of the stature of Hillary Clinton and Walter Cronkite are now willing to publicly advocate world government is an indication of their confidence that the world is now ready to accept their plan. World government is no longer the exclusive domain of the "black helicopter crowd." Finally, the sinister plans to rule the world are being exposed by those who expect to rule.
The timeline is, indeed, short. After decades of silent and denied preparation, the United Nations has made public the millennium year agenda which is crowned by the largest gathering of heads of state in the history of the world next September.
World government, called "global governance" by the U.N., will not occur on any certain day. It is a process that has been underway for years. The Millennium Assembly and summit next September, with the adoption of the Charter for Global Democracy, is seen to be the point from which there is no turning back.
The only way to stop world government at this late date, is for the American people to send a government to Washington in the next election that can muster the courage to just say, "No."
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