Free Republic

During the “Overtime” online edition of HBO’s Real Time, host Bill Maher posited that President Obama moderates his political positions out of fear of being assassinated, leading to a panel-wide battle over whether Americans are “subconsciously racist” against the president. While lamenting with Oliver Stone about the short political career of John F. Kennedy, Maher suggested that bold leaders like JFK “always seem to, at the end of the day, get cut out of the picture, violently or otherwise. And maybe that is why Barack Obama is more of a centrist than we want him to be?” “You think that?”

“Ex-Marine Asks Soviet Citizenship” — Washington Post headline, Nov. 1, 1959 (concerning Lee Harvey Oswald) “He didn’t even have the satisfaction of being killed for civil rights. It’s — it had to be some silly little Communist.” — Jacqueline Kennedy, Nov. 22, 1963 She thought it robbed his death of any meaning. But a meaning would be quickly manufactured to serve a new politics. First, however, an inconvenient fact — Oswald — had to be expunged from the story. So, just 24 months after the assassination, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., the Kennedys’ kept historian, published a thousand-page history of the thousand-day...

Reporters covering the investigation of the major al Qaeda victory at Benghazi should ask themselves: "what would Walter Cronkite do" if he were covering the story. Let's consider the facts. Most people familiar with the War on Terror knew in September, 2012, that there was a heightened risk of an al Qaeda attack in the U.S. or at American installations outside the U.S. on or about the anniversary of the original 9/11 attack. The danger was particularly high at American facilities in Libya because of the very unstable situation there and the presence of al Qaeda personnel who were trying...

In the early 1970s, the most trusted man in America did a very untrustworthy thing. Unbeknownst to the millions who tuned in religiously to the CBS Evening News, Walter Cronkite cut a deal with Pan Am to fly his family to vacation spots around the world. Together with a handful of friends, they roamed from the South Pacific to Haiti, with Cronkite snorkeling, swimming, and drinking, thanks to a friend at the airline. According to Douglas Brinkley’s sweeping and masterful biography Cronkite, the news division president, Dick Salant, was upset at what he deemed a blatant conflict of interest, but...

Yes, boys and girls, it’s story time again… and have we got a whopper for you. This is a story about what may be one of the largest information conspiracies in recent memory. You won’t find it in any history books, you won’t find it in any of the revisionist propaganda they’re pumping into our kids’ heads, you sure won’t find it in any publication of the Lame Stream Media… that’s because they are a huge part of the story. President Eisenhower once said, “Beware of the military-industrial complex”. Today, that caution could as easily read, “beware the Government /...

NPR’s Scott Simon longs for the peaceful days of Walter Cronkite, when horrible events like the Tucson shootings were unheard of: SIMON: People have observed over the past few years, for example, that, you know, this just didn’t happen when 63 million people watched Walter Cronkite every night. Tim Graham at Newsbusters confirms Simon’s claims about the peacefulness of the Cronkite era**. (**Not counting the assassinations of JFK, RFK, MLK, Malcolm X, the shooting of George Wallace, two attempts on Gerald Ford’s life or the wild over exaggeration about the size of Cronkite’s nightly audience) And let’s not forget the...

We are told by careful pollsters that half of the American people believe that American troops should be brought home from Iraq immediately. This news discourages supporters of our efforts there. Not me, though: I am relieved. Given press coverage of our efforts in Iraq, I am surprised that 90 percent of the public do not want us out right now. Between January 1 and September 30, 2005, nearly 1,400 stories appeared on the ABC, CBS, and NBC evening news. More than half focused on the costs and problems of the war, four times as many as those that discussed...

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow is actually about to win an award for her "civility" and "tolerance." "The Walter Cronkite Faith & Freedom Award, established by Interfaith Alliance in 1998, recognizes individuals who courageously promote democratic values, defend religious freedom and reinvigorate informed civic participation," reads a statement released by the organization Monday. "The award recognizes individuals whose actions have embodied the values of civility, tolerance, diversity and cooperation in the advancement of public dialogue and public policy on traditionally controversial and divisive issues."

Ted Kennedy's KGB Correspondence By Kevin Mooney on 6.22.10 @ 6:08AM Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's self-serving, secret correspondence with Soviet agents during the height of the Cold War included proposals for collaborative efforts designed to undermine official U.S. policy set by Democratic and Republican administrations, KGB documents show. With the media now reporting on the late senator's just released Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) file, now is an opportune time for a more expansive investigation into Kennedy's KGB contacts. The agency took a keen interest in a 1961 "fact-finding" trip the Massachusetts Democrat took to Mexico and other parts of...

Many conservatives still have not forgiven Walter Cronkite for editorializing in early 1969 that the Vietnam War would end in a “bloody stalemate,” encouraging the S to abandon the fight at a time when the Communists appeared ready to throw in the towel. If a recently-released FBI file is true, Cronkite may have gone farther than editorializing. According to an FBI informant, Cronkite offered advice and CBS resources to assist the anti-war activists, including a helicopter to fly Edmund Muskie to a protest that CBS would then cover: Legendary CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite allegedly collaborated with anti-Vietnam War activists...

FBI Files Discuss Cronkite Aiding Vietnam Protesters Legendary CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite allegedly collaborated with anti-Vietnam War activists in the 1960s, going so far as to offer advice on how to raise the public profile of protests and even pledging CBS News resources to help pull off events, according to FBI documents obtained by Yahoo! News. The documents, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, say that in November 1969, Cronkite encouraged students at Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla., to invite Maine Sen. Edmund Muskie to address a protest they were planning near Cape Kennedy (now known...

WALTER CRONKITE PROMOTES DEMOCRATIC FEDERAL WORLD GOVERNMENT (Received W.F.A.'s Norman Cousins Global Governance Award on 19 October 1999} I am greatly honored to receive this award for two reasons: first, I believe as Norman Cousins did that the first priority of humankind in this era is to establish an effective system of world law that will assure peace with justice among the peoples of the world; second, I feel sentimental about this award because half a century ago Norman offered me a job as spokesman and Washington lobbyist for the World Federalist organization, which was then in its infancy. I...

President Obama has been invited to eulogize Walter Cronkite, the legendary CBS News anchorman, at a memorial service in Manhattan next month, network sources said. Former President Bill Clinton has accepted an invitation to speak at the service, to be held at Lincoln Center at 10:30 a.m. on Sept. 9. Also speaking at the service will be Katie Couric, anchor and managing editor of the "CBS Evening News"; Sean McManus, president of CBS News and Sports; and Leslie Moonves, CBS Corp.'s president and chief executive officer. Performances are scheduled by Jimmy Buffett and Mickey Hart, who was a Grateful Dead...

NEW YORK, Aug. 17 (UPI) -- U.S. President Barack Obama, former President Bill Clinton and ex-astronaut Buzz Aldrin are to attend a memorial service for Walter Cronkite, officials said. Cronkite died July 17. He was 92. His funeral was July 24 in New York. The New York Post said the luminaries are scheduled to speak at the Sept. 9 event at Manhattan's Lincoln Center. Also reportedly on the guest list are television personality Nick Clooney, CBS executives and newspeople Les Moonves, Sean McManus and Bob Schieffer, veteran broadcast journalist Tom Brokaw and media mogul Howard Stringer. The Post said Wynton...

Walter Cronkite created Fox News. Cronkite's fundamental role as a "cultural artist" in creating Fox. one of the most notable moments of Cronkite's liberalism being unmasked in a highly visible fashion was his now famous series on Vietnam. But by this time conservative Americans were already well awake to the realization that this powerful new institution of television was being used in ways both subtle and not, to convey the message that there was no more enlightened or superior world view than modern American liberalism. Broadcast by broadcast it was increasingly apparent that those who disagreed or who challenged the...

Walter Cronkite's family has released details on his funeral service tomorrow at 2pmET at St. Bartholomew's Church in Manhattan. The service will be a traditional burial service from the Book of Common Prayer with the Rev. William McD. Tully presiding. Music will be performed by St. Bartholomew's Choir. The music was chosen in cooperation with the family and will include a jazz band's rendition of "When The Saints Go Marching In" during the final procession. Speakers will include Andy Rooney, Sanford Socolow, Mike Ashford and Bill Harbach followed by a final tribute from son Chip Cronkite. St. Bartholomew's is the...

Journalism: After the eulogies, the fact remains that "the most trusted man in America" betrayed that trust. He helped snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in Vietnam and tried hard to do the same in Iraq.President Obama on Friday praised Walter Cronkite as a journalistic icon, calling the CBS anchor the "voice of certainty in an uncertain world." More to the point, he was the father of advocacy journalism, the patron saint of media bias. He went from reporting news to recreating it in his own image. Far from the image of the patriotic war correspondent, Cronkite was a...

Katie Couric offered some comic relief on this morning's Early Show, preaching the importance of objectivity in reporting. As evidence of her impartiality, the CBS Evening News anchor cited the fact that, as did Cronkite, she has gotten "grief from both sides of the aisle." Now I suppose some of the more radical elements of the Red Army Faction might have found something to quibble with in Couric's coverage over the years. But how can the woman who has come to epitomize MSM liberal bias suggest with a straight face that criticism has come in comparable degree from the left...

On February 27, 1968, Walter Cronkite delivered his verdict on the (ongoing) war in Vietnam. The most trusted man in America pronounced that it was "...more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam War is to end in a stalemate." Stalemate.... The Tet Offensive, which battle prompted Cronkite's televised towel throwing, was a decisive American victory -- of the more than 80,000 Communist troops who poured south on the Vietnamese New Year, American and allied South Vietnamese soldiers would kill or capture more than 58,000, while suffering a combined, and comparatively light, 9,000 casualties. Tet was in fact a disaster for the...

In any case, it was night after night of one hour lectures until it became apparent (to certain viewers) this “news special” was little more than what we would now term an “infomercial” for Lyndon Johnson’s Urban Renewal Program, a scheme to redistribute massive amounts of tax dollars to rebuild “blighted inner city neighborhoods” accompanied by the complete destruction of the social and economic fabric of existing communities. Variants of this program still exist around the country today, with the same outcome. But in the 1960’s it was something new and untried.