THERE’S actually tape of Dan Rather in 1958, calling a college football game and uttering what’s believed to be the first-ever folksy “Dan-ism.”
He describes a player as being “as lonely as Custer at Little Big Horn.”
Until Rather anchored the “60 Minutes Wednesday” report last September that purported to show that President Bush had shirked his Vietnam-era National Guard service, Rather may have been remembered mostly for his over-the-top expressions.
CBS is giving Rather, who signs off from the “CBS Evening News” anchor desk Wednesday night, an hour-long special that night.
Watching it will make you wonder how different things might have been had it not been for Rather’s spectacular stumble at the final fence of his career.
“Dan Rather: A Reporter Remembers,” (8 p.m./Ch. 2) covers all the bases of his reporting career – from his beginnings as a cub reporter in the late 1950s to the “Memogate” scandal.
In between clips, it features Rather reminiscing about his storied career and comments from former CBS News President Howard Stringer. (Rather and his current boss, Andrew Heyward, are not on the best of terms.)
There’s Rather in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963 – confirming the assassination of President John F. Kennedy to a stunned Walter Cronkite. And there he is covering the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War (“a mean jungle hell,” he calls it) – and getting tossed out of the 1968 Democratic Convention.
Then there is his famous verbal sparring match with President Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal.
Nixon: “Are you running for something?”
Rather: “No, sir, Mr. President. Are you?”
“When Watergate came into being, that was the first time I heard ‘liberal’ as an epithet hung around my neck and thrown my way,” Rather recalls.
In 1981, Rather unexpectedly inherited the “CBS Evening News” anchor desk from Cronkite – who wanted Roger Mudd to succeed him and was never comfortable with Rather.
“You have to accept that you have shortcomings as an anchor and go into this as something new to learn,” Rather says he told himself at the time.
