Walter Cronkite

Word of Walter Cronkite's demise has somehow finally reached me in spite of my highly managed status of recluse, which was implemented for reasons I cannot really go into at the present time or at any other time, for that matter. America, if not the world, has lost its most trusted newsman.

While others have properly eulogized the giant of television reporting, I take hope in the notion that, perhaps, we'll never again have a television news reporter in whom we can trust. I see this as a positive development. At the very least, we should look at our TV anchors askance. More appropriately, we should give them the same respect and consideration we would extend to someone attempting to sell us time-shares in a leper colony.

Even the benighted Walter Cronkite is said to have been an asset of Operation Mockingbird, a secret C.I.A. campaign to influence domestic and foreign media back in the 1950s and beyond, thus functioning as a "reliable source out-going" in C.I.A. parlance. Oh my! Phil Graham went into the Hall of Fame with that recruitment.

W.C. Fields' sage counsel of "Never give a sucker an even break or wise up a chump", notwithstanding I feel it is time to pass the word. It is not too surprising to find that we are being played daily for suckers and seen as chumps by those in control. It does not mean that we must tolerate it. At the very least, we should stop encouraging it.