Walter Cronkite was a towering figure of the media for many decades. His catchphrase was in his sign-off. And that’s the way it was on whatever date. It is somewhat curious that he seems to be addressing archivists of the future rather than his live viewers of the evening but there you have it. He declared the first draft of the day’s history done and in the can. A not-young Dan Rather was groomed to replace him and no doubt he took it seriously, especially as the years passed and Cronkite proved remarkably durable both in his ability to show up and read the news and his prominence in the public mind. Rather was certainly prominent himself, anchoring every electi0n and hurricane. He became known for folksy, cryptic aphorisms supposedly drawn from his Texas youth. If a frog had side pockets he would carry a handgun. That sort of thing. Once Cronkite did actually relinquish his chair Dan searched for some time for his own tagline. One experiment was a single, solemnly intoned word. Courage.

Whether he was observing Courage, practicing Courage or pleading for Courage was never clear. And while that might have been appropriate for a newscast absorbed with war, famine or plague it didn’t quite fit when the last story of the night was a human interest fluff piece about a skydiving shar pei or somesuch. Courage, Wrinkles. Courage.

But Dan wasn’t going to be just a talking head, no offense to Cronkite. He continued as an investigative reporter as well. He demonstrated some real Courage in 2004 when he pursued a sitting President for misdeeds some thirty years old, ill-remembered and despite months of investigation, undocumented. The misdeeds were his slacker-minimal attendance to his military duties in the Texas Air National Guard, his pursuit and receipt of preferential treatment for the sake of his famous name and finally being AWOL, never fulfilling his contract to its legal requirements. Needless to say, the object of this investigation was George W Bush. Also it is needless to say, Rather never turned up any evidence for his accusations.

He never turned up any but some did turn up in the form of a handful of memos hurled into Rather’s hands, typed and signed by a Colonel Killian, deceased, that were written, oddly, to himself. These memos, or rather some crumpled copies of the memos quickly proved to be blatant forgeries having been composed in MS Word with the default settings. This shouldn’t have surprised anyone overmuch who knew that the source of those documents was one Bill Burkett, a well-known crank with a grudge against the Bush clan that had already resulted in one lavish claim of preferential treatment that he had to withdraw when details were contradictory, unavailable or simply false.

This bad turn proved to be an opportunity to display Courage. A less gutsy man might have withdrawn but not so Dan Rather. He brazened it out, claimed that in apposition to the numberless experts on computer imaging, text-type technology and document examination that swarmed on the toddler internet to demonstrate the absurdity of the hoax, he had his OWN experts. And these were on the CBS payroll so their pedigree was far superior to any of the naysayers. But checking with the CBS experts we found that they also did say nay. Killian’s survivors denied the content or the practice of the memos were consistent with the late unit commander. Likewise did officers still living with first hand knowledge of the matter. These were all ignored in favor of a former secretary to Killian who vouched for the content of the memos while admitting that she did not type them, Killian did not write them and that she had no first hand knowledge of the pilot, Lt. Bush. Absent the discovery of a Time Travel Squadron in the TANG, Rather’s project was a baseless surmise of slanders. The embarrassment boiling through CBS finally demanded that Dan Rather draw his last check and get the ordinary, corporate firing treatment, calling back over his shoulder that the memos may well be fake but were still accurate. Courage like this is not of the usual sort.

There is little doubt that the Courageous Dan Rather was serving the nation in his mind; working to spare us another four years. The issue of Courage was then a sore point as the Democrat’s great hope to defeat Bush that year, Senator John Kerry, had had his own Courage bitterly rubbished. The foundation for that was not a handful of xeroxed missives from a dead man but the public testimony of every living officer in his chain of command with extensive documentation. Kerry’s history of malingering, incompetence and cowardice was exposed by on-the-record eyewitness accounts, contemprary records and of course by Kerry’s own lies regarding his three months of duty in Vietnam. But no Ratherite Courage was ever applied to this story of Courage, or its lack, except to undermine and discredit the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth as they styled themselves. Sadly for Dan and the country, this act of Courage failed utterly.

But Rather did not sacrifice in vain. Others were inspired by his Courage. The scent of blood was in the air. Bush blood. Blue blood. Republican blood (the sweetest). Every major news operation in the biz sent off a blizzard of inquiries. The Associated Press sued for full, third party access. Every word on every page of every document from the Department of Defense or any other department having anything to do with George W Bush was scrutinized, backtracked, questioned and publicized. Dust and rat turds disuaded no one from burrowing through archives or demanding some government drone to burrow. And it seemed like success. There was a gap in the paper trail. A couple months of Bush’s pay stubs from the ’70s could not be produced. Where are they? was the demand. What are you covering up? This lapse was enough for dozens of media figures high, low and low down to declare Bush the AWOL President. Impeachment? You betcha! Th-this is treason, really. What a disgrace to have a derelict product of legacy nepotism in the White House! Those were a euphoric few weeks for Bush detractors which, naturally, tended to be Kerry boosters. But in the end Courage was not sufficient. The redundant records were found (or produced…. ). In any case they were able to withstand forensic examination. The election came. And went. Well, you know the rest.

Sadly Courage was not repaid with success. That might be why it has gone so far out of style. Certainly the pressies of our day would apply their Courage to a full scrub of the current occupant of the White House if only there were anything to look into. Luckily there is not. Full Transparency is what Candidate Obama promised and clearly that is what President Obama has delivered. There are no murky corners here, no documents of uncertain provenance, no evasions, inconsitencies, mysterious coincidences or telltale gaps in the public record. The President enjoys a Clean Bill of Health, renewed every evening by a battalion of gum-flappers and fish-wrappers who spend their every breath informing us that any sort of inquiry along this line is not Courageous, but CRAZY! Come on, Obama is an open book, unlike Bush or Kerry or Clinton or McCain or god help us, a Palin; all of whom have suffered the media’s patented firehose and pool brush treatment both while seeking higher office and after retiring from public life. But that was the Courage of another day, a day before we knew our public figures so intimately. No stone has been left unturned, we declare, even though there aren’t any stones. So how do we know? That also is a crazy, possibly seditious and certainly racist inquisition that will not be dignified with an answer. Courage today is the Courage to believe; the Courage to look away. The Courage to denounce, deny, delay and above all to know that there is nothing to find so best not to appear foolish by looking. Someone might see you look. The Courage to Question?  That is a mask for cowardice. Believe, friends and therefore be Courageous.

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