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A Journalistic Legend Is Gone: Daniel Schorr, 1916-2010

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Just as I was leaving for my NYC vacation, the news came that journalistic legend Daniel Schorr had passed away at age 93!

Daniel Schorr was one of a rare breed of journalists that we are unlikely to see again in a field that has changed so much!

Schorr worked for the Christian Science Monitor for decades! He also reported for the NY Times until he went to CBS News as part of the great group of journalists who worked for Edward R. Murrow!

He became controversial during the administration of President Richard Nixon, deeply hated by the President, who put him on the “enemy list” for his open opposition to the Nixon policies and his investigation of Watergate!

He then worked for CNN, and after a few years, went to National Public Radio, where he worked until his death! The author had heard his commentary very recently, and wondered how long he had been serving as a journalist, checking it out as being over 60 amazing years!

Schorr spoke his mind, but it was based upon careful scholarly research, not just personal opinion! He was a walking history book, having been intimately involved in our politics through his coverage of presidents from Eisenhower to Obama!

He was the winner of three Emmys during the Watergate years, as well as a Peabody for a lifetime of reporting, and numerous other awards, and was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Society of Professional Journalists!

Daniel Schorr was a thought provoking and insightful journalist who gave pleasure to his listeners on many channels over the years, and he cannot be replaced, any more than Walter Cronkite, one of his colleagues at CBS, can be replaced!

Journalism will never be the same, but he left a legacy that will endure!

Eliot Spitzer And Kathleen Parker Team Up For New CNN Show In Fall!

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Former NY Governor Eliot Spitzer, who was forced out of office after 14 months due to a sex scandal, is now about to take on an hourly news program on CNN, cohosting it at 8 pm weekdays with Kathleen Parker, a 2010 winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Journalism for the Washington Post, who defines herself as a “rational conservative”!

Spitzer had a dry run as a substitute talk show host for MSNBC, and proved to be very stimulating, and effective in arguing ideas and points with conservative guests! Parker is very articulate when she has appeared on cable shows, and it sounds like a great debate and point-counterpoint will develop between Spitzer and Parker, as well as their guests!

This could be another “Crossfire” type show, and it sounds as if CNN is attempting to challenge their tough opposition at 8 pm–Bill O’Reilly on Fox News Channel and Keith Olbermann on MSNBC! All for the better! 🙂

Kudos To Dr. Sanjay Gupta Of CNN For His Courage And Dedication To Duty!

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Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the Medical Correspondent for CNN, should be hailed and celebrated for his courage and dedication to duty in the Haitian Earthquake disaster.

UN doctors were told to leave because of security problems, leaving their patients, many of them just gone through surgery, absolutely without anyone to take care of them, except for Dr. Gupta, who was reporting the situation, and decided, with threat to himself certainly possible, to stay and tend to all of the patients overnight, going without sleep, but refusing to abandon the people who, without him, would have been left totally alone.

Dr. Gupta truly followed the Hippocratic Oath, while those UN doctors failed to meet their responsibilities, no matter what they were told to do. One should NEVER leave patients untended, but these men and women were unwilling to sacrifice possible danger to do their duty, while Dr. Gupta took his chances, but demonstrated just how much of a great professional and human being he is!

Are Political Dynasties A Bad Thing For America? Leave It To The Voters To Decide!

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Jack Cafferty on CNN today brought up the issue of political dynasties, declaring that having different generations of a political family in office is a bad thing for democracy.

I beg to disagree, as it is always up to the voters IF they want the relatives and offspring of political leaders to be in public office. They may have an edge in name recognition, but they also have a need to prove via their statements, actions and records that they deserve to be in public office. It is not as if these seekers win the seats by default, and often, they have failed to accomplish the goal of winning the election.

When one looks at the past, one can think of the Adamses, the Lodges, the Harrisons, the LaFollettes, the Tafts, the Roosevelts, the Kennedys, the Rockefellers, the Bushes, and the Clintons as the most outstanding examples of so called “dynasties”, and I would argue that despite some controversy, all of these families contributed much to American history.

So if there are people related to Jimmy Carter, Harry Reid, Dennis Hastert, Ron Paul, Joe Biden and others running for public office, all the best of luck as you attempt to convince the voting public as to your right to represent them in government!

Great News: Lou Dobbs Leaving CNN! :)

Ronald 1 Comment

News has just come that Lou Dobbs, the highly controversial talk show host on CNN at 7 pm weekdays, is resigning! This is GREAT NEWS, long overdue!

Dobbs has emerged in the past couple of years as a hate monger and a demagogue, particularly in his strong, vicious attacks on the subject of immigration. If you listened to and followed Dobbs, all 12 million estimated illegal immigrants would be deported yesterday, if he had his way. Also, he was promoting the “birther” movement, which contended that President Obama was not born in Hawaii, despite the birth certificate on file there, and the announcements of his birth in Honolulu newspapers a couple of days after his birth!

His promotion of nativism and prejudice is unbecoming CNN, and there was pressure brought to push that cable channel to force him out, and I was part of that effort in a small way.

The kind of journalism that Dobbs represents belongs on Fox News Channel and I predict that he will end up on that channel, joining Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly et al, only adding more disgrace to that so called “news channel”!