{"id":101,"date":"2009-07-18T11:34:11","date_gmt":"2009-07-18T15:34:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=101"},"modified":"2009-09-25T15:07:51","modified_gmt":"2009-09-25T19:07:51","slug":"walter-cronkite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2009\/07\/18\/walter-cronkite\/","title":{"rendered":"Walter Cronkite"},"content":{"rendered":"

I wasn’t really a TV news-watcher during his heyday (actually, it was a habit I’ve pretty much avoided all my life), but Jesse Walker<\/a> sums up my feelings nicely here:<\/p>\n

\n

It [Cronkite running for president] was a joke, of course. But it was a wistful what-if of a joke, and it resonated. Time<\/em> soon ran letters hailing the idea. “He knows more about national and international problems than any other two candidates put together,” declared one reader, “and, as a duty, I think he would accept the miserable job.” Four years later, the newsman was still fending off suggestions that he run for the office and “make a difference.” Can you imagine anyone spouting such a fantasy about any of our anchors today? Maybe Stewart or Colbert, but not someone who delivers the news with a straight face.<\/p>\n

And that’s good. Cronkite’s influence was a product of the three-network era, a time we should be happy to have put behind us. I’m sorry to see the man die, but I’m glad no one was able to fill his shoes.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

(Cross-posted to the old blog, http:\/\/bolditalic.com\/quotulatiousness_archive\/005594.html<\/a>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wasn’t really a TV news-watcher during his heyday (actually, it was a habit I’ve pretty much avoided all my life), but Jesse Walker sums up my feelings nicely here: It [Cronkite running for president] was a joke, of course. But it was a wistful what-if of a joke, and it resonated. Time soon ran […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,13],"tags":[293,101],"class_list":["post-101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-usa","tag-obituary","tag-tv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-1D","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1140,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101\/revisions\/1140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}