On Wednesday, Tom Brokaw signed off for the last time as the entirely unobjectionable, glibly pandering, slightly speech-impeded anchor of NBC "Nightly News." He was replaced by the still somewhat inscrutable Brian Williams, a figure notable only for his highly deadpan, vaguely homoerotic appearances with the similarly red-of-hair and endowed-of-height Conan O'Brien on "Late Night." Tributes were made, emotions were expressed, Greatest Generations were conjured and the world went on. It's not like Brokaw's retirement is worth crying over.
Which is to say, his ratings supremacy notwithstanding, Brokaw is no Dan Rather. Indeed, when Rather finally departs for that journalist retirement home in the sky - "60 Minutes" - next spring, I wouldn't be surprised if I do shed a few tears. Because forgeries, scandals and temper tantrums aside, at least Rather stands for something.
Of course, certain self-styled media critics will insist that something was simply lefty politics. Which I think is missing the point. I wouldn't deny that Rather probably votes Democrat and is likely a social liberal, but that's hardly the reason he elicits so much disdain in so many people. After all, Walter Cronkite openly editorialized on air about Vietnam and he was The Most Trusted Man in America.
No, what makes people hate Rather - and what makes him brilliant - has to do with the style of television. We let Cronkite get away with criticizing war and Brokaw get away with jingoist sentimentality because we can imagine these opinions coming from real people outside the box - we can imagine Peter Jennings going home and kissing his wife or Brokaw sitting down with a Scotch. But Rather's life is television - his biography is a surreal series of muggings, wild taxi rides and ridiculous costumes fit for an Aaron Spelling soap.
Rather is, simply put, a deeply bizarre figure - a boutique product for a niche audience. The oft-cited Web site RatherBiased.com may be focused on detailing evidence of the anchor's political leanings, but its most interesting feature by far is the exhaustive list of singularly Ratherian moments, ranging from his admissions of drug use ("I can say to you with confidence, I know a fair amount about LSD.") to his response to an uninvited interview request ("Fuck you. You got it?"). Best of all, of course, are those down-home Texan sayings, which seem neither particularly Texan nor particularly authentic to Rather but are instead delivered with the sinister irony of a David Lynch movie. Consider this election night beauty: "These returns are running like a squirrel in a cage now, and one can get a little confused."
RatherBiased.com suggests that these absurd man-of-the-people moments are written beforehand and thus somehow disingenuous. Perhaps. But I'd argue that Rather is the last genuine TV personality left, precisely because he is so tightly wound, so simultaneously choreographed and on the brink of complete breakdown.
Jennings and Brokaw try to be the levelheaded, benevolent fathers most Americans never had; Bill O'Reilly and his ilk occupy the tell-it-like-it-is simplicity of a crazy uncle. Rather alone acknowledges that television isn't real, that we viewers really don't know those people staring at us through the fourth wall - that they aren't fully-formed individual people at all. So he's willfully weird, his "terrorist tape"-like delivery constantly reminding us to question him, question the news and question everything else.
If anyone ever preempted Jonathan Liu '07 for the U.S. Open, he'd totally throw a fit.
