RIP Walter Cronkite

I remember him saying he never would have retired in 1981 if he knew he was going to live so much longer.

RIP

Who could blame him -- and wouldn't he have been an interesting voice all that time. RIP

http://i28.tinypic.com/ojnvd4.jpg

I'm glad he's at rest now, but oh how I wish he could've lasted two more days.

Why, what happens in two days?

Technically three, I guess, but it's the 40th anniversary of the moon landing.

he retired just when I started paying attention to The News, but his charm was such that he was always somewhere (I knew him mostly as the voice on the Disney Epcot Center ride Spaceship Earth). RIP.

Likewise, I only have the most vague memories of seeing him on the CBS Evening News, but I remember the day of his last broadcast being a pretty big deal for my parents.

in the Reagan White House in 1981 for a correspondents dinner:

http://www-tc.pbs.org/newshour/media/walker/images/5.jpg

Get ready for THAT'S THE WAY IT WAS on the front page of your "editorial" sections in this Sunday's paper.

is he killing himself over reagan's war on LBJ's war on poverty there?

Morbs 2: The Morbsening

"Hahah -- white guys!"

oh fuck off

Actually...

Caption this photo

Love Poppy Bush's comb over.

Seriously--as a kid whose parents were both journalists, Cronkite was a major mythical figure that my dad constantly namedropped as I was growing up. The staticy VHS transfers of rebroadcasts of Cronkite covering big events were how I was first exposed to the moon landing, among other things. He was never quite the figure for me that Jennings was, but I know he was important to my Father & his generation of broadcasters and really everyone in the business since. He was droll and funny and I hope he rests well.

oh fuck off

Don't you have anything better to do than troll a RIP thread?

oh fuck off

foip

it's funny, since i never saw him on tv at all, he's always existed in the past for me. so him being actually dead seems like sort of an afterthought, or an endnote to that whole era. but from what i know, he had a core decency that shaped how he did what he did. i'm sure without much effort i could work up a morbs-like indictment of him as an apologist for the establishment, but the establishment has so many apologists that that isn't much of a critique. he also aspired to being something more like its conscience, which legitimately sets him apart.

Exactly. He's part of an American past I barely knew, so working myself into a I-had-no-use-for-him moment is way beside the point.

That's a shame. Television news was a lot more riveting in the days before cable.

For me, Cronkite was as essential and eternal as Johnny Carson.

Surely a back handed compliment...

RIP, but his "drug-crazed mob of kids" remark will forever stick in my craw

For me, Cronkite was as essential and eternal as Johnny Carson.

^^^ this. Just old enough to remember when "watching Cronkite" meant the news and "watching Carson" meant staying up late.

RIP monoculture.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrP5FLOszyM

This full six-minute sequence of the broadcast up until the announcement of Kennedy's death is fascinating for context:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K8Q3cqGs7I

And this is part two of a full sequence but here's the Armstrong landing -- apologies for initial Agnew blathering:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_A9MA61kH5E

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/07/18/cronkite/index.html

A competent guardian of the national myths.

http://www.counterpunch.org/solomon07202009.html

Aside from the Apollo stuff, I liked him best on You Are There.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ljs7rR3s60

^I mean, look at those Alamo credits besides Fred Gwynne. Walter Bernstein, Philip Bosco etc.

I'm about a third of the way through The Eighteen-Day Running Mate, about the McGovern-Eagleton debacle. Never knew that Cronkite was considered for the second spot in '72--he was Frank Mankiewicz's first choice--and that while McGovern vetoed the idea, with one of his reasons being he assumed Cronkite would never accept, Cronkite said years later he absolutely would have accepted.

http://www.yalebooks.com/images/full13/9780300176292.jpg

nutty idea

i... just...

http://deadline.com/2017/12/seth-rogen-walter-cronkite-newsflash-jfk-assassination-david-gordon-green-don-hewitt-1202224250/